Screen goes off, computer stays on

[Afrodeziak]

I have a PC with windows 2003 that I'm hosting a website from.

While I was at work I realized that the website was down, thinking, there must have been a power failure/breaker go at my house, which happens from time to time, I need a UPS for that.

Anyways, I get home, the computer is still running, but the screen is black and un-responsive. As well, the obvious, no network connection, since my site was still down. Fans running, lights on, cd drive trays can come out, etc.

I push the reset button on the case and it doesn't reset like normal, just nothing happens.

So I power the PC down with the PSU switch on the back of the case, reboot and it goes straight to a black screen, so I reboot, and go to Bios and see that my asus board flags the error that I need to change my overclocking settings to default. ie. an overclocking issue that failed.
It's one of those AI boards that gradually speeds up your clocking until it's stable. I'd prefer it to be off, which is where I thought it was, but I guess not.

I'm running something around a 430W Enermax power supply, so I don't think it's the problem. Wondering if it's an overheating issue, since it's now a lot warmer in my old house than it has been all winter and maybe the temps are getting to it?

Anyways it's happened again today from what I can tell, as the websites down again.

Any troubleshooting steps to solve this issue?

Thanks peeps

[HHURICANE1]

Had something similar happen to mine as well. Turned out to be bad ram. Switch it out and see what happens.

[takkyu]

How old is the power supply? Do you see anything of significance in the event viewer for system?

If it's a thermal issue, usually the motherboard will turn the system off to save the cpu from cooking itself to death. Sounds more to me like a PSU issue than anything else. You could run MemTest86+ to rule out the possibility of faulty ram.

[Afrodeziak]

Looks to me like it was overheating, as I put the overclock settings to manual/default in the bios and haven't been having any problems.

I also had a thermaltake fan/large heatsynch on the cpu which I just replaced with the oem 775 intel fan. I never had one initially, so I figured simpler was better.

The power supply is a few years old. I've had cheap PSU's go on me, this one I put a fair bit of money towards so I hope it's not the case.

I'm pretty sure the memory is ok, but worth a test.

[Xtrema]

Originally posted by Afrodeziak
The power supply is a few years old. I've had cheap PSU's go on me, this one I put a fair bit of money towards so I hope it's not the case.

Have a PSU tester to be sure. I had both expensive and cheap PSU went on me before. They all have strange symptoms.

[SmAcKpOo]

MISPOST.