Hi,

My PC's been running very stable for the last two years (with XP first and now Vista), until it started to act strangely a few months back.

Everything looked fined, except that it wouldn't start. The motherboard light was on, I could hear the hard drive spinning but no post beeping and a blank screen.

I changed the motherboard, same thing. Tried a vanilla system (no OS, just the board, CPU, RAM and hard drive, new power supply), same thing.

What I have to do is start/stop it a few times and then it's be ok (and completely stable once it's running.)

I had the same problem under XP and Vista.

Motherboard -> A8N-VM CSM
Processor -> AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+

Sorry i know this post isn't helpful nor on topic but i need to post this to do a test.

Anyone know why i can view other threads fine, but i just posted a thread like 1 hour ago and when i view it it appears weird. It doesn't look anything like the site, it has odd lettering etc. Can anyone view it? It's called "can't print?"

sounds like a power supply issue to me

That's what I thought, but the three power supply I tried did the same. One of them was 700w, which is way more then what I need. I also ran memtest86, no problemo there.

gotta be a Motherboard problem then possibly a dry joint

any idea how I can find where the dry joint is? google didn't return much info on that... thanks

well its a problem where something has not been soldered correctly basically the board isnt hot enough so the solder just sits on the top meaning with expansion it can become either a short or a none connection. However that was purely a guess. You couldhave a look for any buldging caps

could the dry joint be on the CPU? because I replaced the Motherboard and the power supply. or I was unlucky enough to get a second Motherboard with the same issue.

could the cpu be overheating

it's around 50C, so it should be ok. like you said, really looks like a dry joint. Ì'll have a look at it and let you know. thanks!