This one has got me stumped,

Was playing a GAME other day and my PC shuts down, thought overheated and let cool down half hour, again same thing, except this time the power switch wouldn't work, tried a couple more times on power switch and it finally came on, for a whole 3 seconds and shut down again. I have talked to Tech ppl i know and tried things they say but did not work


What I have Done:

Took out RAM, still turned on and off by-self,
took out vid card, same thing.
diff power supply, same thing.
put old power supply back in, worked, stayed on for about 4 hrs.
then 3 to 4 hrs later it powered up on it's own.
next day, same thing cannot get to stay on,
the one time i got it to come on i thought there may have been a virus so i reformatted the drive, XP home, after OS reloaded error message saying my drive was not fully formated, restarted, diff error saying OS not fully loaded?


I am at a loss, I was going to try and bypass power switch and see if that has any issue on the self powering issue. But unfortunately I do not know how to bypass switch.


Any help would be greatly appreciated.


Thanks in advance!!! never mind on bypassing switch, i got it, it is on and runnignno issues YET,

also this is a,
Compaq Presario
2600+ amd athlon
nvidia gforce 4 mx 440
mother board no clue
512 ddr 333 ram


again thnks in advance. will let you know if the bypassing of switch keeps it going.
still any advice i would greatly appreciate.


restarted on it's own again, after i reinstalled windows xp home, came up with an error message, "system not fully installed, please reinstall. Bah i am done with it tonite. starting to think my hdd is crapping out.it could be your mobo. a bad power switch will not cause windows to install incorrectly and i do not believe it is your harddrive, because a failing harddrive will not cause the computer to turn on by itself as it does not have any control over it. check to make sure there are no bare/loose wires by your mobos front panel connector pins.Aye, I have come to the conclusion it is my mobo also. Now just finding one around my town at a decent price. Glad my wifes is still running lol. any ways i appreciate the info.anytime , please post back if the PROBLEM persists.