Or by only putting one stick of memory in, or changing the slot you’re using.
I was assembling a computer and everything seemed to be correct, the fan would spin up, I’d get some lights, but there was no image on the screen, not even the BIOS. I saw someone else make this suggestion and didn’t think it was likely to work, but it did. First I just tried one stick, and it booted. Then I tried both sticks and it didn’t work, but I reseated and then it did.
(Also worth pointing out that your motherboard should have diagnostic lights which if you check the documentation may point out which component has an issue)
Thinking about Lemmy’s demographics many here may have heard of something like this, or have more helpful suggestions about troubleshooting which would be welcome. But thought I’d write out a little post about my experience to contribute to Lemmy SEO supremacy.
My aging work PC (Xeon E3 1230V2) regularly stops booting, and this works for me. It had 16gb of memory, but I had to throw out one of the sticks. The other thing that gets it working again sometimes is tightening or loosening the CPU cooler screws. Thankfully, it’s old enough to still do the BIOs beep codes which tipped me off to the tightening the CPU fix. I’ve got some newer parts lying around (an AMD 2600x and 16gb of DD4) I’ll turn into a full PC when it finally dies, but for now it just keeps going and going.
My cousin and I have run into having to clear the cmos using the jumper in a couple of our builds before it would boot the first time too. Not sure why.
If you don’t want to try and find the correct pins to jumper, you can also unplug the pc from power (which it already should be if you’re digging around in it) and pull the little watch battery for about 30 seconds.
Reseating cards and chips is the first step every time.
And power connectors. I’ve re-seated a lot of loose 24pin and 8pin power cables in my life.
I’ve also fixed them by just unplugging them, holding the power button for like 30s, then plugging it back in.
It really shouldn’t work, but hey, we tricked rocks into doing math for us with electricity, so what do you really expect?
It should work. Doing that discharges any electricity still in the mobo. A build up of static electricity can cause a computer to not post.
If you have to do this regularly, get a humidifier for the room your computer is in, and verify your outlet is properly grounded.
Pushing the power switch shouldn’t do anything to static electricity.
Yeah iirc all that does is make sure all of the capacitors on the motherboard and in the PSU are discharged. Still a good thing do do before working in a pc, to reduce the chance of accidentally shorting a still charged cap with a screw or something.
Sometimes it can also be because you forgot to actually plug it in. 😳
I prefer to flip the PSU switch to the wrong position. Because there’s no other point in time when I ever use that switch.
If something is super fucky and defying all logic, try a different PSU. It’s the one thing apart from the motherboard that can effect every area of your PC.
I have a folder of photos on my PC, shared over the network. I could browse that folder fine locally. I could look in other shared folders over the network. If I looked in the photo folder over the network, the PC would power off instantly.
Swapped it out for a different one (I’d borrowed it from work while mine was being repaired), problem went away and never happened again.
There is zero logic I can see for this, and makes me want to throw computers down a well and live in a cave.
This. I built a new machine and assumed the PSU was the least likely to be the issue. After testing the video card, ram, cpu and motherboard… I tried my spare PSU and it worked great. smh
If your computer is acting haunted, its the PSU.
If its being temperamental like a fussy teenager, its typically ram.
If it’s acting more like an elderly Belgian woman, you may want to update your BIOS.
This is fun.
I need more context. What are elderly Belgian women known for?
Waffles?
Ive built 7 or so computers in my time
in that same time 3 PSUs were DOA, 2 died a month in under pathetic loads, and one fried in a lightning strike (this one gets a pass as only the PSU fried so it did it’s job)
It’s so often the goddamn PSU
I call it “re-seating” the memory because it makes me sound like I have an actual clue.
I have half a clue and also call it reseating.
I have 40 years of PC building experience and I too call it “reseating”.
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An underpowered PSU will usually show issues when actually running heavier loads, not immediately at boot I think.
I miss beep codes so you know what messed up.
Exactly, then having to go through a thick-ass manual to find out what code it is. Oh, I just need to move a jumper…
I think all motherboards support this, they just don’t come with speakers. You can grab a speaker for you motherboard for about $2 or like 100 for $20
Very good tip, this was also the issue on an old desktop of mine. For 3 years I thought it was just cursed until I finally removed and reinserted the RAM sticks. Now it works flawlessly!
There’s probably a hundred reasons it might not post. One time, my CPU wasn’t seated properly. I have heard RAM is a common way. If you’re using only one stick, be sure it’s in the right slot. Edit: or even with two, make sure it’s the right slots, read that manual!
It’s almost always labeled on the mb which slots to use first. And for some reason it’s usually the #2 slots
Multiple times I had issues with two identical DIMMs in a two-slot board, and simply switching both sticks to the opposing slot fixed everything.
Maybe it was a seating issue, maybe it was ghosts. Who knows?
One time for me it was the DVD drive. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
One time, my brother and I were building a new rig for him. After spending an hour putting the thing together, it wouldn’t boot. Like, push the power switch and NOTHING happened. We called his buddy who’s a real wizard with computers. His first question was, “Did you try reseating all the power connectors on the board?” And that’s right when we discovered we didn’t connect the power for the CPU.
I had similar happen to me. Put all of it together, turned it on, then panicked a little when it wouldn’t boot up.
Turns out one stick of RAM was not fully slotted in, so obviously that’s not OK. Was easy to spot once I double checked components. Popped it back out and in, then it was good to go.
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I swear every time I build one it’s the process of put it together, it doesn’t boot, swap the memory stick positions, and now it magically boots!
Lucky. I’ve only had that happen once, but I’ve got shipped a bad motherboard twice over the years.
Ugh, luckily I’ve only been shipped a bad GPU once as the only DOA part I’ve dealt with
