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PC not booting :(
freakish light
butterdick jonesand his heavenly asshole machineRegistered User regular
butterdick jonesand his heavenly asshole machineRegistered User regular
Hey guys. So I have a problem with my PC. actually I've been having minor problems with it for a while that have finally condensed into one big one, it seems like.
So, a while back I started getting BSODs. They were pretty sporadic, so I didn't think much of them. After one particularly bad one, the computer started to hang on the mobo splash screen, pre-boot and bios, so I couldn't even see what was happening. I fixed that one by pulling open the case and fixing a loose connection, so it seemed ok again.
More lately, when it's being going into power saving mode and shutting off the display, no matter what combination of key presses and mouse movements will get it to come back up again and I have to shut it off and restart. Today when I put it to sleep while I went to work I could hear the hard drives spin down, but the lights and fans stayed on, then the keyboard light pulsed once and shut off. I thought it was kind of weird but I left.
Tonight when I tried to turn it back on, the lights and fans come on, but after five seconds everything shuts off. Then the lights and fans come back on but no matter how long I wait, the boot process doesn't start. If I shut it off and try to restart after this, the lights and fans come on and stay on but nothing happens. If I power cycle it, it'll start up and turn off and come back on like before, but it never starts booting.
I'm not even sure what my issue is. From some cursory reading on google, it sounds like the mobo, CPU, or psu but I'm not even sure how to pin it down. Any insights?
For reference, I built this PC in 2009. It's got an asus p5ql pro motherboard, core2 duo e8400, 2x 2GB RAM, and a corsair 650w power supply.
So, a while back I started getting BSODs. They were pretty sporadic, so I didn't think much of them. After one particularly bad one, the computer started to hang on the mobo splash screen, pre-boot and bios, so I couldn't even see what was happening. I fixed that one by pulling open the case and fixing a loose connection, so it seemed ok again.
More lately, when it's being going into power saving mode and shutting off the display, no matter what combination of key presses and mouse movements will get it to come back up again and I have to shut it off and restart. Today when I put it to sleep while I went to work I could hear the hard drives spin down, but the lights and fans stayed on, then the keyboard light pulsed once and shut off. I thought it was kind of weird but I left.
Tonight when I tried to turn it back on, the lights and fans come on, but after five seconds everything shuts off. Then the lights and fans come back on but no matter how long I wait, the boot process doesn't start. If I shut it off and try to restart after this, the lights and fans come on and stay on but nothing happens. If I power cycle it, it'll start up and turn off and come back on like before, but it never starts booting.
I'm not even sure what my issue is. From some cursory reading on google, it sounds like the mobo, CPU, or psu but I'm not even sure how to pin it down. Any insights?
For reference, I built this PC in 2009. It's got an asus p5ql pro motherboard, core2 duo e8400, 2x 2GB RAM, and a corsair 650w power supply.
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Do you have a spare power supply laying around anywhere, or one you can borrow from another computer for a bit? If none of that works you can try swapping them out just to see if it boots.
You don't happen to remember what the BSOD messages were, do you?
I agree with LD50, try booting with just one stick of RAM and your CPU - take out the graphics card, unplug hard drives. See if you can get to the BIOS screen.
But overall, if it has problems sleeping and waking up and booting, power supply might be the easiest thing to replace or RMA first.
I'm pretty sure it's the motherboard at this point. Any dissenting opinions? Also, is it worth it to replace it with the same model (assuming I can find it, newegg doesn't stock it anymore), or one with the same chipset to keep ram and CPU, or just replace all of it? I don't especially like that last option, cause money is a little tight, but if it's the best option that's something to consider.
Thanks for the advice!
I had a similar problem once that ended up being a bad wire on my power supply.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
He/she already did that. Disconnected everything and hooked up a different power supply. This sounds like a pretty classic case of the motherboard failing to post; there's probably something pretty seriously wrong with it.