Power Problem with Cold Boot

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone could help with this unusual problem I have had since sunday (four days).

But when i power on my PC Base unit from a cold boot. (i.e been mains switched off prior). But halfway during the boot up of Windows, usually on the "loading" screen with the windows icon and the moving loading bar.

My PC usually abruptly powers down. The power light at the front of the PC completely switches off (its normally either Green or red all the time). But you can still hear noise coming from the PC unit. Which i am suspecting is the fan, which is also very unusual. As my Fan switches off when there is no power to the PC.

The monitor also acts like the PC is switched off too when this happens (as my Montier power light flickers on and off when there is no power coming from the PC Base unit).

And to restart I need to focably hold the standby button for five seconds to hard switch off the machine. And then try again booting.

This problem would happen for the next 3 or 4 boots. And then windows would boot perfectly fine and there will be no more problems until i try a next cold boot.

Does anyone know what the problem causing this is. As its very irritating.

Thanks
Anthony

 

I have the same issue. I am using a Dell Dimension 9150 with Windows SP2. Since getting my new system I experience intermittent powerdowns after doing a cold boot. The monitor randomly powers down during some cold boots. The monitor remains blank. I can only access the desktop by going into safemode. Dell customer service have been useless. A file utility scan demonstrated no hardware issues so they have washed their hands clean of the situation. Luckily I am using FDISR and can reboot into a good configuation.
I have tried upgrading drivers and disabling startup entries to no good effect. There seems to be plenty of similar incidences with other Dell PC's. This issue was often resolved by replacing the PSU. In other cases the motherboard or video cards were to blame. Unfortunately I am a relative newbie and am also at a loss as what to do.

SetUp

Prvx1, Admuncher, LnS, SocketShield, BoClean, Antivir PE, FDISR, GEsWall (or Defensewall or SSM), Firefox 1.5
Spywareblaster, HardenIT, TrojanRemover

 

I had the same problem with one of my machines. In my case, one of the capcitors on the motherboard had a crack in it's leg. With hindsight, I assumed that as the PC warmed up during the first couple or so attempts the thermal expansion caused a proper connection and the PC then stayed on fine until the next cold boot.

I found it by gently prodding the capacitors on the motherboard and found that one moved. Unfortunately, my gentle prod meant that the crack turned into a gaping hole and I could never get the machine to boot again.

 

I had similar problems a few times.

1) If the computer was off for some time, say vacation (I never turn them off usually), it would have a hard time starting up.
That was soomething to do with the disk cylinders being stuck somehow and unable to spin up. Leaving the computer on for some time, before restarting, fixed the problem (warmed them up I guess, or something).

2) A bad USB hub (powered) was sucking up too many mA and the computer would just freeze during the BIOS post.

3) A power failure affected a disk controller. The controller wouldn't see one of my secondary disks therefore the BIOS was blind to it too. That made 3-4 partitions disappear. Windows would boot up to a point and then just power down. I don't remember if any of the missing partitions had the swap file in it or not but they certainly had something Windows needed. Switching off and on the computer, restored the controller's state and everything went back to normal.