Intermitent no boot up

[metrevor]

I am taking a look at a friends PC for him. One day the PC will boot up and work ok the next day it won't boot up.

When I went to have a look at the PC today but it would boot up properley. It does the POST test but it seems to do the memory check 3 times. After the memory check it detects everything on the ide channels. Then the system hangs. I am left with a black screen and flashing cursor.

The PC is 3 years old do you think the motherboard battery could be at fault.

[metrevor]

You have to leave the PC for a number of hours (not sure how many) before it will start again. For a test my friend left the PC on from about 10 a.m. Sat morning until 18:30 Sun evening so in total it was on for about 18.5 hours. I can only assume from that the ram and CPU are ok as it if was a CPU overheating problem surely the PC would shut down? When I arrived I was able to fully use the PC. I shut the PC down and tried to restart it. I then got the boot up error. My friend says if I come around tomorrow it will start up first time but if you close it down again (even straight away) it will not boot up again. I have reseated the heatsink and give the fan a good clean. It is a Intel 500mhz CPU and I think it is a maxtor hard drive. I know for sure it is 20GB. All cabling is secure.

[Weta]

Oh gee, sounds familiar :/



Is it by any means an old IBM Aptiva? I have not yet tried this solution, and I don't know when I will have the time..

If you try it, please give some feedback..