Intermittent POST Issue

Infidelus · 6 Apr 2021 at 21:05

Bit of technical advice please.

I built a new machine last year following advice from the helpful members here, but I've been having an intermittent issue with the PC not booting for some time.

When I go to start the PC in the morning, sometimes it doesn't POST. I can see there's power going to the board. The case fans are spinning, as are the CPU & graphics card fans, but nothing else happens. If I hold the power button down to switch it off and leave it a couple of seconds it may boot on the next try, though sometimes it takes 3 or 4 goes.

Once it's started, it seems to work fine all day, unless I put it in suspend and it then sometimes shuts down seconds after it resumes or just fails to resume at all and sits there with a black screen.

There are no beep codes to help me narrow it down and hardware diagnostics have never been my particular forte, so I'm hoping someone here can point me in the right direct. As there's power getting to the board I'm assuming the PSU is fine and I'm leaning towards either RAM or CPU.

I've also never really done much in the way of overclocking and the only related setting I have changed is enabling X-AMP (profile 2), though I'm fairly sure it was happening with that off too; something to double-check.

Hardware:

AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Six Core 4.2GHz (Socket AM4) Processor
Patriot Viper Steel 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVS416G320C6K)
MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX (Socket AM4) DDR4 ATX Motherboard
Antec EarthWatts Gold Pro 650W 80 Plus Gold Modular Power Supply
Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2070 WindForce 8192MB PCI-Express Graphics Card

Joxeon · 6 Apr 2021 at 22:04

Have you tried updating the bios? Since there was a known cold boot issue on some of the earlier ones.

Infidelus · 7 Apr 2021 at 19:23

Sorry, forgot to mention that. I updated to the latest BIOS a few weeks ago. No discernable improvement; in fact I think the issue happens more now but that may just my mind playing tricks on me

Interesting about the cold boot issue. Wasn't aware of that and it does rather sound similar to what I'm seeing.

Journey · 7 Apr 2021 at 19:53

Infidelus said:
Antec EarthWatts Gold Pro 650W 80 Plus Gold Modular Power Supply

That's the new one right, not the old model that would routinely set on fire?

Infidelus · 7 Apr 2021 at 19:58

It's https://www.overclockers.co.uk/ante...plus-gold-modular-power-supply-ca-24n-an.html that I bought as the first part of my upgrade in 2019. I'm hoping it's not one that's likely to burst into flames!

Joxeon · 7 Apr 2021 at 20:32

Try enabling ERP in the bios.

Infidelus · 7 Apr 2021 at 20:42

Thanks. I'm fairly sure I had that enabled before I did the recent BIOS update, but MSI seems to like to reset everything after an update and it was disabled. I've just re-enabled it so we'll see if that makes any difference, though I was having the problem before the update so I won't hold my breath

Infidelus · 11 Apr 2021 at 19:30

Mini update. With ERP switched back on I haven't noticed any cold boot issues over the last couple of days, but my machine has shut down/restarted by itself when resuming from standby three times.

I also decided to raise a ticket with MSI and got a reply the day after with a bunch of stuff to try, the first of which was to unplug the 24 pin power connector and remove the battery for 5 minutes. After I did this, the machine wouldn't boot at all no matter how many times I reset it. Support did also point me to the EZ LEDs on the board, and every time the machine fails to start it's the Boot LED that's active.

Just as a test I unplugged the three SATA cables I have plugged in at the front and took the graphics card out (mostly because it's a flippin' long card and it was in the way). When I switch the power back on the VGA LED lit up, but not the Boot LED. I plugged the 3 cables back in and the machine now seems to be happily booting (so far). I only did this about an hour ago so time will tell if that's all was wrong with it (be nice if it was).

Jackabamba · 12 Apr 2021 at 08:14

Genuinely had this issue with a system and it turned out to be a faulty SATA lead. Drove me mad

Infidelus · 12 Apr 2021 at 08:40

Before seeing that diagnostics LED light up, I'd never have considered a SATA cable/port would completely stop the machine from booting. I may have to invest in a new set of cables, just to be sure. Will give it a week and see if the issue reoccurs.

Jackabamba · 12 Apr 2021 at 09:08

If the hard drive cant be seen or is intermitted then Windows cant boot

Infidelus · 12 Apr 2021 at 18:43

Yes, I understand that, but it shouldn't stop the machine POSTing. Never saw this happen before UEFI BIOSes were a thing. You used to jut get an error after POST saying 'no boot drive'. At least you had a clue what was wrong then without having to rip the machine apart. Just blanket refusing to even show the BIOS screen seems really counter intuitive.

Dwarfy · 12 Apr 2021 at 19:22

Depends on the fault, if the mb detects a drive but gets a garbled response to what it is, then it may hang. It may also get stuck waiting for a proper reply thinking it is a hdd that has to spin up. Failing POST would restart/shut down rather than time out. Though most faults in the sata department usually cause drives to drop out of windows.

michty_me · 12 Apr 2021 at 20:31

I've heard of similar issues with CMOS battery being low.

spixelspixel · 12 Apr 2021 at 21:10

Sounds similar to my issue I posted today.
I tried changing cmos battery didn't work.
Cant get it to post right now and had trouble before... but once it posts and up and running, stable for weeks.

Infidelus · 29 Apr 2021 at 19:37

Thought I'd update this thread as it's been a few weeks. Since unplugging/reinserting three of the SATA cables and the graphics card (so I could get to the SATA connectors) my machine has only rebooted twice after resuming from standby, and that was within the first few days. Since then it's been rock solid (touch wood). I did buy some new cables and may fit them over the Bank Holiday weekend but seems the issue might have just been as simple as bad connections. Could have fixed that a year ago if I'd known