Computer fails to start up first try, usually fine second time.

[Siniztah]

I just put together a new machine from second hand parts acquired from a friend, and my system is having the very vexing problem of consistently having issues starting after being turned off for the night. After attempting a reset, it is usually fine, and can run for hours without incident. I am very concerned though because over the course of my troubleshooting, the symptoms have been wildly varying.

 

So what will happen right now is, after being turned off for 9 or so hours, I will press the power button. The fans and motherboard light up. The motherboard which is an msi 970 gaming, will show a 2 digit code in the bottom right of the screen, which is normal and indicates that a part of the system is loading, but then it will just get stuck there. 

 

After I reset, everything will load normally usually. Before I tried flashing the bios recently, it would seem like it was doing fine on the second attempt, and then all of a sudden, the screen would go black but my rgb keyboard and mouse would stay lit up for a second. Then directly after the mouse would go black but the keyboard would stay lit. As I said, however, this behavior stopped after a bios flash and checking all the internal cabling.

 

Now what concerns me is that the last time I started my system up after only being off a few hours, it did its normal failing to load thing, but on try number 2, the gpu fans revved super hard and continued to do so until windows finished loading, and then went back to normal. I have no idea whatsoever what to do at this point and would greatly and genuinely appreciate any help. 

 

Another pretty odd occurrence that I have observed is that after shutting the system down properly, and after it has trouble booting the first time, when it starts the second time my Google chrome browser will load at start on whatever webpage it was on when I shut the computer down. It only does this when it has the startup issue.

[vanished]

This sounds very similar though not identical to the issue that brought me to this forum in the first place.  Basically, if I cold boot, it will get some way through the boot process, maybe even to the login screen, then BSOD, and if I reboot, it then boots and works normally.  A trick I learned is if, when booting from cold, I go into the BIOS settings and just sit for a minute or so, then exit to boot Windows, it works perfectly first try.  I have no idea why but there's some extra info for you and anyone else helping that hopefully will be useful.  I'd be curious to see if your system responds the same way.

[Nord]

You got a cabling or windows problem.

I know you said you checked the cabling, do it again, especially for the CPU fan(s).
Loosely plugged, hard bent, or simply “damaged” from either previously hard bending or other “abuse”  or simply because, well things do break.
Also check if all the hardware is seated properly while on it, usualy this would cause a BSOD, but if you set it incorrectly just the correct way, it often works after some tries.

 

Second cause can be windows, (assuming you are using 10 or 8.1),  the thing is, if you “shut down” your PC, it does not truly turn off. Not in the way windows 7 or any prior OS would, so the first boot after a shutdown is more of a “wake from sleep” kinda boot. 

Switch the button on your PSU to off over night and see if the system boots normally the next day (after switching the switch to on again first, obviously), it's a windows "fast boot" fault.
It would also explain why chrome comes up on system start, because chrome thinks it crashed, which it technically did but not exactly, as the first boot is the “half arsed one” and the second one is a proper full reboot.
The entire thing is retarded and sounds alien, but belive me this is true. Actually, thinking back to the last 2 win10 “updates” with the printer functionality f*ups, it kinda sounds reasonable, respectively.

[King_Jahh]

FYI if it is fast boot causing the issue you can disable it here in control panel.

 

It's a terrible feature that microsoft sets to ON as default. At my work I've set a network policy to disabled on every PC we have automatically as it causes a whole host of issues, all just for the sake of (if you have an SSD) literally booting 1 or 2 seconds faster

[Siniztah]

I disabled fast boot after that being suggested on another forum with no result. Also I did thoroughly check the cabling and plug condition several times during the initial build. It all looks fine. In my case it never goes into a bsod. It just shows a 2 number loading code on the bottom right of the screen with the rest black and doesn't do anything. Also, there is no way to get into bios settings because when it freezes, it is before it gives that option. And I am running Windows 10. I will try switching the psu power switch off and see what happens and post it back here in a couple of days.

[King_Jahh]

When it does get into windows, it it usually quite stable after that? Can it keep a benchmark going at high cpu loads for 30+ mins for example, and at what temps? Just trying to rule out bad power delivery or CPU mounting pressure issue or something like that.

 

Also do you have another GPU you can test? I'm assuming it's an fx cpu with no iGPU? Could be that causing post issues... also try changing which PCIe slot the GPU is installed in in case one has gone funny

 

Otherwise it may just be a bad board unfortunately...

[Siniztah]

So, to answer Jahh, It is always perfectly stable after it successfully starts up. The temps are always stable. Unfortunately I do not have another gpu. Even if I did, since it is only an issue that occurs on the first startup of the day, it would be rather difficult to test. I could try switching the PCIe slot. Thanks for your response.

[Siniztah]

Thanks to everyone for your responses! I just wanted to give you an update. So I am not 100% sure this was what was actually causing the problem, but I pulled the network adapter out, plugged it back in, and my system hasn't had an issue for about 2 weeks.

[onepunchmannnnnn]

Hi. Just encountered the similar problem for a few days now and I thought it's odd so I looked for it in the net to see if it's really a thing. First boot up after being shut down over night doesn't work, but the second try works fine. Fortunately, I am aware that I changed the xmp profile of my memory in the bios before the problem started. So I just went back and disabled xmp and everything went back to normal. Just contributing this encounter to the next guy who might have this problem. Anyways, good day.

[RoKo]

I faced the same issue with my MSI MPG Z490M GAMING EDGE WIFI: after a night when I start up my recently assembled PC for the first time, only the fans and LEDs start to work. No BIOS, no USB. Second startup is OK.

I don't want to disable XMP and will look for other options. But it is encouraging that not only I have this issue)

[Horstpeter]

On 3/2/2021 at 9:50 PM, RoKo said:

I faced the same issue with my MSI MPG Z490M GAMING EDGE WIFI: after a night when I start up my recently assembled PC for the first time, only the fans and LEDs start to work. No BIOS, no USB. Second startup is OK.

I don't want to disable XMP and will look for other options. But it is encouraging that not only I have this issue)

I know it's an old topic but since I just recently encountered the same problem I wanted to add this. I have an MSI MPG x570 Gaming Edge Wifi motherboard and the issue started after enabling xmp.