Hi everyone

First of all Hi to everyone. I have had a quick look through this site are you all seem like the most helpfull people. so down to my problem I am doing this from work so i can't get all the information straight away but here goes. My computer has two problems, but i think these two are joined. First problem is on Turning on the computer all power comes on, fans are going strong and hear the hard drives on but it never reaches the bios. this is very intermitent. sometimes i will press the power on and it will start up first go, sometimes i need to turn it off and on about 3 times, sometimes ten times before it starts and sometimes it can take up to half a hour. the second problem is that when the system is running and in windows or a game or one of my graphics packages the system will totally freeze up. I have upgraded drivers. About the only thing i can think of is that my power supply is faulty, it should be mroe then enough to run my system. Any idea?

I think the first step is to check the system temperature, if that checks back OK it sounds like your at the beginning of hardware failure, so if you could give some system history and list the components we can start to see what your working with. To check the temperature try Speedfan, it's not always accurate, but it's good enough as a starting point, also when you list your components if you can include as much info about the PSU as you can that will help, to see this you will need to remove the side of the case and read it from the label(s) on the unit, ideally a make\model would be great, but if this was store bought it's likely to be a no name unit, but it helps to know.

Thankd for the reply. ok heat is fine, have checked that before too. computer parts are: amd athlon x2 6400+ dual core xfx geforce 8800 XXX edition gigabyte ga-ma770-s3-v2 motherboard 2 gig ram coolmaster 550 powersupply.

Hello maiketh. May be your graphics card. If the system fails to boot just before Gui mode it could be failing to initiate due to a lack of communication with the video card. Satchfan

it does not freeze before gui, it does not even get to the bios, when i know it is going to load i hear the fans slow down a bit and the graphics bios comes up. i am however not certain that it is not the graphics card, i am wanting to try and get one to test

Yeah you will need access to spare parts (or similar system) for testing purposes, it's the only way to test each part to try and specify the problem, without spare parts the only thing you can try is the ram, try booting with a single stick, try it in different slots each time, then repeat with the other stick. Next try removing ram altogether, then put it back and remove the video card, what should happen during this is you will get system errors beeps, note the pattern\frequency of these beeps for the ram and card (one at a time obviously), then if you are able to mention what bios yours is, eg phoenix, ami bios etc we can check the beep codes and make sure they are reporting properly, what we are looking for during this is anything that doesn't behave as one would expect.