Ok here's a nice one for everyone...My mom's computer is a Gateway, not sure of the Model, but it's got a Celeron Processor and 256 MB of RAM & Windows XP Home, Service Pack 3... When I arrived in California about 5 months ago, I opened up the computer and it pretty much gave new definition to the term "cigarette computer". It also gave new definition to what I call COB WEB computer, and dust computer. Yes, it had old spider webs in it.
I took it outside, pulled almost everything out....cables, CD drive, took off the front plastic part of the case......Next I hit it with almost a whole can of compressed air. Next I put everything back together, moved the computer to a new room closer to the phone jack, because her dial-up phone chord was about 50 ft long! Reinstalled XP for her.....updated to serv. pack 3, added anti-virus.....bla bla bla, you get the idea...
Everything seemed fine for quite some time, until the computer began shuting down within seconds of cold booting... The PC does NOT always shut down after cold booting, only sometimes.
I tried swapping in a different power supply, no go on that... I checked the Voltage at the wall.....Ok there... I checked the CMOS boot log, and it had reported lots of "start up keyboard errors", so I switched keyboards....I thought maybe the current keyboard is bad, but that didn't fix the problem either.
After this problem had already been present for a while, I switched the processor to a Pent. 3, just for fun.....The problem remained after the installation of the new processor so the problem was likely not the old processor....
I haven't checked the CMOS battery yet, or double checked the seating of the cables...I haven't pulled out the cmos battery yet either, I may have set something wrong in there, but I doubt it.. Maybe flashing the motherboard would do the trick.
I don't get to go to my mom's house that often, so next time I go over there I'd like to try what I haven't tried yet, plus any other suggestions...
