Tubz

I am experiencing intermittent start up problems on my PC after I changed the PSU. My PC was having heat issues and I found that the previous PSU fan and back panel fan were not running. I had also taken the CPU fan/heatsink out for cleaning. After installing a brand new Cooler Master Extreme Power Plus 550W PSU, I was unable to start the PC most of the time even though there was power - all the fans and lights were running but there were no beeps and occasionally no video where the monitor's power LED was blinking. When there was video, the screen will show the POST running for a short while and will either hang there or just go blank.

I was able to start the PC once in a blue moon, everything runs normally when it does. I am actually typing this on the same PC while it is running now. At this state, I am able to restart the PC from Windows using the restart function without shutting down. It will have difficulty starting up again if I power down the PC or press the reset button. I had tried taking everything apart and reassembled them to ensure that the cables are connected properly and the cards/CPU are properly reseated but the intermittent problem is still there.

I am having difficulty identifying the cause of the problem since I am able to start up and run the PC normally after multiple start up attempts. The new PSU is a likely suspect since the problem only happened after the swap, but I had swapped it with the previous one with faulty fan and the problem was still there and I don't have a good PSU to test it out. I am afraid that I might have damaged something while swapping the PSU. I had even tested the system on basic configuration with just mobo, ram, hdd and psu...the same problem was still there, including a successful boot to Windows.

Summary of the things I did when troubleshooting:

- reseated all the cards, RAMs, cables and CPU

- removed all the RAMs and 3 beeps could be heard

- visually checked the capacitors on the mobo, flat tops with no bulgings found

- looked into the new PSU through the grill, saw some grey mass on some of the components like copper coil in the PSU but this could be a normal thing...I don't know...

Since the problem only started after I had changed to the new PSU, I really want to point the finger at the PSU but since the problem is intermittent and the fans are running all the time, I am afraid that the shop might not think that there is anything wrong with the PSU and refuses to change it.

Are PSUs known to cause intermittent start up problems like this?

My greatest fear is that I might have accidently damaged some other parts during the swapping process.

I cannot shut down my PC now as I might have problem starting it later. Could anyone advise on how to solve this intermittent startup problem? Thanks in advance.

Motherboard: MSI P45 Neo3

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3Ghz

VGA: EVGA GTX260

RAM: Kingston 4GB

PSU: Cooler Master Extreme Power Plus 550W

My current Win7 Pro was activated by phone previously due to change of motherboard. I feel like reformatting and making a clean reinstallation of the OS as too much junk had piled up over time. Can I reuse the activation key given by the phone operator previously or do I need to call them again?

For the past 2 days, I have been unable to login to one of my Hotmail and MSN with the message being my user name and password do not match. I have an alternate Hotmail account which works and so tried to reset my password with this alternate email address.

However after resetting my password, I still cannot login with the new password. The message this time was "You've tried to sign in too many times with an incorrect email address or password". There is an option to enter the password together with some system generated characters but it still won't work, the message was "Type your password and the characters in the picture correctly." I have been attempting these many many times and it still won't work.

I have tried signing in on different computers but the problem is still there. The alternative Hotmail account has no problem at all.

This email account contains important incoming mails. Anyone knows how to fix this?

Please refer to the highlighted section of the trading ladder in the attached image.

http://i382.photobucket.com/albums/oo267/lexxmexx/...

Does anyone know what those numbers displayed in the Bid and Ask columns mean?