A31P sudden stop of cpu/machine/display - loss of ac

[friedrich-eugen]

Hello,

my A31P (2,6ghz/2gb/100GB docked) is old - alass, but four of them (all 2,6 or 2,5 ghz & 2 GB & 100GB & docked) are working for my family and usually they are doing well (XPlatest, MSO 2003 or 2007, Adobe 8 or 9, OO 3.x).

Today I happened to live up to something I have not seen or noticed before:

My personal machine just stopped as if ac/energy was gone, all dark and all still, while battery still shows life (green light is on!) without any hint. I restarted, machine restarted, XP started, O&O Defrag started, no obvious problem, no lost links ....

After some time, same procedure. And again.

CPU Temperature (Everest Ultimate Diag-Tool) 73 C, high but not extreme, harddrives ok (within normal range)

Any hints or advice ? Is it age (about 8 Years by now) deterioration?
Thanks in advance

[RealBlackStuff]

Sounds like overheating.
Clean up and replace the thermal paste between CPU/cooler with Arctic Silver 5.
This stuff dries out after 4-5 years.

[gb_ibmguy]

I agree with RBS,

I would think it's a heat issue. I've pushed some of my A31's to 2.4 ghz and saw some heat issues even with the higher speed fan.

Blow out the dust bunnies (carefully!) apply some new thermal paste (I use OCZ Freeze) and hope for the best!
You may also want to look into TPFancontrol. Although not advertised for A31's, it works just fine, it keeps all of my A31's under 45C no matter what I'm doing.

[friedrich-eugen]

Update -

the last few day I just booted and logged in, than used/updated Kaspersky and outlook - it only showed once the behavior (stopping, without notice).

Today, 20.02.2010, I did use it for an extended period of time and at last let it exit to standby. It refuses to reboot (cooler is runing, hd is running, lights on),
that is no signal to display, no further "action" (no beeps!) no start of bios/error screens, no windows-boot, nothing.

HD is ok, just using it in the 2ndbay of my wife's tpa31p. (1st hd has windows 7(beta) on, won't boot the same)

Any other ideas ?
It could be the CPU, in the same time systemboard (no beeps?) may well be gone, too.

Thanks in advance for any systematic hints

[ajkula66]

I'd try swapping the CPU with a known good one.

If you still get the same thing, your motherboard is most likely gone...

Good luck.

[friedrich-eugen]

Thanks to You all,

I do have at least one spare systemboard (said to be ok), several displays, coolers and cpus, bios-batteries not to forget and I'll test throughly...



By the way:
I do have (all as part of my not very economical process of rebuilding several A31P for my daughters)
- several UXGA-displays, that (only) need replacing of the backlight and
- several (A31P) boards that only need resoldering of the gpu in order to be useful.

And I do have some (A31P) boards which were ok, which I accidentally disabled by lifting their security-chip (wrong time to be distracted) ...

I 'll probably stop trying to repair them myself and give them away.