[Techtalk] computer starts wrongly

[Miriam English]

Hi folks,

Lately my computer starts up weirdly.

Where I live, out in the bush, there tend to be glitches in the line. So 
after shutdown I turn off my computer at its true power switch on the 
back, because ATX power supplies when simply shut down are not truly off 
and the computer remains vulnerable to powerline damage.

But recently, when I switch on the power, my computer turns itself on 
without me touching the front panel "on" button... then after several 
seconds turns off again. Weird. If I leave it for a couple of minutes I 
can push the front panel "on" button and it will turn on and stay on, 
but refuses to boot properly unless I press the reset button. And often 
the routine that safeguards the CMOS data seems to think the settings 
are corrupted (though they never actually seem to be) so I have to press 
DEL to go into the BIOS, then exit it again.

Another way to convince it to boot properly is to shut it down when it 
initially starts itself up, by holding the power button in for a few 
seconds, then when it has shut down, switch it off for a few seconds at 
the true power switch on the back of the computer. On switching power 
back on now it generally behaves itself, remaining off till the front 
panel "on" button is pushed, though it generally needs to be reset 
before it will boot up.

When I say "boot" I mean getting to the BIOS with the POST (Power On 
Self Test) messages coming up, way before Linux. If the BIOS boots then 
I never have any problems getting further.

My immediate feeling is that it is the power supply rather than whatever 
it is on the motherboard that handles the shut-down stuff, but I don't 
know enough about it to really say. I have just 3 reasonably large hard 
drives, one in a removable drive rack, a single CD/DVD drive, and a 
moderately powerful video card (NVidia GeForce4 MX 4000), so there isn't 
too much stuff drawing power. I built this computer about 4 years ago 
and it has worked fine all that time. I am on my computer pretty-much 
all day every day and it behaves perfectly otherwise.

Is my power supply just dying, do you think? Or, dread the thought, 
could some kind of (I get vague here) power control circuitry on the 
motherboard have been damaged by a power surge? The power is really 
unreliable out here. When I can afford it I should invest in an 
uninterruptible power supply. I have surge protectors, but they can 
never really fully protect against fast spikes.

Best wishes,

	- Miriam

-- 
My time wasn't completely wasted last year.
I went on a 940 million kilometer journey.
-----
Website: http://miriam-english.org
Blog: http://miriam_e.livejournal.com