I've been having problems with my computer for a while. Had it for almost a year and it's based around the Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4Gz.

What's been happening is this,

When I switch the pc on, the light, fans and the hard drives start up, then all shut down, then starts up again. This will happen for a few moments or even minutes.

Sometimes a screen appears informing me that overclocking has failed. But, I do not do overclocking. I've checked the settings and they are correct, 2.4Gz, no more, no less.

What's happening?

Maybe something in your bios got changed or corupt some how. Try going into the bios and setting to defaults. If you can't get into the bios look for a jumper on your motherboard that will let you clear the cmos. If you can't find the jumper just pull the battery out for a few seconds and then put it back in.

yeah, clear the cmos. if that doesn't fix it, listen for it to post(the initial beep from startup). if it posts, it will probably have a hardware issue. more like a bad hdd or bad ram.

rich

have you added or removed any hardware lately? i.e. put in a new soundcard..

yeah, what they said....to add to Rotti's idea..... I would wait a minute when you pull the jumper and battery out. Also unplug from the wall so there is no power at all. Then I would update the bios as well! flash it! how long has this been going on? you can also try to hit a restore point. not sure this would do it but worth a shot as well. good luck.
steve

I've not added or changed anything. I'll try the CMOS idea and see what happens.

Could be many different reasons why this is happening. A bad stick of memory could cause this. Did you try removing all RAM except one stick? Try that, test it, then try the other/s.

Finding the cause of a problem like this is a process of elimination. Clearing CMOS and checking each stick of RAM are the first things to try. If you have a manual for your motherboard, look in there and it should tell you which pins you need to put the jumper on to clear CMOS. Leave the battery out for at least a few minutes. And do all this with the power switched off at the mains, but before you mess with the motherboard, press the power switch on the front of your PC a few times to ensure any remaining power is discharged. When you start the PC again, the BIOS should be at their default settings.

yup, after resetting the Bios (in theory this should not help if you didn't make a change but do it anyways).

you gotta pull all cards/ram and eliminate one-by-one the problem hardware. even the drive controller (integrated on the MOBO) can cause this... real hassle... glen

Now comes the part where some goof posts about his MAC wouldn't ever have that problem...
*waiting*

Should have bought a MAC!?

Anyway, Couldn't this be caused by other things besides BIOS/CMOS or hardware issues?

What kind of pc is it? Meaning, is it off the shelf or did you build it yourself? If this is an off the shelf box, look for a bios update. Generally, when a manufacturer detects an issue with the bios, an update is put in place to remedy the problem.


Jimmy

it could be many things.. but an easy check would be to test the power supply or swap the ram.. worst scenario, ur motherboard is messed. ive had this happen before.. when you try to boot the computer, does it make it far enough for you to hear a single beep?

Well, after a while, it'll boot up.

What was the last thing you did with the machine before it started acting that way?

sounds like the hard drive is going out. clear the cmos and start backing it up. then reformat and see if windows can format it. if not, time for a new hard drive.

rich