PC stuck in infinite loop wont POST

[jdunes1]

Hi, I have a pretty old computer that I built approximately 5 years ago. The specs are:

* intel i3 2120
* 16GB corsair vengeance 1666mhz
* [strike]650w corsair psu[/strike] OCZ ZT 650W (made a mistake here, sorry)
* 1TB western digital caviar black
* gigabyte z68-ud3-b3 mobo
* amd 7850 gpu

I have the latest UEFI installed on there for the motherboard - in fact, the only one available for it. I did use the F13? BIOS, however I installed hackintosh a while back and it was easier to use the UEFI. Today I formatted the PC and installed Windows 10 on it, everything was working fine till I setup a virtual box and it wouldn't let me use the vm because I didn't have virtualization technology enabled. Okay, no problem. Shutdown, enter the UEFI, and enable virtualization technology. A potentially important thing to note is that I installed Windows with AHCI by accident instead of IDE since hackintosh needs AHCI to boot correctly. Before I enabled the i-VT, I set the optimized defaults. After this, I reboot my PC and it wouldn't load windows since I had set it to IDE and I installed it using AHCI. So I shut the PC off, and try to access the UEFI, but now the thing wont even boot and it's stuck in a reboot loop. The furthest it goes is to this screen, but usually it doesn't get this far and will just attempt to reboot again.

So far, I have tried turning everything off and on again, unplugging things, unplugging the keyboard/mouse, I've tried taking the battery out of the mobo and putting it in again... but it still isn't booting.

EDIT:
A little update, now it doesn't even boot it just shows the lights 2 green, 1 orange and 1 red on the motherboard - then it powers off.

EDIT 2:
Now it just turns on, "purrs" (heatsink fan spins), and turns off.

Any ideas what I can do? Is it a motherboard issue? Is my mobo dead?

Cheers.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Well, it's most likely either the power supply, which might be probable if you have any Corsair power supply that's not an HX, HXi, AX or AXi. The CS, CX, RM and VS units are pretty terrible after six months to a year, and have a very high early failure rate. They're good at first, but they degrade quickly due to the cheap caps.

A motherboard that old could easily have an issue as well. I'd suggest replacing or borrowing another PSU first, to see if that's the problem, and if it's not, I'd probably replace the motherboard, or even the motherboard and CPU since it doesn't make a lot of sense to spend money on a system that's a few generations old.


I'd try disconnecting all the non-essential hardware like the drives, USB devices and front panel connections for USB and sound first, to see if any of that is to blame.

 

[jdunes1]

Well, it's most likely either the power supply, which might be probably if you have any Corsair power supply that's not an HX, HXi, AX or AXi. The CS, CX, RM and VS units are pretty terrible after six months to a year, and have a very high early failure rate. They're good at first, but they degrade quickly due to the cheap caps.

A motherboard that old could easily have an issue as well. I'd suggest replacing or borrowing another PSU first, to see if that's the problem, and if it's not, I'd probably replace the motherboard, or even the motherboard and CPU since it doesn't make a lot of sense to spend money on a system that's a few generations old.


I'd try disconnecting all the non-essential hardware like the drives, USB devices and front panel connections for USB and sound first, to see if any of that is to blame.

Hi, thanks for getting back to me. I agree that I think it is either the motherboard or power supply, I made a mistake when listing the specifications of my PC. It's actually an OCZ ZT 650W, are they better or worse than corsair power supplies? Given that it's an OCZ and not a Corsair PSU, does that mean it's more likely to be the motherboard?

Are there any ways to check if the motherboard is faulty, for instance, any lights or beeps or something that would tell me there is a problem?

I've tried unplugging everything - even the monitor - however the problem still persists and it still doesn't POST.

I'll try another PSU and see how that goes, cheers!

 

[Darkbreeze]

Well, it's not a great unit, even new, but it's not absolutely horrendous either. It is however probably around three years old, unless you bought old stock from somewhere recently, so all things considered if it's spent it's entire life running a discreet card it could be taking a powder already but it did come with 105° caps so that makes a short life less likely. I'd try another PSU just for shits and grins, and see what happens. Any power supply, no matter how good, can fail, so who knows. That unit only got an 8.7 rating on the JonnyGuru review, but most of that score was due to being overpriced and poor voltage regulation on the non-primary rails.


Do you have any beep codes? Do you have a system speaker attached to the motherboard system speaker header?

 

[jdunes1]

Well, it's not a great unit, even new, but it's not absolutely horrendous either. It is however probably around three years old, unless you bought old stock from somewhere recently, so all things considered if it's spent it's entire life running a discreet card it could be taking a powder already but it did come with 105° caps so that makes a short life less likely. I'd try another PSU just for shits and grins, and see what happens. Any power supply, no matter how good, can fail, so who knows. That unit only got an 8.7 rating on the JonnyGuru review, but most of that score was due to being overpriced and poor voltage regulation on the non-primary rails.


Do you have any beep codes? Do you have a system speaker attached to the motherboard system speaker header?

Hey there, was at college, I'm home now. There doesn't appear to be any beeps, nor any built in speaker. I'm taking the existing PSU to get tested to see if everythings in working order today.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Ok, let me know. I'd also pick up a system speaker, which is a tiny little thing and connects to the motherboard, usually on the same cluster of pins that the front panel connections connect to. If there are any beep codes that will help to narrow things down and you can't determine if there are any codes without having the system speaker attached. A lot of times these get removed because people have no idea what it's there for.

You can pick one up at any computer shop for a couple of bucks at most. Heck, they may just give it to you.

 

[jdunes1]

Ok, let me know. I'd also pick up a system speaker, which is a tiny little thing and connects to the motherboard, usually on the same cluster of pins that the front panel connections connect to. If there are any beep codes that will help to narrow things down and you can't determine if there are any codes without having the system speaker attached. A lot of times these get removed because people have no idea what it's there for.

You can pick one up at any computer shop for a couple of bucks at most. Heck, they may just give it to you.

It's me again It appears the PSU is okay, so I'm thinking it's probably the motherboard. I imagine it's probably the UEFI thing that screwed up since I think it was a BETA (I got it from here), and I think it probably messed up somehow and now the motherboard is basically bricked. I remember when I was setting up the UEFI, there was a warning that if the installation messed up it would be rendered useless - I imagine that somehow this happened due to a bug potentially? Is there any way that I can reset the UEFI or load in an older version of the BIOS? Or should I just buy a new motherboard?

 

[Darkbreeze]

That unit has dualBIOS.

GIGABYTE DualBIOS™ is a patented technology that automatically recovers BIOS data when the main BIOS has crashed or failed. Featuring 2 physical BIOS ROMs integrated onboard, GIGABYTE DualBIOS™ allows quick and seamless recovery from BIOS damage or failure due to viruses or improper BIOS updating. In addition, GIGABYTE DualBIOS™ now supports 3TB+ (terabyte) hard drive booting without the need for partitioning, and enables more data storage on a single hard drive.

So I doubt it's just a bad bios, because it should revert to the backup bios if the system fails to post. Your problem is either elsewhere, or you flashed both BIOS Roms with a bad bios. Given the age of that board, it's entirely possible that you simply have a failed motherboard or CPU.

 

[jdunes1]

That unit has dualBIOS.

GIGABYTE DualBIOS™ is a patented technology that automatically recovers BIOS data when the main BIOS has crashed or failed. Featuring 2 physical BIOS ROMs integrated onboard, GIGABYTE DualBIOS™ allows quick and seamless recovery from BIOS damage or failure due to viruses or improper BIOS updating. In addition, GIGABYTE DualBIOS™ now supports 3TB+ (terabyte) hard drive booting without the need for partitioning, and enables more data storage on a single hard drive.

So I doubt it's just a bad bios, because it should revert to the backup bios if the system fails to post. Your problem is either elsewhere, or you flashed both BIOS Roms with a bad bios. Given the age of that board, it's entirely possible that you simply have a failed motherboard or CPU.

So what's can I do now? I don't mind if I have to buy a new CPU and motherboard if you're certain that it's an issue with one of those components?

 

[Darkbreeze]

Well, I'm not actually, but it's looking that way on the surface at least.

In reality the MOST likely suspect in all cases of hardware misbehavior is always the power supply. What is your PSU model? Have you tested it at all? If not, I would do so as follows.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac7YMUcMjbw


If you unplug the power supply from the motherboard and drives does the PSU fan even come on at all?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixcWCrYpw3Y

 

[jdunes1]

Well, I'm not actually, but it's looking that way on the surface at least.

In reality the MOST likely suspect in all cases of hardware misbehavior is always the power supply. What is your PSU model? Have you tested it at all? If not, I would do so as follows.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac7YMUcMjbw


If you unplug the power supply from the motherboard and drives does the PSU fan even come on at all?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixcWCrYpw3Y

Hi. I asked my dad to check if my PSU was working okay, and he said it looked like it was okay. I'm pretty sure he did the paperclip tests you sent in the videos, and checked the voltages were correct.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Don't be "pretty sure", be "absolutely sure", otherwise you're wasting time and potentially moving on to replacing parts that aren't needed. If you're absolutely sure the PSU tested fine, powers up and has the correct voltage measurements using a test meter, then I'd replace the motherboard and CPU.