Slower Boot Time / Front USB Not Working After Boot Without All Power Supply Cables Plugged In

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jakexconniff

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Nov 14, 2010
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Title mostly says it all, but here's a little more explanation:

Was rooting around inside of my PC to check out the M.2 slot on my motherboard (ASRock Z170 OC Formula). To get an easier and unobstructed view of it, I unplugged the 8 pin CPU power cable connected from my Power Supply to my Motherboard. After inspecting the M.2 slot, I plugged the rest of my computer back in, all except the 8-pin CPU power. I powered on and didn't post, left it on maybe a total of 5 seconds before I realized what was happening, powered off the PSU and plugged the power back in.

Everything (mostly) works fine, but as the title indicates, my boot times have gone from about 10 seconds to around 20-30, with it hanging on the black startup screen much longer. Also noticed my front USB ports on my case no longer work.

Am i right to assume that I caused some sort of outage? What are your suggested sources of this error? Is it possible that I damaged my motherboard, PSU, and/or SSD?

Any troubleshooting tips or knowledge to help hone in on the problem would be appreciated. I have a replacement PSU coming in and a new SSD coming in the mail in a few days so I can swap those parts to check if those specifically are now damaged. Any other advice?

Thanks in advance.
 
Solution
LowlySkeleton
Hmm, interesting. Your PSU might have already been dying before the time you were looking around for the M.2 slot on your MB. If your PSU is faulty, it wouldn't be able to deliver the correct amount of power to the necessary parts of your system. This could potentially explain why your front usb ports didn't function. But its more likely that other major things would been noticed first, like random crashes and restarts.

In any case, its good that you ended up resolving your issues.
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LowlySkeleton

LowlySkeleton

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Aug 5, 2015
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I don't think that should cause any damage. This would basically be like plugging in a motherboard and trying to power it up with no cpu; it won't boot cause it thinks there is no cpu. I think you should check your bios settings. You bios could have revert to default settings and possibly disabling your front usb ports. It might also be cycling through a bunch of stuff before it starts looking for the boot record in your boot drive, as your boot priority might have changed to default settings too.

I think its worth a shot to look through all you bios settings again.
 
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jakexconniff

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Nov 14, 2010
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Interesting enough, I just installed my new PSU and the front USBs seem to work again. The boot time has increased, but still seems slightly slower than usual, although it's negligible and may just be in my head.

Does that sound like it makes sense? A certain power supply disabled my case's front USBs and caused boot to be slower? Or maybe it was just some external factor like dust or cable connections that were fixed unintentionally when I swapped out parts and reconnected all my cables? All very strange, but thanks for your answer nonetheless.
 
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LowlySkeleton

LowlySkeleton

Reputable
Aug 5, 2015
235
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4,860
Hmm, interesting. Your PSU might have already been dying before the time you were looking around for the M.2 slot on your MB. If your PSU is faulty, it wouldn't be able to deliver the correct amount of power to the necessary parts of your system. This could potentially explain why your front usb ports didn't function. But its more likely that other major things would been noticed first, like random crashes and restarts.

In any case, its good that you ended up resolving your issues.
 
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