PC Not Starting.

[anthomson]

My PC has started freezing on boot up. It can happen at any time in the start up sequence, even loading the bios, so I do not think it is software related. After about three attempts it usually goes all the way thru start-up sequence ok and will then work fine - presumably because it has warmed up. Any ideas about which componet could be faulty.

[Hippy]

Not the only answer here, but you could try taking the memory array out and replacing it again, I mean just putting it back again. It could be a bad contact there. If you have more than on memory array take each out in turn and try booting with the remaining one. You might find a faulty one that way. (Please switch off and unplug mains before poking about inside poota!) It sounds like the memory is struggling past the first test but then falling over in real use. If you have a friend with similar poota then swap memory arrays to see if fault transfers to another machine.

Intermittent faults and warmth related ones are notoriously hard to track down. Just when you think you have it licked, plop! It happens again. Good luck and avoid wearing synthetic garments or nylon carpets when handling memory chips, static electricity kills them.

[Gandy]

How long have you had the PC? How long has it been freezing? Another thought would be that the CMOS battery had gone and BIOS cpu settings and changed and was either under/over clocking the memory. Try setting CPU and RAM at 100mhz each and see if that works

[j2buttonsw]

New power supply? BTW, I think you would get error messages such as "Resetting CMOS Press Del to enter setup or F1 to continue" if the CMOS battery was failing.

[anthomson]

Don't think it CMOS battery related - it usually gets past this stage and freezes during windows initialisation. There is basically a window of about 30 seconds where it may fail - if it get pasts this its fine. Occasionally it doesn't freeze completely but either the monitor or the keyboard will not work - usually the former.