PC problem (not ns2 related)

deathshrouddeathshroud Join Date: 2010-04-10 Member: 71291Members
in Tech Support
Ok so i came in from work and pressed my pc power button and nothing happened. I looked inside the pc and the leds all green. So i removed the pc opened it up. My first idea as to what was wrong was the power button. I assumed it must have gone faulty. So i attached a power button from another stack. It fired up. plugged the old one back in. it fired up. Put everything back and it wouldnt start.

This time i removed it all again, plugged the other power switch in and it didnt start this time. Plugged old one back in and nothing. unplugged the power cable from the multiadapter and plugged it into mains. Now it fired up. Plugged it back into multi adapter. Failed. Plugged it back into mains and it fired up. Swapped power cables and it fired up. Put everything back but this time i kept the pc plugged into the mains and wont start.

removed it all plugged it into mains, wont start, tried with adapter, wouldnt start. Attempted to secure every cable and expansion inside pc and then plugged into mains and it started. (not sure if it helped since nothing seemed loose).

Now i just left it out connected everything up and its running. Im scared to move it TBH

Im now thinking it might be the power supply or perhaps either the Processor or graphics card. Pc is less than 1 year old.

Any ideas on what i should change?
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  • BeigeAlertBeigeAlert Texas Join Date: 2013-08-08 Member: 186657Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, Pistachionauts
    I have no idea... but I had something similar happen a few weeks ago. The more I fixed it, the more broke it became. Started with a weird graphical issue on the desktop, so I figured I'd update the graphics drivers. Graphics drivers wouldn't update, so I uninstalled them, booted in safe mode, and installed the new ones. Finally got them to install... then it would freeze after about a minute on the desktop, unless I booted in safe mode... So I figured to hell with this, I was meaning to wipe the harddrive anyways, may as well upgrade to Windows 10... so it decides to not be able to boot from CD rom or USB. Tried unplugging, other sata cables to see if I could figure out why the cd drive wasn't being recognized... then it just stopped booting all together... then it stopped turning on! I still have no idea what happened... the only reasonable explanation I can think of is that an angry invisible gremlin lived inside the computer, and they grew more and more agitated the more time I spent with them until they eventually just killed the computer to get me to leave them alone.
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  • deathshrouddeathshroud Join Date: 2010-04-10 Member: 71291Members
    edited May 2017
    BeigeAlert wrote: »
    I have no idea... but I had something similar happen a few weeks ago. The more I fixed it, the more broke it became. Started with a weird graphical issue on the desktop, so I figured I'd update the graphics drivers. Graphics drivers wouldn't update, so I uninstalled them, booted in safe mode, and installed the new ones. Finally got them to install... then it would freeze after about a minute on the desktop, unless I booted in safe mode... So I figured to hell with this, I was meaning to wipe the harddrive anyways, may as well upgrade to Windows 10... so it decides to not be able to boot from CD rom or USB. Tried unplugging, other sata cables to see if I could figure out why the cd drive wasn't being recognized... then it just stopped booting all together... then it stopped turning on! I still have no idea what happened... the only reasonable explanation I can think of is that an angry invisible gremlin lived inside the computer, and they grew more and more agitated the more time I spent with them until they eventually just killed the computer to get me to leave them alone.

    I did manage to fix the issue, turned out to be either my PSU (power supply) or my ATX cable (psu to motherboard). I tested my pc with an old psu, worked fine, tested an old pc with my new psu and it wouldnt turn on. Bought new psu (which also came with atx cable) and its working :)

    I narrowed it down to 2 possibilities either it was the psu or it was the overly sized gpu or cpu fan creating a bad connection to the motherboard. After the PSU test though i got my answer.
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  • profjekyllprofjekyll Join Date: 2012-04-07 Member: 150070Members
    deathshroud wrote: »
    My first idea as to what was wrong was the power button. I assumed it must have gone faulty.

    Yup. Power button is usually what's wrong with a pc. (Sorry for sarcasm)
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  • profjekyllprofjekyll Join Date: 2012-04-07 Member: 150070Members
    For future reference... strip the machine down to it's bear minimum (Motherboard, psu, cpu only). You need to have a speaker plugged into the motherboard to test this, but assuming you do, try to boot up then (you only need to short the two jumpers that the power switch plug into). Your motherboard should beep angrilly a series of beeps, instead of the one friendly one it usually does.

    If it beeps, this is a good start. Now plug a stick of RAM in. You should probably get a different series of beeps... if not, try a different stick in a different slot.

    Now plug your graphics card in (this assumes you don't have onboard graphics). Finally, you should get the one friendly beep, of your "POST" (power on self test).

    If you are finding that the above doesn't work at all, or is unpredictable, this would indicate a PSU, CPU or Motherboard fault. Hard to say which.

    ...

    Another approach is to unplug stuff one at a time, RAM, expansion cards, USB stuff, SATA devices. Doing this one piece at a time would reveal what may be causing a machine to fail (unless it was Motherboard, CPU or PSU, as above).

    ...

    If your PSU failed, this may be because you have overloaded it. Some power supply units have a single "common" rail, meaning all the stuff you plug into it comes off of one big circuit. Other power supplies have seperate rails. This is where you need to get technical and check you have enough capacity on your PSU for what you have plugged into it.

    A common fault for unstability and PSU failure is very high end AMD graphics cards. This are often 300 watt (25 amp at 12 volts). If you have both power cables plugged into such a graphics card from the same rail, and that rail supported up to 25 amps... then you are putting too much stress on the PSU. Other similar problems are dodgy USB devices that overload the USB power... Dodgy CD / DVD / Blu Ray drives. too many fans... boiling a kettle off your USB. etc.

    Anyhow. That's enough wisdom for now.

    -=[Disclaimer]=-
    There are probably better ways to troubleshoot than the above... so don't get b1tchy, nerds.
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