Desktop Will Not Boot

[Didzo]

I hit the power button, my LEDs and case fans spring to life....

And then my peripherals (monitors, keyboard, etc.) do not light up.

The CPU fan (at least I think it's the CPU fan) moves from a higher to a lower speed, again and again.

This happened to me for the first time yesterday, and a manual restart of the computer resulted in an "overclock failed" error and I (stupidly) chose not to reset my settings to default. The only thing I have overclocked is the RAM, since the mobo did not let it run on its advertised settings automatically.

Today, my desktop doesn't seem to want to get to any sort of boot screen at all and my monitors just sit there without receiving a signal.

So I ask you, dear people of BRBU, to help me troubleshoot and hopefully resolve this issue.


From my googling: it seems to be an issue that happens on Asus mobos (which I have) and might be attributed to either the CMOS battery or an outdated BIOS.

Or it might actually be the RAM or something else.


But the only thing I can really test now is replacing the CMOS battery because my screens won't light up....

Link to my specs.

[Ianki]

my best guess is that one of your ram dimms might have burnt out. try starting it with one stick at a time and see if it goes to bios.  but the mobo speakers tend to give you a rough idea of why it wont boot.  If the speakers give more than one beep it's giving an error message.  you can do a quick google search to see what those error codes might mean.  If you're not getting any beeps, the motherboard or the psu might be blown (or, like me, you accidentally built a box without plugging in the mobo speakers...)

Meanwhile, you can flash the cmos to reset the bios settings to see if that solves the immediate issue.

I still defer to people who know about this than me.

[Didzo]

No beeps from the mobo, and I know I've installed the speaker.

Time to crawl under my desk and manually reset the BIOS.

[HeK]

Didn't I tell you to try this stuff days ago?

[Didzo]

Didn't I tell you to try this stuff days ago?

You told me this yesterday, and I figured I'd try it out next time I booted. Which would be today.

So, resetting BIOS fixed absolutely nothing.

Next, I'm going to try booting with only one stick at a time.

[Didzo]

UPDATE:

I've discovered that one stick of memory doesn't work. But only sometimes. Actually, it seems to work most of the time, except when it doesn't...

Memtest time.

Edit:

Fuck this shit, I'm frustrated. Round 2 will be tomorrow.

Edit 2:

Fuck this shit, somehow my computer is up and running as if nothing happened. Windows Memory Diagnostic found nothing wrong either... Maybe just reshuffling the RAM fixed the issue.

???

[KarthXLR]

Try cleaning the contacts. Do it with a regular pink eraser.

[CaffeinePowered]

Edit 2:

Fuck this shit, somehow my computer is up and running as if nothing happened. Windows Memory Diagnostic found nothing wrong either... Maybe just reshuffling the RAM fixed the issue.

???

I have honestly had this happen before, I had a stick just not like a slot for whatever reason, shuffled them around and stuff worked fine :/

[Ianki]

UPDATE:

I've discovered that one stick of memory doesn't work. But only sometimes. Actually, it seems to work most of the time, except when it doesn't...

Memtest time.

Edit:

Fuck this shit, I'm frustrated. Round 2 will be tomorrow.

Edit 2:

Fuck this shit, somehow my computer is up and running as if nothing happened. Windows Memory Diagnostic found nothing wrong either... Maybe just reshuffling the RAM fixed the issue.

???

ha! i was right.

Don't take any chances though, most high performing ram have lifetime guarantees if you've been running them on spec levels so you can RMA that shit.

[at0m]

[quote author=Didzo link=topic=5415.msg194512#msg194512 date=1296455265]

Edit 2:

Fuck this shit, somehow my computer is up and running as if nothing happened. Windows Memory Diagnostic found nothing wrong either... Maybe just reshuffling the RAM fixed the issue.

???

I have honestly had this happen before, I had a stick just not like a slot for whatever reason, shuffled them around and stuff worked fine :/
[/quote]I've only had that happen during burn-in after a fresh build of a computer, never after several months/years of use. Although this makes me wonder about my HTPC...

[Didzo]

[quote author=Didzo link=topic=5415.msg194512#msg194512 date=1296455265]
UPDATE:

I've discovered that one stick of memory doesn't work. But only sometimes. Actually, it seems to work most of the time, except when it doesn't...

Memtest time.

Edit:

Fuck this shit, I'm frustrated. Round 2 will be tomorrow.

Edit 2:

Fuck this shit, somehow my computer is up and running as if nothing happened. Windows Memory Diagnostic found nothing wrong either... Maybe just reshuffling the RAM fixed the issue.

???

ha! i was right.

Don't take any chances though, most high performing ram have lifetime guarantees if you've been running them on spec levels so you can RMA that shit.
[/quote]

I'll RMA it if it stops working again. What sort of frustrated me was that I couldn't get any good, consecutive results when testing the sticks... I could only identify one stick that might have been causing the trouble.

For now though, order in the universe has been restored.