Red Light on motherboard

Fate Zero · 5 Sep 2023 at 20:38

Hi there,

I randomly today had issues booting my PC. It would get a red light on the motherboard and nothing would happen. I plugged the power cable in and out and turned it on and off a few times and eventually it booted to the recovery screen. I decided to try and launch windows as normal and since then it's booted fine. Is there anything I need to be aware of or looking out for. The only thing of note that happened since I used the PC yesterday was that I had my boiler changed and they disconnected the electrics. The PC was plugged in but switched off at the time.

goldy6660 · 5 Sep 2023 at 21:20

Power your pc down, literally pull the plug out and wait a sec and then try start it back up again after.

If it's still dead maybe take the bios battery out and wait a sec and put it back in and start it again.

Could be a power surge or something maybe

Fate Zero · 5 Sep 2023 at 21:56

goldy6660 said:
Power your pc down, literally pull the plug out and wait a sec and then try start it back up again after.

If it's still dead maybe take the bios battery out and wait a sec and put it back in and start it again.

Could be a power surge or something maybe

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, it was fine after I unplugged it and left it a couple of minutes. Wish I knew what caused it though.

goldy6660 · 5 Sep 2023 at 22:04

Fate Zero said:
Thanks for the reply. Yeah, it was fine after I unplugged it and left it a couple of minutes. Wish I knew what caused it though.

It'd just be a power surge of the power going off/power cut. Glad it's ok now though

Ch3m1c4L · 6 Sep 2023 at 12:11

Check your ram setting in bios, it might have reset your cmos, this requiring retraining of the ram timings and kids now be set to defaults/slow

venomx · 6 Sep 2023 at 13:21

Is there no diagnostic light on the mobo ?
On my mobo, it will have a red light next to the issue... I.E VGA, DRAM, CPU, Boot etc

It would give you a good indicator of where the problem is if it happens agin

Fate Zero · 6 Sep 2023 at 19:33

Hi there, quick update. Basically, it seems the PC has issues cold booting. Upon cold boot, it'll go to the recovery screen and then be unable to repair anything so I just launch windows 10 as normal. MOBO was showing red boot light. Once it's booted it runs fine and I can turn it on and off in quick succession fine. But if I leave it for a while it has the same problem and I have to repeat the process again.

UPDATE: I replaced the CMOS battery as I had a spare one lying around and have updated the BIOS. Now it's even worse. I now get the VGA red light on mobo upon boot. I get error "critical process dead" and it then goes to automatic repair and fails. It won't let me wipe/reset the PC, says "there was a problem resetting your PC, no changes were made". The option to system restore shows the previous restore points but I can't progress in selecting one. I've managed to get into the BIOS which shows it's updated but the time is wrong. I did a complete reset using windows on a USB but still have the same problem. Whenever I cold boot I get this screen https://imgur.com/a/U9yES9e. It eventually boots and runs fine. Warm boots also work ok but If I turn the PC and disconnect the power for a few minutes and try again the whole process repeats. I'm assuming at this point it's most likely going to be hardware related? Would the PSU or MOBO be the most likely culprits? Thanks

therealdippy · 7 Sep 2023 at 12:54

Settings are volatile. Did you check the voltage of the replacement battery?

Fate Zero · 7 Sep 2023 at 20:23

therealdippy said:
Settings are volatile. Did you check the voltage of the replacement battery?

I ended up putting the original battery back in and still the same issue.

Ch3m1c4L · 7 Sep 2023 at 23:37

So, if I understanding correctly, from cold boot is trying to apply whatever settings profile it has, but is failing and after a few tries it defaults to system defaults and succeeds to boot. This is happening because it's re-detecting something as new, so it resets and wants to retest (a few minutes and auto restarts) the hardware it can find and the settings for them.
This is most likely caused by your RAM, either what you've got it at in bios is too much of an OC, or one or more sticks, or slots, are bad. Most likely.

Run memtest86+, any error means it's faulty at those settings. Trial and error for sticks/slots/settings until you nail it down.

The windows repair thing happens if it fails to reach windows three times in a row, just ignore it when you know its not a windows issue and is hardware.

Fate Zero · 8 Sep 2023 at 10:02

Ch3m1c4L said:
So, if I understanding correctly, from cold boot is trying to apply whatever settings profile it has, but is failing and after a few tries it defaults to system defaults and succeeds to boot. This is happening because it's re-detecting something as new, so it resets and wants to retest (a few minutes and auto restarts) the hardware it can find and the settings for them.
This is most likely caused by your RAM, either what you've got it at in bios is too much of an OC, or one or more sticks, or slots, are bad. Most likely.

Run memtest86+, any error means it's faulty at those settings. Trial and error for sticks/slots/settings until you nail it down.

The windows repair thing happens if it fails to reach windows three times in a row, just ignore it when you know its not a windows issue and is hardware.

Quick update, after I changed the CMOS back to the original one last night I was having the same issues for about 30 minutes or so. However, since then it's cold booted fine straight to desktop. I tried it a few times last night and this morning. The only things I changed yesterday evening was the extention lead the PC plugs into and the CMOS, but as mentioned it wasn't until late last night it started booting normally. Really confused now as I have already sourced some parts to test with but now it's running fine. I'll run memtest tonight.

Ch3m1c4L · 8 Sep 2023 at 10:22

In that case, it's probably all just been because of bios settings got wiped randomly, then it retraining them/using incorrect values/the other battery being incorrect or broken.

As I said before, check the basic settings, and or specs in cpu z, to confirm you're running at the correct settings ram normally defaults to slow "compatible" speeds. Also cpu might not be at to boost all the way up etc. But if it all looks good in cpuz, and it continues to boot correctly, put it down to a power surge and software glitch. But a surge protector if you don't have one

Fate Zero · 8 Sep 2023 at 10:36

Ch3m1c4L said:
In that case, it's probably all just been because of bios settings got wiped randomly, then it retraining them/using incorrect values/the other battery being incorrect or broken.

As I said before, check the basic settings, and or specs in cpu z, to confirm you're running at the correct settings ram normally defaults to slow "compatible" speeds. Also cpu might not be at to boost all the way up etc. But if it all looks good in cpuz, and it continues to boot correctly, put it down to a power surge and software glitch. But a surge protector if you don't have one

I'm completely clueless when it comes to what I'm gonna ask but is it possible that a power surge would have effected some part of the PC that latest a couple of days and gradually worn off? Also, regarding the surge protector, I got one for the PC yesterday.