PC Won't boot from "cold" ? Please spam me with suggestions!

furnace

furnace

furnace

Soldato
Joined
12 Dec 2006
Posts
3,421
Location
Worthing, West Sussex
Hey,

This is on behalf of a friend. He has a PC with the following:

DVD Drive
250GB Hard Drive
Sound Blaster Fatality Sound Card
Gigabyte P35 DS4
2GB Kingston 800MHZ
"Core2 Quad" Q6600
BFG 8800 GTS 512MB OC
Corsair HX520W

The problem he has ,is the PC won't boot from 'cold'. If he turns it on, the fans spin, but it doesn't POST - no beeps, no keyboard flashes, nothing on screen - but the fans are whirring away. But if he keeps on trying, on the ~10th attempt to turn it on, it works fine. From then onwards, the computer will always boot properly - whether he restarts it, powers down and on again, it'll be fine.

Then if he switches it off, leaves it for a few hours, and comes back, he can't switch it on again and has to keep trying until it turns on.

This is a brand new build. I don't think it's a dodgy 'on' button because the PC does switch on (the fans go) but it doesn't seem to do anything POST-like :confused:

I have run memtest (no errors), and I have updated his BIOS.

I have told him to try putting +0.2v on his memory, as it is supposed to run at 2.0v but the mobo defaults to 1.8v.

Well, this is wierd, and he hasn't installed anything on it yet as he wants the computer to work properly before he goes installing games and stuff on it.

I have read somewhere (can't remember where) about P35-DS4's having a cold-boot problem? But I can't find much about this other than basically one person saying it in a forum.

So if you could come up with any suggestions - however silly or complex they may seem - please post them!

Thanks! :D
 
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Outcast said:
Large hard drives can take a while to spin up ... In the meantime Bios has reported...or got it's knickers in a twist about no hard drive being present.

Try going into BIOS and selecting hard drive delay and set it at about 3 seconds.
Click to expand...

Just trying out some of the suggestions... this boot delay option, I can't find it in the BIOS? Any idea where it is or what it's called? Or do you reckon the option's just not there in the Gigabyte BIOS..?
 
ricky1981 said:
used to have this issue, never fixed it but found if i totally unplugged my pc for 30 seconds and then tried it would often work. Have since changed PSU and the issue went away.
Click to expand...

Not to sound sarcastic! But...

So you did fix it - by changing the PSU?

He has sent a Corsair 520w back already, this is his second one... hopefully he hasn't got a dodgy one again. He got his dads PSU tester on the first an apparently the 5v rail was duff! But he had the same issues (with cold booting, didn't test the other PSU's with a PSU tester) using a temporary 375w "Trust" PSU and with his current replacement 520w PSU...
 
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Right! Found the problem.

He told me on the same day he found his first PSU was duff, his CD drive was duff too... then he replaced it with another CD drive and the trust power supply.

We tried a new motherboard, and it's all fine now :D With his replacement Corsair 520w. So I'm thinking the first power supply, if it was duff, could have blown the CD drive and motherboard.

Anyhoo, the first mobo's getting sent back now and thank **** his PC is finally working.

A very nice rig he's got, too!
 
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