I’ve been off line for a few days now, as I’m sure that one or two of you have noticed.

This began when I received my new computer hardware. After installing my new toys I powered on the system only to see it lock up after a moment or two. The system would lock up during post; in fact, this even occurred when the BIOS set up was on screen, so this problem has nothing at all to do with the O/S.

I assumed that the motherboard was the culprit. The reason for this is that the IDE prongs were bent. A couple were so badly bent that they were laying down flat. When the system constantly froze I made the (logical?) decision that it was caused by the mobo and RMA’d it.

Now I’m not so sure. I’ve put the old hardware back in only to find that the system is now turning itself off after a minute or two. As with the lock up problem, the system will simply turn off after a short period of time regardless of what it’s doing. It can be at the BIOS screen, or the Windows install CD can be loading, or just whatever.

The timing is too suspicious, but it seems now that my power supply may have simply given up the ghost. I hope like heck that it’s the power supply because the only other parts that the two configurations have in common are the processor and the hard drives.

I am not in any hurry to replace either of those.

There doesn’t seem to be a choice in the matter though. I’ll be ordering a new power supply soon and hoping that it resolves the issues.

It looks like I’ll be off line for awhile in any case. On the bright side I have nothing else to do buy study… yeah… this is just the way that I want to spend my weekend.

~Steph