PC won't start up (powers up for 3 seconds, dies, tries again... repeat)

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Wondermoth

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May 21, 2014
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Hello TW Forum!

So, my PC is dead. Suspect it's the mobo, but it could be anything. Apologies if this is in the wrong forum. I would very much welcome your input/advice.

On power up, the CPU fan spins, the DVD drive tries to access a DVD, then the power dies. The process then repeats, approximately every three seconds.

This didn't happen suddenly; there were a couple of days of increasingly frequent system crashes, almost all when I was playing games, usually within minutes of loading a game up. (This suggests possibly the issue is related to my graphics card. but removing the card has no effect). Each of these system crashes (just a total screen freeze, no BSOD) would be followed by several iterations of the power up/access DVD/die cycle, but the machine would eventually start up again. No longer.

Any and all advice gratefully recieved!


 
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blurryy

blurryy

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Jan 31, 2015
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It sounds like a the motherboard MAY be shot, but it also means it could be not.

Try to troubleshoot a few things, Remove the battery, and plug in the charger into the plug without the battery in the laptop. If it boots, with the plug in than the battery is shot.

Next, Do you hear your HDD (hard drive) moving? if it's not than it could be that. If you have a 2.5" hard drive in your household to swap and see if the screen turns on. If thats the issue, I'd recommend a SSD especially in a Laptop configuration.

Also, Try to reseat the RAM. As in take out 2 sticks (in theory there 8GB) remove 2x4GB and I always like to blow on the port just for the safety of it, and than plug it back in. Like I said this may or may not work, but its a process I usually go threw.

Let me know, if none of these work, I'm sure I'll come up with an alternative.
 
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smorizio

smorizio

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Jan 22, 2010
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right now check to see if your power supply is under warranty or not. if it is rma it first. with the power supply pull it from the system and use a volt meter to test the voltage output. you have to jumper the green wire to back wire on the 24 pin atx plug to jumper the unit.
 
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JohnKau

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Feb 5, 2015
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I think I had a similar problem to this once. I disconnected the DVD drive one and HDD and everything ran smoothly again. Short of replacing your motherboard or PSU, or pulling out your volt meter, disconnecting the DVD drive, non-essential HDDs and peripheral USBs would be an easy first step to diagnosing the problem.
 
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Wondermoth

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May 21, 2014
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System specs!

MOBO = ASRock B85M Pro4 Motherboard (Intel B85, DDR3, S-ATA 600, Micro ATX, PCI Express 3.0, USB 3.0, HDMI, All Solid Capacitor Design, Digi Power, Socket 1150)
RAM = Patriot PSD38G1600K 8GB (2 x 4GB) PC3-12800 (1600MHZ) DIMM Kit
GFX = Sapphire AMD R9 290 TRI-X OC Graphics Card (4GB, HDMI, PCI-E)
PSU = XFX P1-850S-NLB9 PRO850W Core Edition Power Supply
HDD - 1 of 2TB Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 3.5" SATA III Hard Drive
SSD - Crucial CT120M500SSD1 120GB M500 SATA 6Gb/s 2.5 Inch Internal Solid State Drive
CPU - Intel Core i5-4690 3.50GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150


Think that's everything. There's a fairly hefty CPU fan, can't find the details for it, and it seems to be spinning fine.


I wish I had that datasette.
 
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Wondermoth

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May 21, 2014
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And to other posters (thank you, all!)

It's not a laptop :)
All components are less than a year old, so I assume they're all under warranty.
I don't have a voltmeter, but it looks like I might be getting one soon.
I haven't done a through removal of all non-essential parts as yet, as I wasn't entirely sure what to try. Will try and isolate the problem further and report back.

Thanks!
 
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Wondermoth

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May 21, 2014
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SOLVED, I THINK

Reseating the RAM and blowing ineffectually seems to have solved the problem. I've still got to reconnect everything, but it seems we're back in business. THANK YOU!
 
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