Pc shuts down shortly after boot.

Terry

It's an old one, but it has been fairly well kitted out for its age.
Medion MT6.

There's a card reader at the front, and then there's a graphics card, a tv card and something I don't recognise connected to the motherboard.

It boots up, gives an error message (Invalid boot.ini file (which is not a major problem)), then proceeds to an option to boot from windows with the 30 second countdown, and then shuts off after 5 seconds.

Before I go disconnecting things one by one, can anyone think of a reason for this?

Thanks.

Terry

Never mind.
I have just remembered having a similar problem years ago.

Someone else was at this before me, and apparently they were tinkering with the processor.
I'm guessing that it just needs to be cleaned and to have some fresh thermal paste applied.

ScumLord

Run memtest on it too, memory problems can be weird.

hearny

Sounds like its a hard drive issue.

Do you have the Windows disk handy, and what version is it.

If you can boot from the cd / dvd if its 7 or vista repair the startup, if its xp follow this guide:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/330184

it might be worth running a chkdsk on it too.

DJpaudie

sounds like overheating. Computer shuts down if the processor gets too hot. Either the thermal paste, the fan or foam pads on the processor need replacing!

unkel

DJpaudie wrote: »

sounds like overheating. Computer shuts down if the processor gets too hot.

+1

Would be my first guess too. Especially now we've been told someone was at the CPU

hearny

Does the pc start at all.

By that I mean do you get as far as windows loading fully.

Terry

I was talking to the owner today (My friend's brother).
He said that someone replaced a capacitor on the motherboard, and that it was a bit sluggish afterwards, but that it was running.

He then gave it to someone else (a friend of my friend). I know that ****er, and while I might not have any formal education, he knows less about computers than the average Third year student of today.

I'm guessing that he was tinkering with the processor because my friend believed that was where the problem lay when he dropped the pc up to me.
He obviously broke the seal between the heat sink and the CPU.

hearny, there are two hard drives in it. I tried booting them separately. Same result.
Even going into the BIOS setting shuts it down.
It's definitely overheating.

I'm buying a new CPU for myself next week, so I'll just get some thermal paste then.
If that doesn't work, then I'll be back to this thread.

Thanks for the help, folks.
Now onto my next problem...

Terry

Just updating this in case someone has a similar problem.

It was indeed a problem with the thermal paste. There was basically none there.

Removed the fan and the heat sink to clean it before applying fresh thermal paste, and it took all of 5 minutes using cotton buds and alcohol (I can't touch cotton balls. It's like fingernails on a blackboard to me).

There was only crumbs left. It was as if someone had tried to clean it, and then didn't replace the thermal paste.

That aside, there was a problem with the HDD's.
They still wouldn't boot.

I just backed up the files on the smaller HDD and re-installed XP on it.
It's working perfectly now.

DJpaudie

Terry wrote: »

Just updating this in case someone has a similar problem.

It was indeed a problem with the thermal paste. There was basically none there.

Removed the fan and the heat sink to clean it before applying fresh thermal paste, and it took all of 5 minutes using cotton buds and alcohol (I can't touch cotton balls. It's like fingernails on a blackboard to me).

There was only crumbs left. It was as if someone had tried to clean it, and then didn't replace the thermal paste.

That aside, there was a problem with the HDD's.
They still wouldn't boot.

I just backed up the files on the smaller HDD and re-installed XP on it.
It's working perfectly now.

Glad to hear it's sorted. You would expect some sort of corruption to the files on the HDD as it was shutting down after startup and not getting the chance to power down properly.

Freddy Smelly

Terry wrote: »

It's an old one, but it has been fairly well kitted out for its age.
Medion MT6.

There's a card reader at the front, and then there's a graphics card, a tv card and something I don't recognise connected to the motherboard.

It boots up, gives an error message (Invalid boot.ini file (which is not a major problem)), then proceeds to an option to boot from windows with the 30 second countdown, and then shuts off after 5 seconds.

Before I go disconnecting things one by one, can anyone think of a reason for this?

Thanks.

invalid boot.ini means your startup is not configured right.

you need to use your xp disc to repair the startup sequence.

bad ram or overheating is probably causing the shutdowns

as said above use memtest x86 to test each ram stick individually.

also buy thermal paste and carefully remove the cpu heatsink and fan and clean them out and clean the cpu then put a new fresh layer of thermal paste on the cpu then reseat the heatsink and fan

if none of those work then you may need to buy a new psu as it could be failing

yoyo

Terry wrote: »

Just updating this in case someone has a similar problem.

It was indeed a problem with the thermal paste. There was basically none there.

Removed the fan and the heat sink to clean it before applying fresh thermal paste, and it took all of 5 minutes using cotton buds and alcohol (I can't touch cotton balls. It's like fingernails on a blackboard to me).

There was only crumbs left. It was as if someone had tried to clean it, and then didn't replace the thermal paste.

That aside, there was a problem with the HDD's.
They still wouldn't boot.

I just backed up the files on the smaller HDD and re-installed XP on it.
It's working perfectly now.

Unbelieveable someone would remove the thermal paste (not even properly if crumbs were left) and just replace the heatsink! Luckily modern bios do actually have thermal shut down features built in.
I usually use kitchen towel and isopropyl alcohol to clean CPUs and stuff, probably not the most ideal but hasn't failed me yet . Once your careful obviously. Glad to hear it's sorted at any rate

Nick

Momento Mori

Wow, that's mad.

My guess from the original post was a HDD issue. Glad you managed to find the solution.