BillG wrote:
I have seen this problem on more than one of my systems, boot/reboot/reboot/startup finally.
I have always found it to be the power supply. On the other hand it always is on a system with an old drive on it.
Never really considered the power supply. The supply is 650 watt which is plenty for the system but it is ~5 years old. If the issue repeats mayhaps I'll pull the supply and take to a local shop that I trust and have the rails checked on a meter. Would be cheaper than buying a decent meter. Three reasons why I trust this shop...
1) When I built my currently second desktop (was the main at the time) I needed an optical drive. Before ordering on-line I decided to check locally as I already had all the other components; just forgot about the optical drive. Anyway, I checked with them just looking for a DVD burner. They happened to have a Blu-ray drive that had only been used to install Windows and then the client decided they wanted a different drive. Retail on the drive was something like $160.00 and they sold it to me for ~$50.00.
2) Was given a laptop that kept shutting down due to a thermal issue. Thought it was a blown fan and it was a major project to even get to the fan. Took to this shop and the estimate to replace the fan was close to $100.00. Sigh, the previous owner of the system has a lot of dogs and cats. Turned out that the fan was just bound up with pet hair. They cleaned out the fan and all was fine. They only charged me $30.00 or $35.00 for the job.
3) One of the M.2 drives in my main system came without a mounting screw. They gave me one. I asked what they wanted for the screw and the guy just laughed and said something like "It's just a little screw. Get out of here and just have a kind word for us if anyone ever asks.".
Seems like a decent shop to me.
Hope I'm not jinxing myself but I can't remember ever having a hard drive fail. Of course one can go south at any time for numerous reasons.