Help, my PC is intermittantly crashing hard. Powers completely off. Need to power off until St_Power LED goes out, then turn power on before you can restart the PC. It is almost as if the power supply were crowbarring.

Configuration:
Motherboard: Asus A7V8X-X running BIOS v.1013
CPU: AMD XP-2200
Memory: 1 GB PC2700 DDR (1x512, 2x256 sticks)
Video: NVidia GeForce 6800GT / 256 MB RAM

Tried so far:
1. Thought it was a power problem so I replaced 400W supply w/ 550W supply.
2. Thought it might be a thermal problem so I am running with the case open and I replaced the CPU cooler with a ThermalTake Silent Boost cooler. CPU temp is 50-55 degrees C.
3. Thought it might be a problem with the video card so I reverted to my old TI4200 128 MB card
4. Thought it might be RAM, so I ran the PC with one stick at a time.

All to no avail, system is still shutting down. No rhyme or reason, shuts down while running MS Word, Adobe Photoshop or Halo. One thing I have noticed is that I can make it shut down every time by going into BIOS setup and then exiting. Shuts down on exit. I don't know if this is significant or not.

I am at my wits end. Don't know what to try next. If anyone has any helpful suggestions, it would be most appreciated.

Tommy T.

Hi and welcome to PCHF

Did you carry out a re-install or repair install of Windows yet? Also, did you build the PC yourself? Have you checked that the motherboard isn't shorting out against the case or motherboard tray?

..it sounds like a RAM issue to me tho. Is there any way that you can put another stick of RAM in there to test?

tommytailspin: is your problem now solved?

Marked as Pending.