- Jul 7, 2008
- 5,558
- 25
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I recently helped a buddy of mine put together a new budget gaming PC.
The build-process went extremely smoothly, and after ensuring that everything's connected in the right spot and ready to go, we powered it on. The fans spun up, the LEDs lit up, it looked and sounded like it was booting up normally. However, it did not POST.
The screen would stay black for a while, until a few moments later when the PC suddenly powered down by itself. Then it turned back on again. The fans spun up, the LEDs came on. A few seconds later... it's back off. And then back on. And then back off.
Finally we got an error on the screen, somewhere to the tune of "The computer failed to boot multiple times, press F1 to go into setup, F2 to resume boot normally", etc, etc.
On the rare occasion that we can actually manage to boot into Windows, we only see the Windows loading screen for a few seconds before the image freezes and the PC hard-crashes, requiring a hard-reboot. On the other hand, we can go into the BIOS successfully with no issues, and it's completely stable as long as we're in there. I have not made any funny changes to the BIOS settings that would be causing the crash. Only basic stuff, like changing the boot order of the drives, the IDE mode (AHCI), and enabling Intel XMP settings for the memory.
What's REALLY strange, is that if I remove one of the sticks of memory, it's a lot more stable. With just 1 RAM stick I was able to boot into Windows and restart the computer multiple times with no issues. So maybe the other stick of RAM is bad? But then I swap the sticks, and it still works just fine! It doesn't even seem to matter what slot I use. However, as soon as I put both sticks of RAM in there, it has a lot more issues.
I suspected faulty RAM, and ran Memtest86 for ~24 hours or so just to see if any errors would crop up. Nothing. No RAM errors. What in the world?
What would be causing the PC to boot so erratically and unreliably? A short somewhere, perhaps? I'm kind of stumped. I've tried flashing the newest version of the motherboard's BIOS, and resetting the CMOS various times. Resetting the CMOS jumper seems to just make the problem worse and it takes the computer multiple tries to boot again after I do it.
I can't remember all the specs off the top of my head, but he has a 4th-gen Intel i3 CPU, an Asrock Z87 Pro4 motherboard, 2X4GB sticks of memory (G.SKILL I think?), a GTX 760, a Sandisk SSD, a regular mechanical HDD, and a Corsair CX600 power supply. Thanks in advance.
The build-process went extremely smoothly, and after ensuring that everything's connected in the right spot and ready to go, we powered it on. The fans spun up, the LEDs lit up, it looked and sounded like it was booting up normally. However, it did not POST.
The screen would stay black for a while, until a few moments later when the PC suddenly powered down by itself. Then it turned back on again. The fans spun up, the LEDs came on. A few seconds later... it's back off. And then back on. And then back off.
Finally we got an error on the screen, somewhere to the tune of "The computer failed to boot multiple times, press F1 to go into setup, F2 to resume boot normally", etc, etc.
On the rare occasion that we can actually manage to boot into Windows, we only see the Windows loading screen for a few seconds before the image freezes and the PC hard-crashes, requiring a hard-reboot. On the other hand, we can go into the BIOS successfully with no issues, and it's completely stable as long as we're in there. I have not made any funny changes to the BIOS settings that would be causing the crash. Only basic stuff, like changing the boot order of the drives, the IDE mode (AHCI), and enabling Intel XMP settings for the memory.
What's REALLY strange, is that if I remove one of the sticks of memory, it's a lot more stable. With just 1 RAM stick I was able to boot into Windows and restart the computer multiple times with no issues. So maybe the other stick of RAM is bad? But then I swap the sticks, and it still works just fine! It doesn't even seem to matter what slot I use. However, as soon as I put both sticks of RAM in there, it has a lot more issues.
I suspected faulty RAM, and ran Memtest86 for ~24 hours or so just to see if any errors would crop up. Nothing. No RAM errors. What in the world?
What would be causing the PC to boot so erratically and unreliably? A short somewhere, perhaps? I'm kind of stumped. I've tried flashing the newest version of the motherboard's BIOS, and resetting the CMOS various times. Resetting the CMOS jumper seems to just make the problem worse and it takes the computer multiple tries to boot again after I do it.
I can't remember all the specs off the top of my head, but he has a 4th-gen Intel i3 CPU, an Asrock Z87 Pro4 motherboard, 2X4GB sticks of memory (G.SKILL I think?), a GTX 760, a Sandisk SSD, a regular mechanical HDD, and a Corsair CX600 power supply. Thanks in advance.
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