Be Excellent To Each Other

Chaps! And Chapessessess!

My PC seems to be a bit poorly. Ever since I returned from my recent hols, my computer is not always powering on properly. Basically, I'll push the power button the front of the tower, all the lights come on and all the fans spin up (except for the CPU fan), but nothing else will happen. No signal to the monitor, no hard drive activity and no 'beep' to say that it's POSTing correctly. Nothing.

However, if I keep cutting the power and trying again, eventually it fires up (it takes A LOT of this to get it going). And when it does, it's as if nothing is wrong with it at all - it'll work perfectly, until I shut it down. Then we go through the same arseache in trying to get it to start.

As far as I can see, it's got to either be a buggered PSU or a buggered motherboard.

The motherboard is an 18-month old Gigabyte running an overclocked Intel Core 2 Duo processor. Since it's the power button on the front of the case, wired to the motherboard and taking into account the overclocking, I can see the mobo being the culprit. But surely if I killed my motherboard, it would be stone dead right? It wouldn't occasionally work 100% fine for as long as it has power going to it?

The PSU on the other hand is a fairly new Be Quiet 750W PSU, which has this cool little function in that it keeps the fans running for a few minutes after the PC has been switched off. It does this by having you plug the fans into a seperate set of cables to everything else (it's a modular PSU), so presumably it keeps power to these cables whilst cutting everything else. So that makes me think it's the PSU causing the problem - maybe the fans-only mode is engaging instead of full power mode?

Both are going to be bloody expensive to replace... so what's the consensus people? Which is the broken bit, PSU or motherboard?

Buy a 360.

HTH

Do not get me started on the reliability of a PC that has worked flawlessly for the last 18 months versus an Xbox 360.

Flash the bios to make it show a logo.

HTH.

Set the safe defaults in thee BIOS and see if it still happens.

Yeah? But they're reliable now.

HTH

A system that does fire up with effort is usually the PSU. Some cheaper models degrade with time. If it was being pushed to start with it may have slipped over the edge.

I would say Power supply myself.

I would turn the overclocking off to see if that makes a difference before I did anything else.

In order of decreasing likelihood:

PSU bad.
Motherboard bad.
Memory bad.
Electricity supply bad. (Power cable bad. Gang plug bad.)
PCI / AGP / PCIe cards bad?
USB something bad...?

You'll just have to switch things about and test.
Resetting the BIOS is a good idea too.

I have a Shuttle PC that has always done this. Some bootups just hang, pre-BIOS-splash-screen, with no video output and no error beeps. Sometimes it's done it dozens of times in a row, and sometimes it's not done it for months, with no rhyme or reason I could ever fathom. The problem has persisted for several years, during which time I've changed pretty much everything in it barring the motherboard itself. It's going to bother me forever that I never got to the bottom of the issue.

can you not try another psu?

I don't have another to try, although I can possibly borrow one. I'm increasingly of the opinion it's the PSU, as I managed to get it fired up this evening in less tries, seemingly by switching it off at the PSU each time before trying again. Be Quiet are meant to be a really good make of PSU and their website has a customer service number I can try, so I think I'll be giving them a bell tomorrow.

My work PC does this from time. No idea why - every now and again, I'll push the power button and the fans will come on, but nothing else happens. And then it'll take two or three attempts to boot it. Doesn't seem to be any rhyme nor reason to it, but it never seems to have any long-term detrimental effects.

99% of PC errors are down to the following.

*Loose components. Check your cards, connections and ram. Take them out and reseat them.

*Build up of dust. For example your CPU's heatsink will eventually clog if you do not perform routine maintainance on it.

Your problem sounds to me like your video card is possibly not seated as well as it should be or you have loose ram. Are there any beeps coming from the motherboard?

Hilariously this could be a bios rom problem, because that's exactly what my computer was doing with a fucked bios in it. Powered on, all the lights came on but noone was home.

I would go with loose components myself.

Well it definitely seems to be a bad mobo. I know Shuttle were using bad capacitors for a while too a few years back that would cause similar problems. Sometimes they had the juice in to kickstart the PC and others not. I suppose it would depend on how old your shuttle is (one of those small wee things I assume?).

Is your bios chip removable? might need reseating.

Angle Grinder.

The lack of beeping points to either a motherboard or PSU issue which Zio reckoned in the first instance.

As the PSU is the easier thing to fix I'd try and get my hands on one from somewhere - any unused PCs at work you can borrow one from to test if you've got access? As opposed to JC in my 10 years in IT management the majority of the hardware problems I encountered were PSU failures (once on a server when I was stood near it patching some network points - no-one would believe I hadn't done anything). I've always had a couple spare to hand for such eventualities.

Speaking of loose video cards though I remember my first AGP card which I fitted and resulted in beeping and no boot. I got red hot prickly heat about it not working and thought I had a duff card. Fucker needed Grim... to sit on it before it would work.

I've got a pSU you can have/borrow/whatever.

1) I hope you call it Trigger's PC
2) It's probably Lupus

All my PCs are Trigger's PC.

Yeah. Probably.

That's not what motherboard capacitors are for. They are for power regulation and smoothing, and when they go bad, you get random crashes (from power spikes).

Really old. PC Pro gave it to me for a magazine article in... 2004? But it's been doing this crashy thing since, oh, I dunno. 2006 maybe? There were times when I gave up and put it away, only to pull it out six months later and discover it was fine again (although in between I'd have done a strip down and rebuild of RAM, graphics card, sound card, drives etc; so I likely disturbed something during that process).

Uhh, dunno. That's not a bad straw to clutch at, actually. The machine's been retired now though so I'll probably never do this.

It's *never* lupus. Except that one time.

It's not that. Really, honestly.

That would be more of an on/off type error. Unless there's 'fizzing', sparks and smoke, obv.

Are you on nPower? They sometimes supplement their standard electricity with cheaper foreign electricity. It could be this.

Turn it off and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on again.

Ariston?

One might even call it 'unlikely'.

I'd be shocked. I'd be all, like, ohm my god. I simply don't have the capacitance to believe that. I totally resist the idea.

boy you have a chip on your solder !

Robocop?

It could be "heavy electricity" though.

Do you notice it happening more when your chakras are out of alignment? Maybe you need to modulate your chi nodes to attain a more maximal flow. I recommend dangling a crystal over your hard drive whislt chanting a mantra.

Is it just me or have you lot been a bit more nerdy and grumpy this week? In that you nerd it up when the oppurtunity arises but resist all other ideas.

Just this week, you think?

Maybe it is because i have been grumpy this week and relying on you guys to cheer me up...but yeah, think this week expecially the hive mind have been particularly moody about new topics. Like Banksy. and that other one I said I liked.

I hope it's nothing to do with my arrival.

Although I'd be quite proud to have destroyed an entire forum within a week of joining it; my previous record is several months.

Kalmar the elephant has got his trunk stuck up his own anus.......

I've been extremely grumpy for about a fortnight. Sorry if I've taken it out on you bunch of electrical peeps.

Are you *sure* you have? You've seemed almost normal recently.

I buggered off for a week (not that you buggers noticed)

I did...

Some time off is always nice.

What? We've stopped that one? Oh.

Cheers bud.

I'm not worthy enough to be told when you do one of your disappearing acts.

Balls, you quoted my typo

Yeah, they have been a bit moody. Must be the phase of the moon or something. Still, the hive is still producing a few comedy gems, so there's no need to activate the suicide swarm just yet.

Why you cheeky scamp.

*grabs myp and gives him a nuggy*

That's the nicest physical contact I've had with anyone in ages.