Voltage drop crashes!?!?!?


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Subject: Voltage drop crashes!?!?!?
Name: B.H. Davis
Date: 7/4/2005 3:47:18 PM (GMT-7)
IP Address: 66.168.47.237
Message:

New computer. P4 3.4 ghz socket 775 with AGP video. Win 2000 Pro. 1 gig ram.

The system worked great until I put it in place and started attaching my various scanners, printers, SCSI card etc.

Then I started getting sudden totally dead crashes (reboot crashes) when I would print to any one of my printers. I would reboot and printing would work okay. It would then work fine until the computer had been off for a while. On subsequent use of the computer (say several hours to overnight with it turned off) the same sudden crash would again happen on the first use of a printer after boot up. This occurs with both my HP 932 parallel port printer as well as the Brother USB printer as stated in the next paragraph.

Now, I think this may be voltage drop related as one more strange thing happened. I was installing my Brother MFC 8500 printer following the directions very carefully. I had not yet connected the USB cable (although this is an all in one machine and the phone line was already connected to it and the computer modem....hard to believe that would be a factor though) when the instructions said to power up the printer. Again, no USB connection yet, but the moment I plugged in the printer I got the same sudden crash. Hence I think this is a voltage drop issue.

Everything in the office is on one circuit so I've temporarily connected the computer to an extension cord going to another circuit. If that solves the problem I'll run a second circuit into the office just for the computer (no peripherals on the new line). It hasn't been long enough yet to be confident the extension cord has solved the problem.

Question is whether any of you think this could be power supply related as versus wall current. The case was a $40 range case with a 400 watt power supply. I took it out and it's about 1/2 the physical weight of the 300 watt power supply from my old high quality case. Acutally, I've switched the entire system, including the new 400 watt power supply over into the old case. Should I order up a better quality power supply? Or perhaps just use the old 300 watt supply? All my peripherals worked flawlessly on my old P4 2.2 system that I took out of this higher quality case.

As always your help is greatly appreciated. Wish I knew enough to offer something in return.

BH Davis

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