PC won't POST - Help needed

RobG

RobG

RobG

Associate
Joined
21 Jul 2004
Posts
252
Location
West Midlands, UK
Hi,

I have an issue with my PC and wonder if anyone here can help. Here's the story:

The PC hasn't been modified (hardware or software) in any way for a long time.

PC has been used for 8 hours or so today, working perfectly normal with no issues. I set it to 'sleep' (Windows 10) and left it for a few hours. Upon my return I noticed that the PC power was on but the power LED was flashing (as though it was still in sleep mode). I tried the power button to wake it up and there was no response. I then embarked on a series of troubleshooting:
  1. Full plug out reset - no change
  2. Disconnect all USB, DVI, networks and audio cables - no change
  3. Remove all but 1 stick of RAM, try 1 stick of RAM in different slots - no change
  4. Clear CMOS - no change
  5. Remove GPU (use onboard) - no change
  6. Remove PCI-e soundcard - no change
  7. Remove SATA cables so only the M2 drives are connected - no change
When I say 'no change' the PC powers up but the power LED doesn't light up. It will actually power up for around 10 seconds, reboot and then power up again and stay 'on' (with the power LED being off) indefinitely. The motherboard (MSI Z170A Titanium) has an LED display on it that shows '00' - not sure if this is any use.

The rig is as specified in my signature.

I would be SO grateful of any help you can provide. If anyone is near Stourbridge and wants to look in person then I'd happily pay for your time to get this sorted for me (I just don't have the time).
 
IIRC, 00 (or D0) is a CPU problem, look it up in your motherboard manual to be sure. I had the same problem a while back with my 4670k dying and not coming back out of sleep. As I had no spare parts to test it and confirm, I took the CPU, mobo and RAM to a local PC repair place and asked them to find out which piece of hardware was dead. It's a quick job, so it should only cost whatever their minimum charge is.
 
Hi Quartz

I haven't done that yet as the watercooling setup makes it quite tricky / time consuming. What are you thinking here - the board is grounding somewhere? I'm struggling to get my head around it based on not having moved the PC (prior to the issue) and it has been working fine for months.

I will certainly do a full strip down if push comes to shove. I can't help but feel it is a motherboard / BIOS issue that manifested as a result of me using sleep and then having to hard reset when it didn't respond to wake up.

Rob
 
benjii said:
IIRC, 00 (or D0) is a CPU problem, look it up in your motherboard manual to be sure. I had the same problem a while back with my 4670k dying and not coming back out of sleep. As I had no spare parts to test it and confirm, I took the CPU, mobo and RAM to a local PC repair place and asked them to find out which piece of hardware was dead. It's a quick job, so it should only cost whatever their minimum charge is.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Would be a little but gutted if it is the CPU. May try reseating it tomorrow beforehand.

EDIT - I find the motherboard manual so unintuitive to read / use. I couldn't see the error codes when I looked earlier (although I was only skimming it).
 
UPDATE

Thanks to everyone who offered advice. I took another look today, couldn't see any obvious signs of a short on the motherboard but gave everything a good dusting and wiggled all cables. This seems to have done the trick as the machine now POSTs and after some BIOS tweaking (I'd cleared it during troubleshooting) I am now back up and running.

Again, thank you for the advice yesterday.
 
OK - I spoke too soon. I've had a number of instances of the issue occur over the weekend, here's what I've noticed.
  • One one occasion the PC failed on shutdown - the monitor went to sleep but the PC stayed powered on requiring a plug pull to power it down. The PC then refused to boot with the 00 / D0 error.
  • The PC will start almost without fail if I leave it unplugged and remove the CMOS battery for at least an hour. It will also withstand a few reboots following this power on whilst the RAID is configured in BIOS.
  • The PC has been on sine 9am today and working flawlessly. I'm sure if I shutdown and try to boot again it will fail (I need the PC today so won't try this until tonight).
I'm starting to suspect a PSU fault - reason being the relationship between the fault state, powering up/down the PC and that it seemingly being (temporarily) resolved by cutting power for a long time.

Can anyone shed any light on what might be going on here?
 
RobG said:
OK - I spoke too soon. I've had a number of instances of the issue occur over the weekend, here's what I've noticed.
  • One one occasion the PC failed on shutdown - the monitor went to sleep but the PC stayed powered on requiring a plug pull to power it down. The PC then refused to boot with the 00 / D0 error.
  • The PC will start almost without fail if I leave it unplugged and remove the CMOS battery for at least an hour. It will also withstand a few reboots following this power on whilst the RAID is configured in BIOS.
  • The PC has been on sine 9am today and working flawlessly. I'm sure if I shutdown and try to boot again it will fail (I need the PC today so won't try this until tonight).
I'm starting to suspect a PSU fault - reason being the relationship between the fault state, powering up/down the PC and that it seemingly being (temporarily) resolved by cutting power for a long time.

Can anyone shed any light on what might be going on here?
Click to expand...

when you shut down was fans still staying on like it was still powered on ?
as i had a similar problem and turned out to be motherboard, sometimes would boot up and then sometimes not at all even with a cmos reset ?
 
00 indicates a cpu, motherboard or psi problem. Possibly a short like someone mentioned... dust or dead bugs can do this.

It’s difficult to diagnose without spare equipment unfortunately.

I know it’s time consuming but I would tear it down and rebuild... testing reseating the cpu while it’s out.

Unless you’ve already done it, you might be due a water cooling system flush and fluid change? Should be done every 6-12 months ideally.
 
Thanks again to everyone who has inputted to this thread.

I have used the PC all day today and it has been flawless. I disabled sleep mode as I didn’t want it to power off as I suspected it would cause an issue.

I have just shut it down (which completed fine actually) but upon trying to start it again I see 00 and get no video signal. I didn’t touch the base unit at all between shutting it down and then pressing the power button to start it (after a wait of 1 minute or so).

Does this help diagnose the issue? Doesn’t sound like a short to me on this basis but I’m happy to be corrected. I have a PSU that I picked up from PC World today for testing. I was reluctant try it this morning as I will struggle to return it if I open it and the current PSU (Super Flower 1200w Gold etc) is still under warranty. That said, the PSU is easier to test than the motherboard so perhaps that is the next logical step.

Alternatively, it could be heat related and the CPU? I will test that tonight by leaving the power supply connected to the mains, all plugged in as normal and then try booting from cold tomorrow.

The saga continues.....
 
That the PC sometimes works indicates that the fault is unlikely to be a short.

Again, how old is your PSU? Is it Haswell compatible? A quick Google indicates that it could be as old as 2013 which is the Haswell release date. I see a Johnnyguru review from 2014 which says it supports Haswell's sleep states. That said, since you've had it working for years, I am disinclined to believe that it is a sleep state issue.
 
Ok, test completed last night. Leaving the PSU plugged in to the mains, CMOS battery in etc resulted in a 00 error and no boot this morning.

I have now pulled the plug for the PSU and removed the battery. I will see tonight whether that results in a bootable machine.

Is this starting to sound like a motherboard issue (capacitor dying?) or could it still be PSU related? I have the nee PSU that I can test with if that’s a likely cause (again, resisting due to not wanting to have a spare £90 PSU lying around).
 
RobG said:
Ok, test completed last night. Leaving the PSU plugged in to the mains, CMOS battery in etc resulted in a 00 error and no boot this morning.

I have now pulled the plug for the PSU and removed the battery. I will see tonight whether that results in a bootable machine.

Is this starting to sound like a motherboard issue (capacitor dying?) or could it still be PSU related? I have the nee PSU that I can test with if that’s a likely cause (again, resisting due to not wanting to have a spare £90 PSU lying around).
Click to expand...

Better of elimanting the psu first rob if you went and brought a spare, worse case scenario at least you have for future build.
But the way it is sounding it is the motherboard,also for sake of pennies try a new battery in mobo and reset the jumpers
 
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