Power button issue

Nay

Nay

Nay

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12 Feb 2020
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Hi,
I took my pc into my local repair shop as it was not booting it was freezing on the Asus screen with the red led boot device on. This was still happening with everything disconnected and only a single ram stick so I came to the conclusion it's the Motherboard. Just for clarification I decided to take it to the repair shop and they confirmed this. But when I went to collect it from the repair shop they said the power button is no longer working and the repair guy was having to use a screwdriver across the contacts on motherboard to power it up.
I thought that was odd as there was no issues with the power button when I dropped it off at the repair shop.
Having been confirmed the motherboard was faulty I thought maybe that also caused the power button to stop working so I got me a replacement motherboard.
The replacement board has resolved the booting issue and it now boots up fine and loads Windows however the front pc case power button does not work still and the only way to power it up is by pressing the reset button on front of pc case.
What has the repair guy done to this front panel power button for it not to work could he have put the power button and reset button on the wrong pins and is it safe for me to swap them around to try to see if this will correct it?
Sorry for long post and hope someone can help me out.
Thanks
 
Your case manual should say in it what the colours of the wires from the front panel are and usually the contacts have it also printed on the side of the 2 way housing.

I suspect they put the restart connection where the power connection should be and vice versa.

Worth checking before swapping just in case there is more weirdness going on but not aware of any motherboards that take pressing the reset button as also being a start signal off the top of my head.
 
5abr3 said:
Your case manual should say in it what the colours of the wires from the front panel are and usually the contacts have it also printed on the side of the 2 way housing.

I suspect they put the restart connection where the power connection should be and vice versa.

Worth checking before swapping just in case there is more weirdness going on but not aware of any motherboards that take pressing the reset button as also being a start signal off the top of my head.
Click to expand...
Photos are showing one side of the power connection block with three pairs of wires connected red/white H.D.D. LED, orange white PWR Ground, blue white Reset Ground
Other side of power connection block with one pair of wires connected green white +5V Ground
The other photo shows my pc front case power buttons.

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Those are how the wires were connected in the power connecter block when I had the PC back from repair shop and it had stopped working while he was working on it so not sure if he put the wires back in the correct place?
 
They look correctly laid out on the adaptor header thing, if it starts OK as reported using a shorting bar then I suggest the switch is broken.

If you have a multimeter you could check continuity (with the switch connector detached from the motherboard, should conduct when the button is depressed).

Edit: the other thing is does the switch work if directly attached to the motherboard instead of that intermediate block? Could be that helper header has damage
 
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If you can power it on by shorting the power pins on the mobo then the fault is with the cable running to the case power button, or the case button itself.
You can use a small screwdriver or any metal object of suitable size to gently short the + and - on the header.
 
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The reset and the power buttons are both the same, in that there are push to make release to break.
If you want, you can swap them around, so the reset is on the contacts that power the PC up. You could leave the reset contacts disconnected, I mean who uses the reset anyway?
That way you don't have to repair anything.
Another trick that may be available in the BIOS is to set it to power up on power restore. That way as soon as power is applied to the PC it just powers up. I use that option on one of my PC's with the addition of a remote socket so that I can turn the PC on with a remote.
 
SpellowHouse said:
The reset and the power buttons are both the same, in that there are push to make release to break.
If you want, you can swap them around, so the reset is on the contacts that power the PC up. You could leave the reset contacts disconnected, I mean who uses the reset anyway?
That way you don't have to repair anything.
Another trick that may be available in the BIOS is to set it to power up on power restore. That way as soon as power is applied to the PC it just powers up. I use that option on one of my PC's with the addition of a remote socket so that I can turn the PC on with a remote.
Click to expand...
I swapped the power switch and reset switch around on the contactor block and now it works as it should. Power button powers up the pc and the reset button resets the pc now. Seem like the cables have been named incorrectly and the guy who checked the pc must have taken the cables out and not realised they need to go back in that way.
 
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Nay said:
I swapped the power switch and reset switch around and now it works as it should. Power button powers up the pc and the reset button resets the pc now. Seem like the cables have been named incorrectly and the guy who checked the pc must have taken the cables out and not realised they need to go back in that way.
Click to expand...

Shouldn't matter, both are just switches. Doesn't matter if you wire them incorrect polarity either.
 
The polarity doesn't matter in this scenario as all the case switches do is short the + and - pins on the mobo..
You can do it manually by very carefully touching a small screwdriver to momentarily bridge both pins on the mobo.

If it's working now... I can only suggest that one of the black plugs wasn't pushed into the connector block properly, or the connector block wasn't sat all the way home on the motherboard header pins.
Or a dodgy solder on the switch cable that's only just holding on..

Those connector blocks are handy but they are not always engineered perfectly and might be a bit loose?

It's also quite easy to accidentally put one those little black plugs on an adjacent pin if you don't keep a close eye on what you are doing.
 
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