Alright so now I'm using an old PSU. The reason I stoped using this PSU is because:

* It sometimes shuts down when other appliances get plugged in elsewhere in the house.

* It sometimes shuts down when static comes close to the PC (vacuum cleaner, slippers..)

Aa ^_^

Hunter... sorry you're having computer troubles...

inside hunter's computer:

motherboard: bring out your dead! bring out your dead!

heatsink: <carrying CPU> heres one!

CPU: im not dead!

heatsink: your not fooling anyone.

CPU: i feel happy! i feel happy! i feel hap-*whack*

heatsink: here you go.

motherboard: nine pence.


see? its actualy a ridiculous british comedy.

next episode: sir mousealot the brave saves sir monitor from certain photon burns.

Flipside wrote:What Radeon card is it? It might be that the PSU overheated from the current being drawn by the card, or it could be a fault in the windows/drivers, and the PSU problem was unrelated. Normally power/heat problems will cause hard resets, whereas software/OS problems will cause crashes or freezes, but not always.

Before you stick a second PSU in there, do you have an older graphics card you can test the rest of the system with, it might be worth trying a boot-up with an old or borrowed card first to see if the system starts without it.

Any ideas how a GPU fault would block windows from starting unless in safe mode ?

Penti P4
Geforce4 MX
Windows XP

That sounds like a driver problem of some description, Safe Mode just loads up generic VGA drivers, which may work ok, but try re-installing the Graphics drivers and maybe even DirectX, that'd be my first suggestion anyway

@ Hunter,

Are you using a lot of multi-socket leads, the ones that split one socket into several?

Yes, sadly. No choice.

Flipside wrote:That sounds like a driver problem of some description, Safe Mode just loads up generic VGA drivers, which may work ok, but try re-installing the Graphics drivers and maybe even DirectX, that'd be my first suggestion anyway

Ta.

Upgrading from the Gefore4MX would be hella cheap so if I can get a GPU with the drivers bundled I may go ahead and drop the £70 or so required.

As for Direct-X, would the versions usually bundled with games be what you're refering to ?

To be more precise, the comp would fire up and the thingy fella do the beep as normal, the windows loading screen would appear but then it would seem to fail and keep retrying. On the second try I would get the option to restart, restart last know good settings or restart safe-mode, with safe-mode only making any progress. I remember seeing a fair number of errors in the events viewer.

I had the exact same problem, I just deleted the card, removed the drivers and reinstalled it in Safe Mode using the original CD drivers. Somehow it worked eventually.

Yay! Party at Hunters'!