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mad desktop

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georgetwo

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Hi everybody,
I am having a problem with my friends P3 desktop pc with MECURY motherboard. He told me the pc could not booth up. then i formatted it and it started fine.
in the process of installing other applications, the pc switched off on its own, i tried to on it but it will booth windows xp then show a blue flash on the monitor and restarts. it repeats this untill you turn off the pc yourself.
I have formatted it three times, thesame thing always hapens. can anyone tell me what is wrong with the pc ?
 
Sure he is, a PC is a consumer electronics device =)

There are any number of a thousand things that could be wrong, from a bad motherboard (you said this was a P3 machien is it not exactly new) bad memory, bad CPU...
But just to give you something to start with it could be an overheating issue. Remove the CPU, clean off the old thermal paste with solvent very carefully, apply new paste and reseat the heastink. This may not be what's occurring but it's a good first step in trouble shooting. Trouble shooting hard PC crashes and reboots like this is not an easy process, but start there and see where it gets you.
 
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well, when I opened the processor, I discovered the the 'Animal' who tried to repair it last used chewing gum to stick the processor to the heatsink. Anyway, i have washed it out, I tried a working RAM, Hdd but problem still persist. is it the processor ?
 
Did you apply new heatsink paste? You can't just slap the heatsink onto the chip and expect a good bond, you have to use a thermal compound, even the tiniest of air bubbles can create massive localized heating. If the situation is as bad as you say the processor may very well be shot. It may never be stable again.

The 'chewing gum' you refered to could be the old heatsink compound, that stuff gets pretty gummy when it ages, it dries out into a cakey brittle mess. It couldn't have been chewing gum, most chewing gum contains synthetic rubber so would act as an excellent insulator, it would have fried the processor long ago, or perhaps has just finally managed to do so. Older chips like that don't run as hot as modern CPU's do.
 
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Hi everybody,
I am having a problem with my friends P3 desktop pc with MECURY motherboard. He told me the pc could not booth up. then i formatted it and it started fine.
in the process of installing other applications, the pc switched off on its own, i tried to on it but it will booth windows xp then show a blue flash on the monitor and restarts. it repeats this untill you turn off the pc yourself.
I have formatted it three times, thesame thing always hapens. can anyone tell me what is wrong with the pc ?

If you can access the boot menu and turn off "Restart on system failure", you may have a better chance by Googling the BSOD message.
 
Download and burn the Ultimate Boot CD using a different PC, and use it to check out your RAM, Hard Disk, etc for errors before attempting an OS install.
 
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Nice link there kchristie, I bookmarked it, might put that one in the same binder I bring with me on family housecalls other thatn the linux live CD I use.
 
Thank you all for your cool ideas. I don't know what to tell the owner of this pc, shuld i say he need another processor or motherboard or even both?
I don't have another p3 cpu to test with. is there any other way to know which of them is bad ?
 
Considering how old P3's are, I'd say buy a new machine. It's simply not worth trying to repair that kind of hardware anymore. Simply finding the parts now days is hard enough.
 
Thank you all for your cool ideas. I don't know what to tell the owner of this pc, shuld i say he need another processor or motherboard or even both?
I don't have another p3 cpu to test with. is there any other way to know which of them is bad ?

Perform the suggestion of kchriste and report your results.
 
I have the bootable disc already, shuld i use fdisk command or fixdisk or ......
pls I need the lines of command.
all i know is how to format and install windows 95 and 98 with dos command.
pleas I still need help.
 
Get into the BIOS and tell the computer to boot from CD. There should have been instructions on the site you downloaded the iso file from, or maybe the CD puts instructions on the screen when you boot.

I don't have one here at this time to verify.
 
Yes, you need to configure your computer to boot from CD. After that, the software on the CD gives you a menu to select the utilities you want to use. Use the arrow keys to move around.
I've used Memtest86+ to test RAM. It works well. You need to run it for a while to fully test the RAM as the system warms up.
You'll also want to use one of the Hard Disk Diagnostic Tools to test the drive for possible failures. The one you use depends on the HDD you have.
 
CPU burn in test would be the first thing I'd run... If it's a heating issues and you run a burn in test the machine will crash within a minute more than likely.
 
Yes, that one would be good. Especially after the "chewing gum" incident. :D
 
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