Help: Windows doesn't boot one minute, boots fine the next.

Did you use your friends power cord or our own when you tested it at home? What you described was a problem that I had about 3 years ago. I took apart a computer and tested everything, then I changed the power cord and everything worked well. I opened the cord up and there it was, a short. Always check your connections first. I didn't and spent 2 days learning a hard lesson.
Anyways, maybe that will help or give you some ideas.
Speck

No, I didn't take his power cable with me. Thanks for the idea. I'll take a new power cord with me today when I return the box.

Seen a very similar thing to what you may be experiencing (which was news to me when i was told).

Anyhow, it was with a HP Pavilion tower. Basically, my mate had a load of USB devices plugged in and for some reason it seemed to suck too much power. If he switched off his USB Printer before booting the machine, it would boot without any issues.

My advise is to take it back to your mates house and try it without any USB devices plugged in and see if it does make a difference, i would also see if there is a BIOS update and if so apply the BIOS Update.

Cheers

I've had that problem before. I did suspect a BIOS problem was involved, but didn't flash the BIOS. I noticed the problem no longer existed after I reinstalled the OS and enabled more USB Host Controllers in the BIOS. Most likely the latter fixed the issue.

K

A good approach with things like this is to reduce the machine to it's essentials - disconnect the CD drive, modem, network card and any other add-on device and see if it boots reliably. Then build back up one item at a time to find the problem device. Bear in mind that it could also be the hard disk, memory or CPU fan but I'd say they were less likely. A final possibility which has already been hinted at is that there is almost too much load for the power supply unit which is 'on the edge' of refusing to start due to overload. It's possible that the variation in supply between your friends house and yours could make it work in one location and not the other. Test as described earlier - take something out to prove it, and if it looks likely then a beefier supply should fix the problem

I had a machine once that wouldnt boot up at all and the thing that was causing it was the ps2 connector i guess the guy who owned it plugged it in while it was powered on or something because as soon as i tried a usb keyboard it booted straight away so i would def take the bishops advice.Good Luck anyhow.

Seen a very similar thing to what you may be experiencing (which was news to me when i was told).

Anyhow, it was with a HP Pavilion tower. Basically, my mate had a load of USB devices plugged in and for some reason it seemed to suck too much power. If he switched off his USB Printer before booting the machine, it would boot without any issues.

My advise is to take it back to your mates house and try it without any USB devices plugged in and see if it does make a difference, i would also see if there is a BIOS update and if so apply the BIOS Update.

Cheers

Smurf,

You nailed it right on the head! I went back to my buddies house and the problem occurred until I unplugged the USB cord to his HP all in one printer.

I will definitely do a bios update. What did you do to fix your problem? Did a bios update solve the issue? Any other idea's or suggestions would be most appreciated.

Thank you kindly for responding to my post.

Glad you have identified the issue. I have not actually got to a resolution with my issue just yet. My issues were added to when i added an extra Hard Drive, the power requirements for that just caused major issues in that the Master Hard Drive then stopped working which cause an issue that no OS was there.

I tried a new PSU to try and compensate for this, the original PSU in the HP was only 250Watt so i plugged in a 450Watt thinking this would resolve the issue of the hard drive atleast, it didn't. I contacted HP who then advised me on the BIOS update, i have not had chance to call back to my mates to try it (he still has his CDRom unplugged to get around the hard drive issue, his writer is still plugged in).

I am due to call tomorrow and try the BIOS, if that works i will probably still leave the 450Watt PSU in as i think this will resolve the problem.

My advise would be to try a BIOS update first and see if this resolve this particular problem, if not then just see what Watt the PSU is and maybe try a bigger one.

Cheers