PC Boot Issues

Hi,

I hope someone may be able to give me a few pointers on how to procede with my issues. I will avoid to write a novel like I usually do ;)

My problem is that every so often my PC basically refuses to boot. It will start spinning the fans, the HDs and DVD will light up for about 2 seconds, I hear the HD spin and then it simply does nothing anymore. The HD stops spinning, the HD light goes off, and the screen stays black.

This happens about once every 2 weeks. And it can last from one hour to one or two days. After that the PC suddenly boots again and it pretends nothing has happened. It's like your car that won't start for some reason every once in a while :)

This is what I've tried so far:
- rebooting / resetting
- CMOS reset
- removing everything but power supply, videocard, motherboard, CPU and RAM
- switching RAM modules
- buying a UPS (which seemed to work for the first two months and I was very happy, until the PC decided that wasn't it and refused to boot again)

When it is working it sometimes freezes as well, either in a game or just when idle. It doesn't overheat. The CPU and GPU are at normal operating temperatures.

I can definitely say it's not a software problem since this occurs before any OS is loaded. And it can't be anything else than the aforementioned components that I didn't remove. However, I currently don't have any replacement hardware so I cannot start testing.

The PC will suddenly work again without any changes made, so it's difficult to test. Once, after a 3-day 'refusal to go to work' I decided to simply bring it my PC shop as I had enough, but right putting it in my car I did a last test and... it worked again.

So now, after refusing to boot for two days, I thought I'd get some help on the forums :)

I have an Asus P5B motherboard, with an Intel Core2Duo E6600, 2x1GB Corsair DDR2, an ATI Radeon HD 4850 and a 600W OCZ power supply. This is my third videocard on this system as my GeForce 7900GT and GeForce 8800GTS both died (they gave artifacts) and my second power supply as the previous one exploded right in front of me.

I moved now, but I think I had some serious power issues in my previous appartment which may have caused damage. Hence the UPS :)

Any idea what it might be? Perhaps the CPU and motherboard sustained damage from bad current and therefore sometimes refuse to work? How can I test the components without having hardware replacements?

Hopefully someone can help me a bit. I only use my PC to play an occasional game and to do Windows programming. So I don't feel like buying an entire new motherboard/CPU/memory configuration while this system will do. For the rest I use my Mac, which luckily (still) works fine at the moment :).

I hardly ever have software problems, but I seem to attract hardware problems a lot instead. The number of motherboard, videocard and CPU failures I've encountered on my PCs were numerous :).

Thanks a lot if someone can give me some pointers or info on how to know which part is failing. I usually work by elimination, but at the moment I'm stuck eliminating any further.

Best regards,
Edward.

Did you reinstall OS?

First run memtest. If that comes up good then consider your power supply.

Thanks. I will first run memtest once my PC will boot again.

I'm sure it's not OS related as it won't even boot to BIOS, also when no disks and other hardware is connected.

Well, you've everything you're supposed to do, and without spare parts to test, I agree with what has been stated. Try memtest. You could also get the free version of Sisoft Sandra and run some of their tests to see what happens.

If you haven't already, try re-seating the components that must be there. However, I usually see a problem with the motherboard when these types of issues start appearing.