Diagnose this extremely weird problem..

Lord-Jaffa · 14 Aug 2008 at 02:34

So my PC is having issues booting into windows, ill press the power button and it will attempt to boot up, it gets to the graphics card display sometimes then switchs off and restarts, then just gives up entirely.

Now here is the weird part, if i push the power cable down on the back then it boots up fine into windows, once in windows there is no problems at all, pc runs fine with no restarts or anything.

I think it might be an issue with the motherboard or power supply but i have no idea wtf is going on, why would it not boot up when i press the on button, yet if i push the power cable down untill windows loads its fine (however if i let go of the power cable it restarts again)?!

It was working fine for the last few months as well!

MikeHiow · 14 Aug 2008 at 08:10

I'm going to say PSU, I only mentioned it yesterday somewhere on here, but I had an issue where by it would keep rebooting during and around post. Once windows had actually loaded, it'd be fine.

Lord-Jaffa · 14 Aug 2008 at 12:32

MikeHiow said:
I'm going to say PSU, I only mentioned it yesterday somewhere on here, but I had an issue where by it would keep rebooting during and around post. Once windows had actually loaded, it'd be fine.

Yeah that seems exactly like my problem, but why was it messing around only during post and not when its in windows for days at a time? lol Makes no sense at all!

I was leaning towards motherboard/bios issue but i really have no idea. Is there anyway i can check the PSU without sending it off for RMA?

Ive tried the usual suspect of memtest/prime95 for hours and they all come back clean, games play fine no artifacts on the grapics card. Just really leaves motherboard/PSU.

Lord-Jaffa · 15 Aug 2008 at 03:09

Anyone else have any insight on this?

fornowagain · 15 Aug 2008 at 03:15

Sounds like a bad joint. Power cable? The main 24 pin connector? Look inside you will see little square female connectors, try gently bending them closed. If not that, then maybe a dry joint on the motherboard (needs soldering) or a broken conductor in the PSU lead.

Greebo · 15 Aug 2008 at 08:42

Lord-Jaffa said:
Yeah that seems exactly like my problem, but why was it messing around only during post and not when its in windows for days at a time? lol Makes no sense at all!

If you look at things like hard drives and optical drives and especially water pumps etc you will find they all require more power on initial boot up.

From memory a hard drive needs 25w to spin up initially yet only uses 15w on average during use.

Optical drives are more from memory.

Hence the system failing over on initial boot up but if it can get past that into windows then its all fine as power consumption has dropped.

This indeed would lead me to suspect the psu or a dodgy power lead/contacts to the psu.

A lot of local computer shops have psu testers but before I did that I would try a different power lead and make sure the connectors into your mobo are fine.

To test the premise that it is a power issue, you could unplug to non essential items inside you pc. If your system then boots up fine with no problems, you at least know for pretty certain that it's your psu and then rma it.

Andromeda1983 · 15 Aug 2008 at 11:50

Sounds like a PSU issue, id test with a different PSU and if it fixes the problem

Lord-Jaffa · 15 Aug 2008 at 16:19

Greebo said:
If you look at things like hard drives and optical drives and especially water pumps etc you will find they all require more power on initial boot up.

From memory a hard drive needs 25w to spin up initially yet only uses 15w on average during use.

Optical drives are more from memory.

Hence the system failing over on initial boot up but if it can get past that into windows then its all fine as power consumption has dropped.

This indeed would lead me to suspect the psu or a dodgy power lead/contacts to the psu.

A lot of local computer shops have psu testers but before I did that I would try a different power lead and make sure the connectors into your mobo are fine.

To test the premise that it is a power issue, you could unplug to non essential items inside you pc. If your system then boots up fine with no problems, you at least know for pretty certain that it's your psu and then rma it.

I will see if i can borrow a spare PSU to see if the issue is still there, i dont really want to RMA unless im sure its that since the postage on a Power supply is a killer if it turns out to be fine! Will source a new power cable also to check for that also.

Thanks for the ideas

Lord-Jaffa · 5 Apr 2009 at 10:22

This problem still plagues me to this day, anyone have any new ideas or imputs before I buy a new PSU?