Stop turning off! Please help!

My pc has an issue with staying on. It has a tendancy to power down at will. I have tried multple overheat solutions...new heatsink and fan, a slot fan, an extra outtake fan, and an intake fan. Basically here is what I have and where I'm at (besides my wits end)

MSI 6340 mobo v.1 w/ Award Bios updated recently, VIA chipset updated yesterday, 700mHz AMD Duron proc, 256MB RAM, GeForce2 video card. All of the hardware in the pc functioned fine for over 1 year. It will work if I don't leave it on for more than a few hours, but I want to do all of my backups and maintainace overnight. I've tried different power supplies, video cards, and RAM. For trouleshooting I have disconnected all other hardware. Basically, after a period of time, different intervals, the pc will just "power off ". The power light is still on, when the hard drive is connected the IDE light goes on solid when "down ", the monitor gets no signal, and the box just sits there until it is powered off (unplugged, does not respond to the power button). If I start it up immediatly it won't boot. If I leave it for a while it will boot successfully. Since I've disconnected the hard drive I have been booting to the Bios and leaving it and timing the system. The system will stay in the BIOS for about 12 hours before the screen goes black and the power button is unresponsive.

Does anyone have any ideas short of replacing the proc and mobo? Anyone else ever ran into this type of thing? Any other troubleshooting suggestions? Any help is appreciated.

 

You've been thru a lot and done a lot but I didn't see any mention of going to control panel>Power Management. I'm sure you must have but I had to mention just in the rarest of chances that you hadn't. I'm working with Win98fe and my settings ares set to "never' and "never ".

 

Hello bribears,

I've been through this also and it turned out to be my power management settings in the control panel. My current settings are Power Schemes: Home/Office Desk, Turn off monitor: never
Turn off hard disks: never and System standby: never

This cleared my problem up right away.

Hope this helps!

 

Thanks guys! However I did set everything in Windows power management to never long ago. Also, as I mentioned above, the hard drive isn't even connected at this time and I'm only booting to the BIOS and the problem is still there.

 

Well my conclusion is that your MoBo has some sort of issue. Its the only thing left that you haven't replaced. According to your post you have tried all sorts of cooling solutions, new PS, new HDD, and still have problems when you disconnect all the peripherals. Dump the MSI MoBo and buy and ASUS or Gigabyte board.

 

I replaced the Duron proc last night and the pc is still sitting in the BIOS 18 hours later. That's a record so I'm going with the proc. I figured I was down to mobo or proc, but wanted to be sure there was not something like a timeout with the BIOS being displayed that I did not know about. Looks like the BIOS would stay up forever if the hard ware is good...right?