[RESOLVED] Slight Problem with eMachines T1440

I'm taking a look at an interesting problem with this eMachines T1440. I think it's come to the point where it's officially beyond me.

First off the computer randomly turns on. What I mean by that is that the power supply turns over but doesn't shoot any power to the mainboard. I checked the power supply and it checks out okay. But that really isn't the more serious problem. What I'm running into is that when the computer does decide to boot into Windows, it'll operate for roughly five to seven minutes. The screen will go completely black for a moment then reappear and the system has totally locked down. It won't accept mouse movement, no keyboard input, nothing. Here's what I've tried so far:

1. Running PC Doctor from Hirens. All the hardware checks out okay according to this test.

2. Running some utils from a PE. The PE locks up in a similar fashion to booting into Windows which leads me to my next potential fix.

3. Replaced the RAM. The MB has unlike types of RAM installed so I removed them and installed like RAM and it still did the same thing.

I'm not sure what else I can do here. I'm really shooting for a bad mainboard considering the fact that this is an older eMachine and that I've already had too many eMachine boards go bad for seemingly no apparent reason.

Any help in this issue would be greatly appreciated.

it's most likely a short in the power supply. I would check your bios settings and shut off wake-on-lan, etc. and double-check the power settings. But low voltage will cause lockups, screen black-outs, etc. And as a power supply warms up, the resistance increases, lowering the voltage. It may be borderline functional when cold.

I ended up chalking it up to the PSU. Swapped it out and the computer functioned properly but I still have a feeling that it could've been something else. eMachine are just total garbage man.

And thanks for the advice. Much appreciated.

well there's another thing. The power supplies are extremely cheap. we're talking 200 watts. Not much room for failure. My main system has 700watt. But anyway, if it was anything else the new supply would have the same error. Power supplies are pretty much self-contained.