Computer Problem

Bishop149 · Post by **Bishop149** » Sun, 28. May 17, 10:41

Basically it won't turn on.

More specifically.
For the last few weeks it seemed to be the case that if I turned the PSU off, left it for a few hours and then turned it all back on it would all fire up fine. Implying perhaps something needed to discharge?

In the last few days its got worse, basically the above no longer holds and the only way to get it to fire up is basically to press the on button repeatedly for literally 5 minutes. It seems random chance that on one of those many many attempts it works.

Once the machine is on everything seems to work perfectly.

Now I'm pretty sure the issue must be with either the PSU (a pain to replace) or the Motherboard (oh ****). If I plump for the wrong option, well I've wasted a couple of 100 quid.
My first port of call I think will be to remove the PSU and do this trick to see if it works when isolated.

Other than that I have no ideas. Any suggestions.

burger1 · Post by **burger1** » Sun, 28. May 17, 11:10

Maybe it's the power button thingy. Unplug the power on push in connector thing from the mainboard and try to bridge the power on pins with a quick twist of a screw driver (don't hold it there just a short bridging should work). This should bypass the power on switch. Might be a power on button on some mainboards also.

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Sun, 28. May 17, 11:11

The fact that you had to turn the PSU switch off to affect things and that once it was on everything works, all seems to indicate that the mobo is OK. What I would check is the connections from the psu to the mobo and the mobo to the front panel switches to see if any contact is intermittent or poor.

A far longer shot is that I once had a PC that would not switch on because the graphics card was almost instantly overheating because of dust in the card heatsink and the system was detecting this and protecting it by not continuing with start-up.

Good luck.

Chips · Post by **Chips** » Sun, 28. May 17, 12:25

Was about to say can a multimeter or whatever they're called be used to test the switch via the cables that plug into the motherboard from the case - but in searching found what others already said:

http://support.antec.com/support/soluti ... wer-button

burger1 · Post by **burger1** » Sun, 28. May 17, 12:50

Also don't turn the power supply on/off at the power supply switch. There's a thread about how this seems to kill power supplies. It killed one of mine.

https://forum.egosoft.com/posting.php?m ... 32&start=0

Clear the cmos with the jumper is another common step. It probably won't help?

Morkonan · Post by **Morkonan** » Mon, 29. May 17, 06:12

Bishop149 wrote:Basically it won't turn on....

I had a similar issue with a computer and never did figure it out. I replaced the PSU, yada yada, with no positive effects. Somewhere, it was a mainboard issue and that was the only thing that fixed it.

Bishop149 · Post by **Bishop149** » Mon, 29. May 17, 23:54

It's not the power button, first thing that I checked. Yeah the mobo also has a power button and that doesn't work either.
Removed the PSU and shorted pins 15 and 16 and the PSU fan fired up fine, so it looks like it's the motherboard. Wonderful, the damn thing is less than 18 months old and of course is JUST out of warranty, never buying an MSI board again that's for sure*!

So next question, can you keep an existing Windows installation and change a mobo? Never done that before, will all the initial driver mismatchs screw everything up?

*It's got a really dodgy network driver as well, bluescreens if you download to much in one go and then do anything RAM heavy. It memory leaks basically, whoever wrote it must be a moron.

Post by **UniTrader** » Tue, 30. May 17, 00:06

Bishop149 wrote:So next question, can you keep an existing Windows installation and change a mobo? Never done that before, will all the initial driver mismatchs screw everything up?

For Licensing this depends on what type of Windows License you have. if its a (cheaper) OEM License you heve to get another one since these Licenses are tied to the Mobo where the OS is installed on first iirc. this does not apply to the regular Version, but it sounds like you build your own Systems so it may apply.. except - for Win8 and 10 the License Key is actually stored on the MoBo itself (afaik)

For System Stability it might boot up fine on a new MoBo, and is usually useable enough to backup your existent Data. not really sure about long term effects though (Windows used to store some System Data in the OS config which led to problems in the long run when doing this afaik), so better do a clean reinstall i think

burger1 · Post by **burger1** » Tue, 30. May 17, 06:27

As a long shot you could try booting up the mainboard outside of the case on a cardboard box. Make sure you don't pop the cpu cooler off the cpu and have the edge over hang so the graphics card doesn't pop off. You could also try removing the graphics card if you have onboard/on cpu video .

For data you can use your current drive as a slave to another drive. You also may as well try your current win 10 if you get a new mainboard. If you upgraded maybe you can use your old os and upgrade to 10 using the win 10 upgrade for impaired people.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/accessi ... s10upgrade

googling win 10 mainboard died and using tools and changing any time to more recent results might help you find a way around the problem also

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-34 ... d-win.html

pjknibbs · Post by **pjknibbs** » Tue, 30. May 17, 08:47

Bishop149 wrote: So next question, can you keep an existing Windows installation and change a mobo? Never done that before, will all the initial driver mismatchs screw everything up?

The answer is, "it depends". A few years ago all you would get if you attempted this was an INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE bluescreen error because Windows didn't have the right drivers for your disk controller installed. However, I swapped out the mobo on a Windows 10 PC last year and it actually worked fine--it detected the changed motherboard and installed the proper drivers. Thing is, I don't know whether I was just lucky there, or when Microsoft fixed that problem--was it Windows 7? 8? 10? Definitely wasn't Vista because I know it didn't work in that OS.

red assassin · Post by **red assassin** » Tue, 30. May 17, 11:24

pjknibbs wrote:The answer is, "it depends". A few years ago all you would get if you attempted this was an INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE bluescreen error because Windows didn't have the right drivers for your disk controller installed. However, I swapped out the mobo on a Windows 10 PC last year and it actually worked fine--it detected the changed motherboard and installed the proper drivers. Thing is, I don't know whether I was just lucky there, or when Microsoft fixed that problem--was it Windows 7? 8? 10? Definitely wasn't Vista because I know it didn't work in that OS.

I switched motherboards on XP once or twice with no problems, but I may just have been lucky about the driver support. At any rate the built in driver sets have improved significantly over the last few releases so I wouldn't expect driver issues.

Mostly the issue is, as others have said, depending on the particular Windows license you're under, it may choose to solve the PC of Theseus conundrum by declaring any hardware modifications make it a new computer.

Bishop149 · Post by **Bishop149** » Sun, 4. Jun 17, 09:54

Well I changed the mobo.
£170 quid and 2 days of work later and it's still sodding broken. Great.
Must have been the PSU after all, another 100 odd quid.

If that doesn't work then I'm out of ideas.
I'm now really worried the faulty PSU has just fried my brand new mobo.

burger1 · Post by **burger1** » Sun, 4. Jun 17, 12:05

Well at least you won't have to worry about the windows problem.

Anyways you could also be shorting the mainboard out on the case via the mainboard mounting screws (stupid cardboard spacers/insulators). Did you test it out of the case or are you using liquid cooling? I think your mainboard will be ok. You can also probably rma your old power supply. Electronics manufacturers can be pretty dodgy.

Do you have any old computers around you could test the power supply on? Might be able to test the graphics card that way also.

Chips · Post by **Chips** » Sun, 4. Jun 17, 12:35

Do you not have an old psu kicking around or a friend to borrow one off of? Power requirement could have been reduced (remove gfx card, use onboard graphics with a less powerful psu).

You tried re-seating all the power cables, or swapping them around where applicable? (granted, the motherboard power connector is not likely something the psu has two of!).

If you bought online, you can likely return the item under consumer contracts regulations - think it's now 14 days from receipt of the goods, with a further 14 days to return them after stating you will return them. The cost of return is the vendors, you just need to package it all back up and return

Bishop149 · Post by **Bishop149** » Sun, 4. Jun 17, 12:37

I try and avoid the shorting issue by using plastic mounting screws for the mobo, the standoffs are still metal however, I couldn't find plastic ones to fit.
And yeah unfortunately I can't test outside the case without extreme difficulty due to water cooling.
When I first turned it all on it worked fine first time, which argues against such a short. This morning same issue. Thinking about it that is perhaps because the PSU had been unplugged for a few days before that first turn on. This was how I circumvented the problem initially, turn the PSU off for a bit. I think there is a short, or that something is holding charge when it shouldn't with in the PSU itself.

As a side note the windows install was fine, it configured for a bit then loaded as normal. Only driver issue outstanding was the network driver which I planned to install manually.

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Sun, 4. Jun 17, 13:05

Sorry to hear that but I wasn't convinced it was the mobo just going by your initial description of the issue and its responses to switches.

A good piece of maintenance advice is that when you are really unsure which part of a system is faulty and cannot accurately test them by other means, always change the easiest/cheapest suspect part (or even a part that you had considered upgrading anyway) first.

I think your new mobo is pretty likely to be OK thus far since damage to them usually occurs when a faulty psu is operating rather than when it won't switch on. They are also pretty resilient nowadays. Good luck with it.

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