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Author Topic: Comp fine until restart - Doesn't boot + black screen!  (Read 3090 times)

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hichief

    Topic Starter


    Newbie

    Comp fine until restart - Doesn't boot + black screen!
    « on: September 16, 2009, 11:02:16 AM »
    Hello all, and let me thank you in advance for reading this... I'd appreciate all the help I could get!

    This was my first time putting together a rig. Being pretty familiar and having exchanged parts before, I felt confident enough to put together one from scratch. Everything (except the case, which was in pretty good condition except some scratches) was brand new. And everything worked great from the first boot up - I got windows 7 installed, etc, no problem.

    However, when I went to restart after installing some drivers, it did shut down the system and started back up... but it didn't boot up at all. The motherboard never makes beeps, and this time was no different... but the motherboard green light was on. All the fans and LEDs were on, but the LED on my monitor was orange as if it were on standby. Couldn't get to the bios or anything. I reset and shut down the computer twice each and still nothing. After going back in and making sure everything was still connected properly. Everything seemed OK, but I switched the two sticks of ram into the 1st and 2nd, instead of the 3rd and 4th, just in case. Everything plugged in, it booted up great once more great! However, this time I needed to reboot again after I installed AVG and it happened once more, exactly the same thing!! I once again checked all the power connections and everything was peachy. I unhitched the CPU fan to take it off, but then I thought better of it since I don't have any thermal paste so I hitched it back on and left it be. I left the RAM alone as well, and tried to boot it up. It booted up fine again! It seemed so odd that whenever I took the case off and played inside a bit... it would "magically work" again.  ???

    I then downloaded a CPU temp monitor - which confused me as well. It had "temp1", "temp2", "temp3", and "core". Everything was running at 35º-40º, except temp3 was a BURNING 115º!!! I explained the situation to my wife before I went to work and basically told her to keep an eye on it, because I thought this may be inaccurate. She kept it on for 8 hours straight, and even played some games on it for a few hours. Nothing funky happened. If anything in the system was overheating, wouldn't it shut down? The bios reported the CPU at a cool temperature as well. I'm not sure what "temp3" could even be. I do see 3 heatsinks besides the CPU heatsink - could one of those be "temp3"? And even so, could this be the problem?


    Right now I'm at a loss, and frankly paranoid about rebooting! Any ideas of what could be wrong? I am using:
    Windows 7 64-bit
    AMD Phenom II X2 550
    2x ADATA 2GB DDR3 1333MHZ (4 GB total)
    Integrated sound and video card
    Mobo is an ECS A790GXM-AD3 (AM3 socket)
    450W Corsair ATX PCI-E Powersupply
    Seagate Cuda7200 1TB 7200RPM, 32MB, Sata 3.0GB



    Thank you in advance for any information.

    hichief

      Topic Starter


      Newbie

      Re: Comp fine until restart - Doesn't boot + black screen!
      « Reply #1 on: September 17, 2009, 12:44:38 PM »
      Quick addition/update: I shut it off last night, and my wife turned it on this morning. She reported it didn't boot up, as per usual, but she didn't open the case or anything. She switched the power off and on from the back of the power supply, then hit the power button at the front of the case. Computer started up and ran perfect. The computer has been running all day fine without a hitch, once again. Still, it's been happening every time we reboot!

      « Last Edit: September 18, 2009, 05:55:24 AM by hichief »