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Strange Power Problem

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by espionagefred

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One of my PCs has a problem ive never come across or heard about. Whenever I do something where the power is cut to a minimum, for example shutdown or hibernation,turning the computer back on after less than 5 minutes results in just the power supply fans kicking in. The rest is idle and I have to cut the power manually.Restoring power after 10min+ is alright and my suspicions is that its some sort of queer heat problem. Settings such as sleep dont cause this effect.

2 replies

by thechas

First, you will usually get faster, and more responses to technical questions if you post them in the Technical Q&A section.

I suspect that what is going on is a 'latency' issue.
That is, a filter cap needs to discharge to below a certain level before you will be able to properly restart the system.

Many power up control circuits are designed on the assumption that ALL capacitors are discharged when the power-up sequence begins.
There are often timing issues that can cause problems if 1signal is in place before another, out of sequence.

The only 'fix' is to use a different motherboard that is know to come out of hibernation modes properly.

Chas

by sagetech

I have ran into other strang problems too as an onsite extended warrentie tech.
There was even a motherboard that if wile put into sleep mode a powerloss occures and bios power recovery settint was set to return to last state (default setting) would never wake again. only way to fix was motherboard replacement.
and this was a major brand system.

This problem caused me to start recommending
a) clients NEVER USE SLEEP OR SUPPPEND MODES on this brand of desktop systems.
b)Disable all sleep and suspend modes on the operating system.
c) set power loss recovery mode to power ramain off after power restored.

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