PC not booting.

My gaming rig won't boot since last night. It starts when I hit the power button, but it powers right back down 1-2 seconds into the process, and then just keeps repeating that until I flip the power switch off on the PSU. No beeps. Any ideas?

I'm going to take it apart and clean everything first to see if that helps. It has a lot of dust buildup so I'm hoping that's the issue even though I know odds are it's not. After that, it's off to buy a new PSU.

Almost forgot.. It's not BIOS related. I reset it both by using the reset button on my motherboard and by removing the battery.

99% chance it is one of these things:
- PSU farted
- MoBo farted
- CPU cooler ain't cooling
- The connector between PSU and MoBo got lose (yes, I wouldn't believe if I haven't seen it once, it *is* possible)

Dust? Man, my rig has so much dust inside I can plant some flowers in it, not to mention fat film on everything inside from me smoking like a chimney by the PC for years. So no it's not that, but cleaning is a good idea generally so fans don't need to run like crazy. If only it wasn't a bigger chore than grinding…
Forget BIOS.

Ideally, you should have an extra part for each of the components, so that you can go by elimination. Even more ideally, another PC that you can move, piece by piece, each one of your current components. But few people have that.

Aside from that, I'd remove all components aside from the minimum subset of components: gpu/cpu. And see how it fares.

But based on what you describe, it could very well be something PSU related. If it just shuts down without running enough for it to be something on the motherboard.

I just realized I've spent so little time in the past 10 years, debugging build issues, that I'd probably don't really know how to proceed, if it happened to me. The only thing simple enough is to look at the error code that my motherboard can list. And then check the manual.

I've also grown quite lazy with cleaning the inside of my case. Usually, I give it a canned-air cleaning every 1-2 years, and the temperature drops about 10 degrees.

Originally Posted by JDR13
My gaming rig won't boot since last night. It starts when I hit the power button, but it powers right back down 1-2 seconds into the process, and then just keeps repeating that until I flip the power switch off on the PSU. No beeps. Any ideas?

I'm going to take it apart and clean everything first to see if that helps. It has a lot of dust buildup so I'm hoping that's the issue even though I know odds are it's not. After that, it's off to buy a new PSU.

Almost forgot.. It's not BIOS related. I reset it both by using the reset button on my motherboard and by removing the battery.

Yeah, I'd start with a good cleanup, and, if it were me, I'd go a bit further and remove and reseat everything. Something might be making or not making a connection somewhere. Dust and gunk could also potentially cause heat issues on parts of the MB chipset.

It's not possible to rule out BIOS issues completely - since we moved to UEFI, the OS can and does mess with it. I had a system that started similar shenanigans, and I could reproduce it by doing a Windows update, and fix it by doing an emergency restore of the BIOS (not just a reset). I wouldn't think it's a likely cause, but such things go on.

If a clean up doesn't help, yeah - I'd look to the PSU next. They can become slightly faulty and cause all sorts of weird things.

I already checked all the connections so I know it's nothing that simple. I doubt it has anything to do with the cooler, but I'm going to check that anyways.

I just got home with a couple of cans of electronics duster, and I'm about to give everything a good once over. Fingers crossed.

If I do have to replace something, I hope it's the PSU. That's one of the easier things to swap out, and mine is quite old anyways. I thought it was around 5 years old, but I found the receipt last night, and I was surprised to see it was from 2013. For a PSU in a heavily used gaming rig, that's ancient.

Originally Posted by JDR13
I already checked all the connections so I know it's nothing that simple. I doubt it has anything to do with the cooler, but I'm going to check that anyways.

I just got home with couple of cans of electronics duster, and I'm about to give everything a good once over. Fingers crossed.

If I do have to replace something, I hope it's the PSU. That's one of the easier things to swap out, and mine is quite old anyways. I thought it was around 5 years old, but I found the receipt last night, and I was surprised to see it was from 2013.

Yeah, that could be a definite possibility, I'd say.

When I talk about reseating everything, I'm thinking of doing a complete teardown - everything out of the case, cleaned up and put back together again. I have solved problems that way before, but maybe skip to trying a new PSU if that's a hassle.

It's a PITA for sure, but I've needed to do it anyways. You'd probably be horrified if you saw the interior of my case right now. It's starting to remind me of one of the vaults from Fallout.

Lol. I found a dead mouse in PC once, though it didn't appear to be causing any issues.

Damn, I feel for you - mysterious shutdowns suck.
That sort of thing is probably less onerous for me - I have three machines and spare bits in our household, so plenty of opportunities for swapping stuff in and out to find out what it is - but not many have that luxury.

My gut feeling is that it's a PSU or Mobo issue (as per joxer, and I've had those symptoms for both), but I'd take your GFX card out and see what happens, just in case (not that that'd discount the PSU - it may be the lower draw doesn't trip it).

Good luck man!

As a new resident of Florida, I hope you have a battery back up & surge protector! Lightning capital of the damn country. In all likelihood it's either the PSU or motherboard.

I’m surprised people don’t take better care of thier PC’s. I clean mine every few months but there’s never much dust anyway.

You can Grab a PSU tester for about $20. That’s where I’d start since it’s not posting.

So.. I got it to boot. No idea what it was specifically, but I took everything apart as Ripper suggested. I even removed the heatsink and reseated the CPU. Also removed all the thermal paste and applied a fresh layer.

I went through almost an entire 10oz can of duster blowing everything out. It was pretty bad.

I haven't placed any kind of load on it yet, so hopefully it's not just teasing me.

Originally Posted by Imo.
I’m surprised people don’t take better care of thier PC’s. I clean mine every few months but there’s never much dust anyway.

Yeah, I have no one to blame but myself for letting it get that bad. I always say I'm going to clean it every 6 months, but I never get around to it. I think it's been around 3 years since the last time I did.

Originally Posted by JDR13
So.. I got it to boot. No idea what it was specifically, but I took everything apart as Ripper suggested. I even removed the heatsink and reseated the CPU. Also removed all the thermal paste and applied a fresh layer.

I went through almost an entire 10oz can of duster blowing everything out. It was pretty bad.

I haven't placed any kind of load on it yet, so hopefully it's not just teasing me.

Sorry I don't have much to add. But wanted to wish you the best.
I've had some issues before, and it's a massive pain and stress.

Sorry this had happened JDR - indeed not knowing is really stressful.

The only incident this happened to me is when my PSU was failing as it was not able to provide sufficient power to the different components. I noticed the PC starting to turn off trying to reboot when I activated the DVD drive, and then when I installed a new graphics card (even though within the power limits of the PSU). When I put a new power supply, it was working fine.

It might be also the case that some components are also starting to draw more power from the supply (driven by Windows, other software, fans .. etc.) and overloading the PSU.

Anyways I hope that it will be sorted out.

Glad you got it up and running. Hopefully it wont give you anymore issues.

Also glad to hear you got it to work. A suddenly unusable computer is one of my fears, since I both need it for work and rely on it heavily for fun stuff. I went through this whole weird thing a few months back where I could no longer use the software I need for a lot of my work and had to set up a separate log in (to my PC itself) to access it. It resolved itself after about a week, but I was very confused and slightly panicked in the meantime.

And thanks for the reminder to clean the dust out of the case.

Hope the spring clean and service does the trick. Sometimes it's hard to know exactly what the problem was, but in some cases that will sort things out.

I like to use cases that are designed for easy access and management. The NZXT's are my standard choice. For dust problems, the trick is to use a case like that with good airflow, and positive air pressure to make sure the air flows through the dust filters. A couple of big, quiet fans on a decent case will do it.

I have a cat that loves to use my tower case as her sleeping/bathing spot. I have to open the case every couple months to vacuum out the cat hair. She loves the hot air coming out the top.

Glad you fixed it, but I just wanted to chip in. What you experienced sounds to me like memory problem. Sometimes the PC will go crazy and refuse to work with your RAM as it is. It then tries to reboot itself while changing the RAM speed. If it fails it reboots and tries another speed and so on, and so on. If it can't boot for some reason with any speed it will just cycle the process until you turn it off. Reseating your RAM stick(s) can usually fix your problem (and I suspect it is what did it in your case). So my advice for anyone who has similar problems is to reseat their RAM first since it's fast and easy to do. If it's an older RAM (or simply newer RAM witch is not 100% compatible/tested with the motherboard, they usually have the list of tested ram on mobo website) you might need to do it a few times. I hope it helps anyone who has similar problems.