CPU/Mobo Need Help: PC not POSTing

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4nd3r50n

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My config is as follows:


  • Processor: Intel Core i7 860
  • Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3R
  • RAM: Corsair DDR3 Value RAM
  • Hard drives: 2X1TB Seagate Barracuda| 1X300GB WD VelociRaptor| 1X90GB OCZ Vertex2 SSD| LG DVD-RW Optical Drive (All drives are SATA)
  • Graphic Card: MSI GTX 580 (Backup- Sapphire ATi 4850, not connected in the system)
  • Power Supply: Tagan StoneRock Series TG600-U37
  • Cabinet: Lian Li Lancool K56
  • Monitor: Samsung P2350 (connected via DVI)

Background:
Day 1: The system was working fine with no issues. I just connected an extra internal WD 2TB hard drive (after disconnecting the power and data cable of one Seagate drive) to backup data. After backing up data, I shutdown the system and removed the hard drive and restored the original configuration. After I powered on the system, the system refused to POST and the hard drive LED stayed on from the time I pressed the power button on the cabinet. There was no display or beeps of any kind. I had to leave for work and so I let the system be for the time being, shut it down by pressing the power button and left. When I returned back later in the evening, I turned on the PC and voila! the PC turned on as usual. The hard drive LED blinked once (like it normally does during booting) and the PC turned on perfectly. I was able to browse the internet, played Quake III and watched an episode of HIMYM without any issues. The PC at no time displayed any erratic behavior. I later shut it down normally.

Day 2: My brother turned on the PC in the morning and it went back to the same issue- no POST. The hard drive LED was constantly on and the PC refused to POST. My brother turned the PC off and left. I returned back from work in the evening and turned on the PC. It booted as usual without any hiccups. I followed the same routine and then turned it off normally.

Day 3: I return from work in the evening and the PC refused to boot again. Same behavior- No POST and the hard drive light is constantly on. So, I turned the PC off to troubleshoot and get to the bottom of the issue.

Troubleshooting done so far:

  1. Removed power and data connections to all drives except the OS drive. No display, no POST, no beeps.
  2. Removed and re-inserted RAM. No display, no POST, no beeps.
  3. Removed display card and RAM. No beeps!

Warranties:
  • In warranty- Motherboard and RAM
  • Unsure: CPU- has a date of Nov-2009 printed on the Intel CPU box
  • Out of warranty- Power supply

Currently, I am completely stumped! The PC turns on but there are no beeps, no POST and no display. I am thinking something is wrong with one or some of the following components:

  • Power supply.
  • Processor.
  • RAM
  • Motherboard.

I don't have another power supply to test if the power supply is a problem. It will be really helpful if fellow users can provide some insight and suggestions for me to proceed to further troubleshoot this issue. Also, I don't have the receipt for the processor, In case, the processor is at fault (which I doubt), what would be the RMA procedure for that?

Please help.

Thanks,
4nd3r50n :)

PS: Sorry for the long post. I tried to be as elaborate as I could to provide a clear picture of what's going on.
 
Did you try disconnecting all drives and powering up the system just to get the BIOS display?

Try resetting CMOS if you havent done it yet. Be sure that you disconnect the power cord before resetting CMOS.
 
Hmmm.... I forgot about that. I'll try it as soon as I get home tonite. Somehow, I feel the chances are slim even if I do that. Any other troubleshooting step that I can possibly try, to confirm what exactly is wrong with the system?
 
Does your motherboard have LED's [except the power on LED] ?
Some motherboards have LED's near the RAM,Processor and HDD connectors, and the LED stays on for which ever device is faulty.
And yes do try what Chirag said, try powering on the system without any HDDs.
 
I did try powering up the system with all the drives disconnected with no luck. The LED's on the motherboard light up as usual and that's what is bothering me. Nothing seems to be out of place other than the POST not completing. I will try Chirag's suggestion of resetting the CMOS, but other than that I'm really flying blind. :(
 
I think it should get sorted with this.
4nd3r50n said:
I will try Chirag's suggestion of resetting the CMOS, but other than that I'm really flying blind. :(
Click to expand...

Another way to troubleshoot this is to keep holding the power ON switch for 10 secs and wait, the display will pop up.

Just read your post again, you had removed RAM and you got no beep, considering that you have a buzzer installed ;) this can be RAM going bad. How many RAM chips do you have? If multiple chips, then you can try by inserting one at a time. I guess with your knowledge about computers, you might have already tried that.
 
I am trying to arrange for a power supply from a friend today. It's a local make so dunno if it will help but I'm still gonna try.

Just read your post again, you had removed RAM and you got no beep, considering that you have a buzzer installed
123.gif
this can be RAM going bad. How many RAM chips do you have? If multiple chips, then you can try by inserting one at a time. I guess with your knowledge about computers, you might have already tried that.
Click to expand...

I tried both RAM and display card...so there should've been some beeps. I have two RAM chips. I can understand the RAM but not the display card. What I'll try doing is change the slots and check. I now have a few options to try in the evening today. Thanks, Chirag. :)
 
Looks like it is the motherboard... I just turned up with this link
Funny part is.. I had posted on that thread and didn't recall it. :$
 
Latest update: It may not be the motherboard! Atleast, I am hoping so.

I couldn't try any torubleshooting yesterday as I reached home pretty late. In the morning today, I just turned on the machine to see if it works. Well, it did turn on, POST, and boot to the Windows logon screen and then restarted. Back to the same issue, no POST, no beep. So I tried all the troubleshooting steps. CMOS reset, battery removal, display card and RAM module removal and slot change. Removed all drives and kept just the motherboard power connector connected and turned on. Nothing happens. The system turns on and then stays on with no display or beeps. I am suspecting it could either be the CPU or something so really silly that I am overlooking it. :(
 
4nd3r50n said:
Latest update: It may not be the motherboard! Atleast, I am hoping so.
Click to expand...

Did you try using a Linux Live CD to boot?

4nd3r50n said:
It's not POSTing....so not sure how the Linux CD will help?
Click to expand...

Well in the last post you did say that it did POST, but then reverted to restart cycle.

So that is why I suggested the same, doesn't hurt to try out all these small steps.
 
Try with a different PSU. If you can come down with your machine till Vikhroli, I can test it using my PSU ;) or Else @Jakob can help you as he stays in Dombivli
 
Last edited by a moderator:
It's not POSTing....so not sure how the Linux CD will help? :23:

---------- Post added at 12:31 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:27 PM ----------
chiragsthakur said:
Try with a different PSU. If you can come down with your machine till Vikhroli, I can test it using my PSU ;) or Else Jakob can help you as he stays in Dombivli
Click to expand...
Thanks for the suggestion, Chirag...let me ping Jakob and see if he can help. :)
 
ALPHA17 said:
Did you try using a Linux Live CD to boot?



Well in the last post you did say that it did POST, but then reverted to restart cycle.

So that is why I suggested the same, doesn't hurt to try out all these small steps.
Click to expand...

Got it... thanks for that suggestion. Lemme try that tomorrow. :)

Update time: I finally got to borrow a PSU from my friend for a couple of hours. It was a run-of-the mill iBall 400W PSU. I disconnected all the connectors of my previous PSU and only connected the motherboard and ATX connector of the iBall PSU. I also replaced the GTX 580 with my R4850 and turned on the system. Well... the system booted just fine. So my first thought maybe it's the display card that is causing this. So, I removed the iBall PSU, reconnected my Tagan PSU and restored all connections, except for one hard drive which has bad sectors on it. I kept that one disconnected. The only other change other than disconnected hard drive was the R4850 as the display adapter instead of the GTX 580. With these changes in place, I turned on the system and the system booted just fine.

I shut down the system, replaced the R4850 with GTX 580 and powered up the system again. System booted again and went up to the Windows logon screen. I put in my password and it was on the desktop and suddenly it just powered off by itself. I turned it on again and the No POST, No beep cycle began again. My thought was that the display card was to blame. So I replaced it again with the R4850 and restarted again. System started properly again.
This time I was able to get to the desktop and get on to the internet. Unfortunately, my Symantec Endpoint Protection client was disabled and a Windows Command Processor virus got into the system and restarted my system. The system restarted properly and then I realized that the Endpoint protection was turned off. I restarted it but by then my system was infected. So, I did a System Restore and that got the system to restart again which happened without any issues.
After this restart, when I got to the desktop and tried opening Symantec from the System Tray, the system switched off and went into that No POST, No beep cycle again. So, I turned off the system and waited for about 10-15 minutes and restarted the system again. It turned on OK again, but only for a little while. It shut off by itself in a little while and went into the No POST, No Beep cycle again. I finally turned it off for the day.

Now my inferences from these troubleshooting steps point to two things or rather three.

Cabinet - Something may be shorting and that is causing this. However, if something is shorting, the behavior would be consistent and the PC should either boot or not boot at all. So, I am kind of dicey about this option.
PSU- It is probably unable to supply enough power to the system. Something is causing a load which causes the system to restart, especially when it is in Windows. Long shot, but maybe this is a cause.
CPU- The CPU is probably overheating causing the system to restart and then go in the No POST, No Beep cycle. This is my strongest suspicion and I'm pretty unhappy about it. It had given me overheating warnings in the past without any overclocking done on the CPU. If this turns out to be the culprit, then I will have to RMA the processor, which may be another circus in itself.

So now that I have narrowed it down to these three, I'd like some suggestions for the next step. Obviously, I will need a good quality PSU to check if there is an issue with my PSU. Also, I will need to check if there is any fault with the CPU... which is difficult. Should I rather just send CPU for RMA and get that out of the way? Please suggest, mates. :)
 
Try removing all the HDD's and see whether your system restarts in BIOS screen too. Rest in BOLD
4nd3r50n said:
Cabinet - Something may be shorting and that is causing this. However, if something is shorting, the behavior would be consistent and the PC should either boot or not boot at all. So, I am kind of dicey about this option. (Rule out this possibility)
PSU- It is probably unable to supply enough power to the system. Something is causing a load which causes the system to restart, especially when it is in Windows. Long shot, but maybe this is a cause. (Did you try checking with onboard graphics??, does it restart on onboard graphics too?)
CPU- The CPU is probably overheating causing the system to restart and then go in the No POST, No Beep cycle. This is my strongest suspicion and I'm pretty unhappy about it. It had given me overheating warnings in the past without any overclocking done on the CPU. If this turns out to be the culprit, then I will have to RMA the processor, which may be another circus in itself. (If you feel so, then keep your cabby horizontally. Hold and keep pressure on the heatsink of CPU {hold the plastic area of fan} and turn the system on . Check whether your system works fine by this.You will need patience to keep pressure on the heatsink for about 15mins)
Click to expand...
 
I'll have to do all of this on Saturday... too busy today and tomorrow. :(
Will keep the thread updated on my troubleshooting steps. :)
 
Though not the same, something similar happened to me. I have a corsair VX450. one fine day system suddenly powers down from working state without any alarms or malfunction. I try to restart, wouldn't start. Just a brief spin of processor fan, thats all. Wait for an hour, it would boot up, reach windows and shutdown unexpectedly within a few minutes. I narrowed it down to the power supply. got it rmaed and has been running fine since. The case may be faulty capacitors in the PSU. You see, they sometimes gather enough charge to power on the system, but as time passes, they lose their charge and system shuts down. One more thing, try installing a fresh copy of linux. Lets keep windows problems out of the equation. or better still, boot from a pendrive with knoppix or puppy linux
 
I am thinking the same too... problem is I'm not sure if that is the reason. To rule the PSU out of the equation, I will need another PSU which is of the same or better quality and test the system on that to confirm for sure. Unfortunately, that is not an option that is available to me. I have PM'ed Systembuilder for a price on the Seasonic PSU's. Seems like I will have to spend a bomb on the PSU first....with no guarantee that it is the faulty part. :(

---------- Post added at 08:54 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:50 AM ----------
PSU- It is probably unable to supply enough power to the system. Something is causing a load which causes the system to restart, especially when it is in Windows. Long shot, but maybe this is a cause. (Did you try checking with onboard graphics??, does it restart on onboard graphics too?)
Click to expand...
It's the first gen Core i7 so no graphics on the chip or any onboard graphics on the motherboard. :(
 
PSU can be problem, but I dont think there is anything like System shuts down coz "Capacitors discharge" They will discharge when you turn off the system and if they are leaky or burnt then system wont power up in the first place.
4nd3r50n : Did you contact Tejas? And can you change your profile name, its difficult to tag :P

I can help you with Silverstone strider 500. But you shouldn't run Gtx580 on it. Its my friends PSU and I dont want to risk it. He stays near to dombivli railway station
 
I didn't because I didn't have enough time that day. I will speak to him tomorrow and see if he can help. Issue is I can't carry my system anywhere coz it's big and heavy. I will need to get a PSU for a few hours to check. If that PSU is powering someone's primary system, I don't think I will be able to get the PSU then. Anyway, I will call him today.
About the profile name... naah, I'm not changing it! :D
 
His Mobo has gone kaput day before yesterday. So PSU is available. You can go to his place and collect it. PM me your ph number
 
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