Solved Random reboots, power supply might be dying

[seankurth]

Model: Compaq Presario SR5710Y

This was my dad's old computer, but it started blue screen'ing every half hour or so and randomly rebooting in August 2012. Just yesterday I decided to get it out and mess with it. After all, its not a bad PC. Dual core, 3GB RAM, Nvidia Geforce with 1.3GB integrated memory (my laptop can play Cities XL 2011, full graphics, with just 1GB). Worth saving, even if it is cheap, right?

So, I did. The first thing I noticed was a dead hard drive. Like, you could hear the read head grinding the disc, BIOS wouldn't recognize it dead. So, I swapped for a brand new Seagate 1TB, better than Western Digital I guess. Then I did the obvious (replace RAM, dust case, etc). Then, I noticed something shocking: There was no CMOS jumper. Literally, the pins were empty. I was amazed the thing would boot at all, the power button should have gotten no reaction without a jumper. Pillaged one from a 10 year old DEAD MSI box that was laying around. Seriously, it ran for 3 years straight without a jumper. WOW!

The thing is relatively stable now, I haven't seen a blue screen or a hardware failure since yesterday afternoon (its been running all night). But the random reboots still occur. They're less frequent, I can run this PC for 2-3 hours before it does a hard reset and restarts, which I think is tolerable for daily use.

However, I still want to fix it. Since I've ruled everything else out (except the CPU, though I think that would trigger a blue screen rather than a reboot), I'm thinking its the power supply. Unfortunately, all the methods I know of to test the power supply require it to be DEAD, like power button does nothing dead. I've got a pretty good process of elimination case though.

So, my question is, do you, for close to sure, think its probably the power supply? and if so, would it be *OK* to replace the 250W unit in there with a 430W unit from the MSI box (which I know works for at least 6 hours after doing the pin test)?

Please note: have already reinstalled and updated Windows 7. No way I'll mess with 8 on this thing.

 

[matts6887]

It does sound like it could very well be a power supply issue; however it could also be another hardware issue of some sort. I would give the following steps in the following link a try and see if it helps ya out any. If it does let us know; and even if doesnt post back and we can go from there. But yes in the end it should be ok to replace the old power supply with the higher rated one.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/4569-power-efficiency-diagnostics-report.html

 

[seankurth]

It didn't help. All the power report told me was that I had the high performance plan enabled with no USB selective suspend or idling/sleeping of anything unless I tell it to, which I already knew.

 

[seankurth]

Thanks, I replaced the power supply with the one from the old MSI box, and no crashes yet. Its been running solid since about 20 minutes after my last post, so I'm close to the 3 hour mark. Oddly enough its running faster too, maybe its the extra power? I used the guide here: How To Replace Your Power Supply | Hardware Secrets