Only a static underscore on boot

[MJW2K]

Hello everyone,

Yesterday I moved and during the move I was careful to not risk the PC. In the evening it looked like that was a success since everything worked fine. Today I wanted to reposition the PC to have more space and additionally I went to the BIOS to enable a setting that would allow me to power on the PC by using the power switch on the power supply. That is were the problems started.

 

After saving the changes my PC only output a static underscore in the top left corner. There was no way for me to reach the bios, the PC simply froze. I tried solutions from other forums like resetting the CMOS RAM Data and at some point managed to get into the BIOS to reset all settings. That did not change anything and I left the PC for about an hour unplugged from the wall trying to get a replacement motherboard since I am suspecting the problem to be with the motherboard. Later I managed to get into BIOS again, checked that everything was correct and switched to UEFI boot mode. Afterwards the PC rebooted without a problem and I was able to use Windows as if nothing ever happened. However now I tried rebooting it again to see if the problem was fixed permanently and to potentially update the BIOS and the problem is back again.

 

This is were I don't know any further. I am quite tech savvy, but I don't have that much experience building PCs. I am suspecting that there is a problem with the onboard memory of the motherboard, but I was hoping to get some second opinions here before replacing the wrong component.
 

Thanks for all the help and for reading through this post. I hope someone here understands the problem better than I do.

 

Specs:
Ryzen 5 3600

ASUS TUF B450-Plus Gaming Motherboard

RTX 2060

16GB DDR4-3200 RAM

Samsung 970 EVO NVMe Boot Drive

(Windows 10 was recently reinstalled, seemed to be a common factor with this problem in other forums)

[Bombastinator]

Internal damage is a massive bugbear with PCs being moved. How far apart did you take it for the move?
 

Common behavior is to remove the video card and cooler if it’s a large air cooler (this is one of the things AIOs beat air coolers in.  It’s not a big list but it exists) if a heavy air cooler was left on, the motherboard could have flexed enough to break internal tracing (I.e. it’s dead Jim) 

If a large video card was left on damage would center around the pcie port the video card attaches to but the results can be  equally damaging.  
 

A less damaging possibility is cables could fall out of sockets or appear to be attached when they’re actually not in alignment.  Pulling things, looking for damage, and reseating everything could be a good step.
 

shippers of complete units generally use conforming foam to support things so they don’t flex. Such things often require specialized foam systems though.

Edited July 24, 2021 by Bombastinator

[MJW2K]

To be honest I probably could have been more careful, but did not expect the precautions to not be enough. I have a horizontal case and a low-profile air cooler so the only thing that could have really flexed the motherboard would be the graphics card, but there are no signs of anything.

 

I don't think its just a loose cable especially since it worked not only directly after the move but also when I randomly got it to boot yesterday.

 

My suspicion rather is that maybe a standoff got loose and shortened something that has to do with the onboard memory, since in my mind it would explain the issues. Then again I don't know much about the way a motherboard functions ...

 

Additionally yesterday the PC managed to boot after being disconnected from power for a longer time. This did not work after leaving it of power over night, so it is just not giving me anything right now.

[Bombastinator]

56 minutes ago, MJW2K said:

To be honest I probably could have been more careful, but did not expect the precautions to not be enough. I have a horizontal case and a low-profile air cooler so the only thing that could have really flexed the motherboard would be the graphics card, but there are no signs of anything.

 

I don't think its just a loose cable especially since it worked not only directly after the move but also when I randomly got it to boot yesterday.

 

My suspicion rather is that maybe a standoff got loose and shortened something that has to do with the onboard memory, since in my mind it would explain the issues. Then again I don't know much about the way a motherboard functions ...

 

Additionally yesterday the PC managed to boot after being disconnected from power for a longer time. This did not work after leaving it of power over night, so it is just not giving me anything right now.

It’s the vibration.  Put a weight in the middle of a spring made of fiberglass and it will wiggle when you shake it.  In this case the spring is the motherboard and the weight is the cooler. The thing is the spring has strips of copper tracing all through it so it can break on the inside where you can’t see it.  Motherboard might not have been damaged of course, but an external visual inspection isn’t reliable in this case.

[MJW2K]

Would you agree that the issues point to the onboard storage of the motherboard?

[Bombastinator]

4 minutes ago, MJW2K said:

Would you agree that the issues point to the onboard storage of the motherboard?

Isnt a lot of onboard storage on the motherboard.  Just bios. A mechanical hard drive can be fragile.  There was a lot of tech developed for laptop hard drives though like self parking heads so it’s hard to know if a hard drive might have possibly had damage problems.  HDDs don’t like vibration much even then.  There’s an argument that one way or another the chances of it being a motherboard problem of some sort be it software or hardware is non zero.

Edited July 25, 2021 by Bombastinator

[MJW2K]

I don't think the hard drive took any damage. I only have one mechanical drive and it worked flawlessly when I had the system booted. I don't know enough about motherboards to really know what the issue could be with it, but I find it curios that booting into BIOS time worked when I reset the CMOS RAM data

[MJW2K]

Update to the situation. I tried everything that helped yesterday but I haven't gotten into BIOS once. Instead the PC stays frozen with the underscore for a few minutes and then goes into a state in which no RGB is turned on and with the graphics cards fans spinning on 100%.