bad advice deleted

now going out back to whip myself as punishment...

 

Last edited: Jun 21, 2017

This is a check list to how I would approach it:-

Put on an earthing strap to prevent shorting.
0) Remove mobo battery (for an hour) OR look for the two shorting pins on the mobo to clear CMOS (aka CMOS reset) and retry booting
1) Check AGAIN for dust. Did you take off the front panel where the power button resides? A build up of dust here can cause thermal overheating, and poor power button connection (this is my best guess,or PSU, at fault actually)
2) Check and recheck ALL connections are fitting tightly
3) Are ram chips seated tightly?
4) is the PSU fan going round (put your hand at the back to feel for air) although that would only cause your computer to crash after 15 mins for example. Not this.
5) Then remove ALL drives, sata cables, ide if you have any (probably not seeing as you built this last year) and all ram chips but one bank
6) Remove PSU cables from Mobo and reconnect
7) You should now have 1 ram chip, PSU connected to mobo (no drives connected or being powered) switch on and get into the BioS ( I see no reason why you shouldn't get in now)
8) carefully try the arduous task of rebuilding everything one step at a time.


There is one other thing I would do, probably right at the start actually. Take the PSU to Maplin (If you have one nearby) as they have a gadget that recreates starting up a PC, and can tell you if it is at fault in a second. and if you DO have to replace it. Go for a quality named brand more so than something that merely says 700W or HIGH Power.

I only EVER use:-
Corsair, Seasonic or EVGA and expect to pay about £100 quid for something like the Corsair RM750X. (Comes with 7 year guarantee)

Maplin aren't the cheapest for this £115 (about 15 quid dearer than online)

 

Last edited: Jun 21, 2017

Wait, did you say you spent £20 trying to fix this computer? Dude, that's your problem right there! You've got yourself a British computer!

 

Could be a Bad stick of RAM. Remove one stick at a time and reboot in between each stick removal. That just happened to me 3 weeks ago. My fans were going extremely slow upon boot-up; i thought it was a psu issue, but it was a bad stick of 4GB ram. Had 16GB; had to run on 12GB until my new 32GB replacement ram arrived. lol

 

I, too, believe this is RAM-related. If it was disk-related, you could enter the BIOS. (You can be certain, if you can boot with an emergency boot CD.) Whenever I tried to upgrade my RAM (unsuccessfully), I also had no BIOS and no beeps. I believe this happens when RAM and Mobo do not communicate properly (faulty modules, incompatible RAM or worn connections).
By the way, have you overclocked RAM, FSB or CPU (multiplier)?

 

when you have a black screen it could be for dozens of reasons. Read this guide. It may help you troubleshoot your problem. It is on PDF Format. Good luck!

 

A bad hdd wouldn't keep him from accessing the bios now, would it?

 

If his condition worsens or doesn't go away after about a week, he should be seen by a doctor. Any time cold symptoms last for more than about 10 days, a visit to his healthcare provider is warranted.

 

At times a good sense of humor is welcome. This time it is not. He is asking for help and instead of trying to help him you reply with that stupidity. We, including you, know how devastating the problem that he is facing can be. Save your smart ass comments for another time Mainzelman.

 

had the same symptoms 2 years ago. it was a burned memory cell. try removing one, reboot. rinse and repeat!

 

Hey ladies and gents. First of all, thanks so much for all your help. You've all been fantastic, really can't thank every single person who's replied enough!

Been fiddling for a couple of hours.

First off tried the magic 'unplug and hold the power button down for 30 secs' method. No luck.

Then tried removing the CMOS battery, nothing changed. Tried shorting the jumpers. No change. (Manual said both methods did the same, so thought I try them both.)

If you said a bad stick of RAM was the problem?

Shantay, you stay!

Think in my wild panic yesterday when I tried this, I tried running it with the same single stick of RAM twice and that was the bad one! They are absolutely identical in my defence.

Anyway case closed. Going to now order another stick of RAM, think it may be less than a year old as I started with 8GB and added another 8GB a few months later. Must try and find the receipt.

Again, thanks for all of your help!! I can get on with some work now. And the other half will be more than happy that I'm not distracted tonight. I may even get thoroughly wasted to celebrate.

 

Thanks for coming to my defence and I would quite probably have agreed with you yesterday when my mind was frazzled. He was only being slightly silly though and I think it's best to try and keep these things in perspective. I know these machines are our pride and joy, but when all is said and done, they are just machines.

 

I just had a similar problem my self. That is the reason why I now keep 2 identical systems. Anyhow, I am glad you were able to find a solution to to your problem ...and that a visit to the doctor, as suggested by our comrade Mazelman, wont be needed.

 

What inspired my comment, was the antropomorphism in the threads Name. I think a good sense of humor should always be welcome. No need for turning the drama triangle.

 

A new 8GB stick of RAM is going to have to wait until this month credit card has arrived.

The bad one is typically only a couple of weeks over a year old (isn't that always the case!) So it'll be out of warranty I presume.

Shocked to find that one 8GB stick of DDR3 is now twice the price I paid last year for it!

Expect the fall in the £ is partly the cause. Than you Brexit leave voters! Think most of my projects I'm currently working on will be OK with 8GB.

Just having a break and a cold drink (only mildly alcoholic) because I live next to a school and it's their Sports Day, can't hear a thing for screaming kids and some bloke on a loud hailer. Could close the window but it's really hot here in the UK today, not often we can say that.

 

Buy a new PC and stop messing around building PCs, or do you also build your own cars and TVs? No? So, why the feck build a PC.

 

For example, one can save some money by building. It does not take long. Not as long as cars and TV's. It's fun and you know exactly, what you got. On the other hand it can take longer to replace broken things. But that's also often the case if you buy a Custom PC. And that's why Macbooks are everywhere used in Live Environments because you can always get the exact same Model.

 

Because it is really easy, you can exactly choose what parts you want to use and you save a lot of money. Building a desktop pc is like Lego. PSU + mobo+ cpu+cooler + ram+ hdd +case maybe a grafikcard if you dont wanna go onboard. Done

7 or 8 parts connected with plugs. You dont even pay 50% of the price as if you buy it assembled by a company. Does your car have 8 parts and plugs?

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jun 21, 2017

Had that joke before U.
Hoping it got to him now.

 

DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT DO THIS. Modern HDD's store HDD System area pointers in a NVRAM chip on that circuit board. Even the simple act of swapping boards to test if it works will corrupt the donor board's NVRAM. (I found this out the hard way with two same model Deskstar drives, killing the drive where all my projects were stored to test the system drive). The only way to salvage the data after this is either buy an $1000 rig for forensic drive data recovery, or send the drive off and pay $$$$$ for a data recovery service. It used to work like a charm on the older IDE drives, but modern SATA drives are another story. And each drive's system area is uniquely different. Trust me, I researched this ALOT. I lost 1 years work this way. If you are proficient with SMD soldering, there is a way...

http://www.hddzone.com/ibm_hitachi_pcb_swap_replacement_guide.html

I would still attempt to contact the manufacturer. Some will make a concession since it's only several weeks out, or there could be a recall on your particular chip (by the lot number) which extended the warranty. In short, it costs nothing to try!
Glad that you got it figured out, and can get back to making music.

Custom builds (self done or hired out) are the only way to ensure you get exactly what you want. It's not a cookie cutter world for everyone. In my personal experience, any custom built PC I've had has always smoked major manufacturers similar offerings in terms of performance and stability. Hell, losing the bloatware from the manufacturer is a "performance" upgrade. But then again, I work on my own cars and TV's as well so not everyone's cup of tea. And repairing his PC will also save him the time required to re-setup and re-install all of the applications and plugins he uses.

 

Last edited: Jun 21, 2017