Need advice on strange PC boot problem

[kilgore_T]

Hi folks, need advice

Sometimes - about twice a month - When I switch my PC on, it boots for about 2 seconds, fans spin up light come on,

then it shuts off, and about 1 second later it starts itself and goes to the American megatrends boot screen and tells me to press F1 to go into setup

which I do and it takes me to the Bios,

I exit without saving and PC boots up just fine and runs fine,

no crashes no lock ups

 

thought about the replacing cmos battery but it is not losing date time etc

 

any ideas what might be causing this?

[Thias.TG]

I had something not exactly like this but close to...

Check your boot priority (If you have multiple drives)

[kilgore_T]

5 minutes ago, MathiasVN said:

I had something not exactly like this but close to...

Check your boot priority (If you have multiple drives)

ok thanks will try that I have 3 drives and a blu ray player

[Master Disaster]

13 minutes ago, kilgore_T said:

Hi folks, need advice

Sometimes - about twice a month - When I switch my PC on, it boots for about 2 seconds, fans spin up light come on,

then it shuts off, and about 1 second later it starts itself and goes to the American megatrends boot screen and tells me to press F1 to go into setup

which I do and it takes me to the Bios,

I exit without saving and PC boots up just fine and runs fine,

no crashes no lock ups

 

thought about the replacing cmos battery but it is not losing date time etc

 

any ideas what might be causing this?

You overclocked? If so it's probably not 100% stable.

 

If not update UEFI to latest version.

[kilgore_T]

12 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

You overclocked? If so it's probably not 100% stable.

 

If not update UEFI to latest version.

no overclock

 

I will try that thank you for your help

[ElSeniorTaco]

how old is it? 

And if its more then 3 years, replacing the battery isnt a bad idea, although I am not entirely sure that is the cause

[kilgore_T]

its coming up for 3 years old now, ill try the other suggestions and if they don't help then the battery is getting replaced

 

thanks for the replies

[Paul Vreeland]

If you aren't losing settings, it is not the battery.  That doesn't necessarily mean the battery doesn't need replacing.  3 years old isn't fresh.

 

As a technician, this is the kind of case where a teardown/visual inspection is a good starting point.  I usually check for swollen caps, corrosion, burn marks, liquid spills on the motherboard.  Then move into testing the CPU/RAM/HDD.

 

Yes, I said liquid spills on a desktop PC motherboard.  Seen it in the past...usually soda.

 

Updating UEFI/BIOS might help, but something working one minute then not working the next generally leans towards component failure.

 

This kind of situation is usually diagnosis of exclusion.  Sometimes the PSU can be at fault, sometimes motherboard, cabling, dust, etc.

[kilgore_T]

2 minutes ago, Paul Vreeland said:

If you aren't losing settings, it is not the battery.  That doesn't necessarily mean the battery doesn't need replacing.  3 years old isn't fresh.

 

As a technician, this is the kind of case where a teardown/visual inspection is a good starting point.  I usually check for swollen caps, corrosion, liquid spills on the motherboard.  Then move into testing the CPU/RAM/HDD.

 

Yes, I said liquid spills on a desktop PC motherboard.  Seen it in the past...usually soda.

 

Updating UEFI/BIOS might help, but something working one minute then not working the next generally leans towards component failure.

thanks for the help, I will check but the chance of liquid spills is practically zero due to the Pc's location, but I had a bad feeling it was a hardware fault, by its behaviour

 

one of my harddrives had become noisy recently and has -1 time- not been recognised by steam until a restart

could this cause the strange boot behaviour?

[Paul Vreeland]

BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP.  If you have anything you value on that PC, keep it in a second location.  Second location, not a separate location.  Two places minimum.  Suddenly noisy HDDs can be an issue completely unrelated to what you are having and can result in data loss.

 

Depending on the configuration of the system, that HDD could be a factor in your symptoms.  Starting with basic tests and visual inspection can reveal other issues as well.

 

If I've learned anything in the last 16 years, it's that you don't want to just check and fix 1 thing.  If you are already in the machine, give it blanket testing and check as many things as you can.  If you aren't a technician, you may not know what to check unless you have some experience.

 

Without "peeking under the hood", it's hard to say what the problem is.  There's "a million things" that all need to work perfectly for you to push power button and enjoy the computing experience.  One thing fails in the chain, one tiny component hidden away on a circuit board, and the chain fails.

 

You can always call a technician, too.  There's a reason people pay us money to get stuff fixed, it's usually after they waste their weekend, month, year trying to hack at it themselves.  I'm not saying don't try, but this is a realm where the problem isn't easily reproducible so it sometimes requires a keen technical eye to spot the issues.

[kilgore_T]

16 hours ago, Paul Vreeland said:

BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP.  If you have anything you value on that PC, keep it in a second location.  Second location, not a separate location.  Two places minimum.  Suddenly noisy HDDs can be an issue completely unrelated to what you are having and can result in data loss.

 

Depending on the configuration of the system, that HDD could be a factor in your symptoms.  Starting with basic tests and visual inspection can reveal other issues as well.

 

If I've learned anything in the last 16 years, it's that you don't want to just check and fix 1 thing.  If you are already in the machine, give it blanket testing and check as many things as you can.  If you aren't a technician, you may not know what to check unless you have some experience.

 

Without "peeking under the hood", it's hard to say what the problem is.  There's "a million things" that all need to work perfectly for you to push power button and enjoy the computing experience.  One thing fails in the chain, one tiny component hidden away on a circuit board, and the chain fails.

 

You can always call a technician, too.  There's a reason people pay us money to get stuff fixed, it's usually after they waste their weekend, month, year trying to hack at it themselves.  I'm not saying don't try, but this is a realm where the problem isn't easily reproducible so it sometimes requires a keen technical eye to spot the issues.

thanks for all the advice, I'm a worrier so my stuff is always backed up on a couple of other devices

 

I will find someone to take a look as I'm not up to that kind of thing,

 

[ElSeniorTaco]

Assuming that you are not checking it your self because maybe you dont know how, if you try to do it your self, with some guidance from here for example.

You might learn something useful, and I believe people should dive in and try to learning new stuff.

 

 

However if its a matter of a lack of time or whatever, or you just rather pay someone to do it, then you can totally disregard this post  

 

[kilgore_T]

hey folks thanks for all the help

2 weeks and no problems...yet....though it only happened a few times a month

fingers crossed