refurbished HP Pavilion Elite h8-1010 freezes, wont start up

[deyzin]

First off I purchased the pc 3/20 and it ran no problem for almost 2 months.  I haven't opened the case for anything.  The only software installed is trend micro which has been installed since day one and I upgraded it to win 7 professional. 

Ive been having a random freezing problem for the past couple months.  The computer will freeze up, screen will be stationary, keyboard, mouse nothing works.  Never a blue screen.  Holding down the power button will turn it off.  Usually it will start up, yesterday however it would not successfully start up.  Tried multiple times to get it started but the screen would not turn on.  I can hear the HD make some sounds after pushing the on button but nothing would happen.  If I let it sit for 5mins the boot up screen finally came on with start windows normally or start up repair but it would freeze shortly after no matter what option I chose.  This morning it started up with no problems through the start up repair.

Ive updated my bios and my display driver and done system restores.  Sometimes the restores seemed to work.  I think Its some sort of hardware issue.  Or maybe insufficient cooling?  Any advice would be much appreciated.

[Danjen]

It could be the power supply, shorted device of any kind attached (bad printer, flash drive, keyboard, mouse, network connection), memory problem, video card fan not spinning and the video card could have overheated, bad capacitors (rounded or leaking a brown or dark substance). The first think you should do is make sure it is not under warrantee.  If it is, contact HP.  If it isn't, remove the cover and inspect the board for bad capacitors, fans not turning, disconnect all non essential items like the hard drive, DVD, floppy if you have one, all external devices (yes the monitor) and turn on the computer. Does it appear to stay on? If yes, shut it down by holding in the power button for 5 or more seconds or flipping the power switch on the power supply or pulling the plug. Connect the monitor and then one item at a time leaving the hard drive with your important data as the last item. If it didn't stay on. Try to use only one piece of memory and try each memory slot, try the next piece etc. If that doesn't work, the best guess is the power supply (if you have an ohm meter - test the power supply first).