[Bobboau]

the PSU is the only part of my computer I'm not sure about, I have an ASUS A7N8X delux mobo (PCBv2.0), AMD Athlon XP 3000+, a gig of 400mhz ram (froget who made it), ATI radion 9800 pro 128MB, audigy 2 sound card, an ATI TV input card (has caused more crashes and hard locks than anything else ever), two 110 GB ATA  hard drives, one of wich is more or less worthless and error prone and also made into three partitions, one of which was a windows partition before it went bad, the second partition I was going to try and dual boot linux but never got any further than makeing a seperate partition, the thrid was for a long time a data partition, but anything usefull in there has been moved to the SATA drive. the other 110HD is the current windows install, it's sole job is running windows, a lot of minor applications get saved here. the main hard drive is a 250 GB SATA drive, it is were all my important data is I have been abuseing it sence I got it and I have yet to fill it up (huge uncompressed video files and ****).

[MP-Ryan]

As I said, check the Windows event log, and then start checking temperatures.

[Bob-san]

They generally won't overheat toward the end of their lifespans. I'd recommend you backup most of your data on DVDs, do a low-level format of all hard drives, remove the TV card, and retry installing. You don't even have to register WinXP; you have 30 days to try the setup before you're commited to reregistering... they should give you no problem, if they do just say youre trying to fix your system and describe your problem.

Anyways... if you replace the system, any chance to send me the RAM? I need some more RAM; I had a 512mb stick burn out, so I'm left with 1 DIMM and 512mb. 

[jr2]

Umm, check the wattage on your PSU.  I would hope you had at least a 400 watt, preferrably a 600 watt.  You've got a lot of hard disks.  This may be the reason one of them is so error prone; hard disks don't take to being underfed, IIRC.  You should be able to find the wattage on the back of the PSU, I hope.

EDIT:
http://www.google.com/search?q=power+supply+calculator

http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculator.jsp

[Bobboau]

it's 420 watts, and that thing was buggy from the day I got it, when it was the only hard drive and I didn't have most of the extra parifrials.

honestly I haven't had a problem sence I made this topic.

[Rictor]

Reffered to informally (meaning only by me) as Dancing Frog Syndrome.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

420 watts with a Radeon 9800 is cutting it a bit thin.  I had a similar situation.  System worked fine for about a year then just started turning off for no reason.  Turned out I was right at the limit of the power supply all along.  Apparently it started to get a bit weak and wasn't putting out the full wattage anymore.  Bought a bigger power supply and haven't had any problem since except the odd fan going out.

Just went back through a couple of years of email and found the support ticket from ATI.

Regarding your RADEON 9800 PRO:

What is the Power Supply rating of your computer ? The 9800 series of products require a MINIMUM of 300W of power in a normal configuration.

When you play 3D computer games, the card draws more power. If your power supply is already maxed out, then the card will fail and therefore your machine will shut down.

So that's over 300 watts just for the video card. 

[CP5670]

ATI's recommendations are intended to cover generic, unbranded units. A good quality 300W will run his system quite comfortably (my guess is that it uses no more than 150-170W on full load, going by what my computer is like). If it's a generic one, on the other hand, it may have problems regardless of its rated wattage.

In any case, memory problems are a much more common cause of this behavior than power supply issues, often giving the kind of speaker pop he described.

[jr2]

*wonders when Bobboau will drop off the face of the online Earth for a few weeks, then re-appear complaining about his massive system failure*
-Seriously, though, did you run Memtest86+?

[Nuke]

it's 420 watts, and that thing was buggy from the day I got it, when it was the only hard drive and I didn't have most of the extra parifrials.

honestly I haven't had a problem sence I made this topic.

in that case id just say ignore it. probibly had some unwanted potentials that discharged themselves with time.

i doubt its a memory problem. its common for speakers to pop when the power fails, happens on stereos, tvs and computers alike. almost every computer ive worked on that has shut itself down for unknown reasons has popped. i accept this as normal.

[jr2]

...Right, but they don't usually just shut down.. (at least, not since XP, for me)
Then again, how long had it been running since the last restart/shutdown?

[Bob-san]

Remember WinXP generally will destabilize itself the longer it runs... most WinXP machines become too unstable to use effectively within about a week. Some, however, can run for very long; notably my school's P4 computers have run for over a month. Why? Because, nothing we do sticks; the machine is effectively reset every time someone logs on and off.