- Jan 14, 2016
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Ok, I have a long, strange PC story. I have medium/low tech expertise, as you'll probably notice from some of the noobish things I did. Anyway, here is my build (about 3.5 years old):
mobo: Asus M5A97
cpu: AMD FX-6300 3.5 ghz
psu: corsair TX650M
ram: 2x G.Skill Ripjaws 8gb
hdd: barracuda 7200.12 500gb
graphics: Radeon XFX HD6770 1gb
and an ancient Linksys PCI wireless internet card(2.4 ghz 54 mbps), which may seem trivial, but just wait.
Alright, here comes the entire story. I'll leave nothing out; bear with me. So, over the years, my 6 USB ports on my mobo have gotten increasingly funky and unreliable, until about a month ago all six died simultaneously. So I ordered a PCI USB card. When it came, I installed it, and while I was at it, I dusted my computer and re-applied thermal goo to my CPU and GPU (they were getting pretty crusty). Then I made a mistake. I wanted to boot my computer to make sure all was well, and to install the driver for the USB card. Only, the power in my apartment was weird that day. Half of our power was down, and everything in the place was sharing the other half, and operating at partial capacity. Now, I had not then heard of undervoltage dangers to electronics. I figured my PSU would know what to do: either it would boot, or not have enough power, and not boot. So I booted up, and all was fine. Installed the driver, checked my CPU temp. All good, so I shut it down. Then some bizarre shit happened. About 5 seconds after it powered down, my computer pulsed on momentarily three times in as many seconds, of its own accord. Ok. So I freaked out, unplugged it, and left it alone until the landlord fixed the appartment's electricity. Then, when I tried to boot, it wouldn't. All it would do was power the fans and case lights for like half a second. Did the paperclip test on the PSU; worked fine. So I figured the mobo was fried, and that I should probably get a new PSU too just in case it had a hidden defect and would murder my new mobo the next time the power was acting up. However, today, just before I intended to order these parts, I decided to take out my PCI cards (graphics and wifi) and see if it would boot, just in case they were somehow preventing it. And lo and behold, it booted. So I put the graphics card back in. Booted fine again. Put the wifi card back in, and instead of booting, my hard drive literally produced a big spark. At this point I figured my hdd was lost anyway, so I tried again, just to see. More sparks. I took out my wifi card, and put it back in. This time, it booted. However, all the fans would rhythmically pulse between faster and slower speed, with my DRAM LED blinking on and off in sync with the fan speed changes. I booted many times and got the same results. With the wifi card out, it boots normally. The wifi card causes the same thing regardless of which PCI slot it's in. Ok, so the wifi card is screwed. Unsurprisingly, the hdd isn't recognized either. So, all I need to do is buy a new drive (probably get a small ssd) and a new wifi adapter (i'll just get a USB one).
Now, the point of this post is to ask if any of you guys think my mobo or PSU is faulty, or if it really could be just my old wifi card that was killing my whole system. Is it possible for a PCI wireless card to single-handedly block a system from booting, and also to somehow cause an hdd to spark and die? I guess all I'm saying is this story totally baffles me, and I don't know where the fundamental problem could be. Should I just get a new drive and wifi adapter and be done with it?
Thank you so much for reading this.
mobo: Asus M5A97
cpu: AMD FX-6300 3.5 ghz
psu: corsair TX650M
ram: 2x G.Skill Ripjaws 8gb
hdd: barracuda 7200.12 500gb
graphics: Radeon XFX HD6770 1gb
and an ancient Linksys PCI wireless internet card(2.4 ghz 54 mbps), which may seem trivial, but just wait.
Alright, here comes the entire story. I'll leave nothing out; bear with me. So, over the years, my 6 USB ports on my mobo have gotten increasingly funky and unreliable, until about a month ago all six died simultaneously. So I ordered a PCI USB card. When it came, I installed it, and while I was at it, I dusted my computer and re-applied thermal goo to my CPU and GPU (they were getting pretty crusty). Then I made a mistake. I wanted to boot my computer to make sure all was well, and to install the driver for the USB card. Only, the power in my apartment was weird that day. Half of our power was down, and everything in the place was sharing the other half, and operating at partial capacity. Now, I had not then heard of undervoltage dangers to electronics. I figured my PSU would know what to do: either it would boot, or not have enough power, and not boot. So I booted up, and all was fine. Installed the driver, checked my CPU temp. All good, so I shut it down. Then some bizarre shit happened. About 5 seconds after it powered down, my computer pulsed on momentarily three times in as many seconds, of its own accord. Ok. So I freaked out, unplugged it, and left it alone until the landlord fixed the appartment's electricity. Then, when I tried to boot, it wouldn't. All it would do was power the fans and case lights for like half a second. Did the paperclip test on the PSU; worked fine. So I figured the mobo was fried, and that I should probably get a new PSU too just in case it had a hidden defect and would murder my new mobo the next time the power was acting up. However, today, just before I intended to order these parts, I decided to take out my PCI cards (graphics and wifi) and see if it would boot, just in case they were somehow preventing it. And lo and behold, it booted. So I put the graphics card back in. Booted fine again. Put the wifi card back in, and instead of booting, my hard drive literally produced a big spark. At this point I figured my hdd was lost anyway, so I tried again, just to see. More sparks. I took out my wifi card, and put it back in. This time, it booted. However, all the fans would rhythmically pulse between faster and slower speed, with my DRAM LED blinking on and off in sync with the fan speed changes. I booted many times and got the same results. With the wifi card out, it boots normally. The wifi card causes the same thing regardless of which PCI slot it's in. Ok, so the wifi card is screwed. Unsurprisingly, the hdd isn't recognized either. So, all I need to do is buy a new drive (probably get a small ssd) and a new wifi adapter (i'll just get a USB one).
Now, the point of this post is to ask if any of you guys think my mobo or PSU is faulty, or if it really could be just my old wifi card that was killing my whole system. Is it possible for a PCI wireless card to single-handedly block a system from booting, and also to somehow cause an hdd to spark and die? I guess all I'm saying is this story totally baffles me, and I don't know where the fundamental problem could be. Should I just get a new drive and wifi adapter and be done with it?
Thank you so much for reading this.
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