[mdlug] After power outage desktop won't boot.

[Steve Litt]

Oh, I didn't see the part about the DVD being busted. You can get a
known-good new DVD reader drive and a SATA cable for less than $30,
that you can use on this computer or another computer. I'd do that.

By power supply I mean the big hunk of metal, containing a fan, bolted
into the back of your case. The power supply has all sorts of cables
coming out of it.

The instructions I gave are precisely for the situation in which the
screen stays blank before the "bios screen", by which I assume you mean
either counting memory or that silly splash screen they put by default
to prevent troubleshooting.

One of the keys to productive troubleshooting is performing diagnostic
tests even when you're pretty sure what the outcome will be. Because if
you were wrong, but proceed on the assumption, for instance, that it
had nothing to do with the power supply, and it turned out to be the
power supply, that would turn an easy 30 minute troubleshoot into a
several day affair. When it comes to diagnostic tests, redundancy is a
good thing: It keeps the search in the right place.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
April 2016 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21



On Sun, 01 May 2016 08:04:13 -0500
Robert Jim Fulner <dad at jimfulner.com> wrote:

>  
> 
> As mentioned in original message, my DVD/CD drive is busted. 
> 
> When refereeing to power supply, is that just the power cable, or are
> are you talking about what the power cable connects to inside the
> box? 
> 
> Screen goes blank before I get to the BIOS screen, so I doubt that
> will help. 
> 
> On 2016-04-29 10:17, Steve Litt wrote: 
> 
> > On Fri, 29 Apr 2016 02:38:35 -0400
> > Jim Fulner <jim.fulner at member.fsf.org> wrote:
> >   
> >> While I was at work today it looks like my power went out at home.
> >> No biggie, just boot the desktop up again. And it didn't. Monitor
> >> flickers on, then nothing, my first attempt I heard a strange
> >> noise from the case that I thought was the hard drive trying to
> >> spin, though I wasn't sure. My 3 year old broke my DVD drive like
> >> a year ago so that could have been the noise, not sure. Opened the
> >> case, fans were spining though not really how I thought they did.
> >> Tried disconnecting and reconnecting things no apparent change.
> >> I'm not really a hardware guy, what's my next step from here? A
> >> new PC wasn't really in the budget for this year. Would anyone be
> >> interested in helping me tinker with it if I bring it to
> >> Penguicon?  
> > 
> > Hi Jim,
> > 
> > This is either hardware or software. Try booting a known good live
> > CD, remembering to hit the proper keys during POST so that it boots
> > from the CDROM/DVD drive. If it boots from CD, suspect something
> > with the hard disks or their controllers, or corruption within the
> > filesystems.
> > 
> > If it won't boot from CD, see if it gets as far as counting memory.
> > To do that, you need to change the BIOS so that it doesn't "quick
> > boot" or "silent boot" and it doesn't present a splash screen. If
> > it counts memory, suspect disk problems.
> > 
> > If it won't count RAM, the idiomatic investigation technique is to
> > remove everything from the mobo except CPU, RAM, video card, and
> > power supply, and try booting again. I mean *everything*, including
> > those little wires from LEDs and power and reset switches, which
> > are known to frequently go intermittent. If *now* it counts memory,
> > one of the things you disconnected is at fault, so reconnect one at
> > a time and reboot each time until you can toggle the boot failure by
> > connecting/disconnecting a specific component.
> > 
> > If it didn't count RAM in the preceding paragraph, you've narrowed
> > it down to mobo, CPU, RAM, video card, or power supply. If you have
> > multiple RAM sticks, remove all but one and power up again. Repeat
> > for each stick. If the failure happens for some sticks and not
> > others, the sticks producing failure are bad: Replace.
> > 
> > If none of the sticks produced memory count, it's probably not RAM.
> > Most people have spare known-good power supplies hanging around.
> > Disconnect the current power supply without unmounting it from the
> > case, and connect a known-good power supply without mounting it to
> > the case. If it now counts memory, you had a bad power supply.
> > 
> > If it's still not counting memory, you have a bad video card, a bad
> > mobo, or a bad CPU. Swap the video card. This is easy if you already
> > had a video daughtercard, or very difficult if you had an onboard
> > video card. Difficult, because you have a buried shovel: If only
> > you could see, you could disable the broken onboard so the new
> > daughtercard could shine through, and if you could disable the
> > broken onboard, you could see. A lot of time, you can get past this
> > with sufficient fiddling around.
> > 
> > If swapping the video card didn't fix it, you have a bad mobo or
> > CPU, and personally, I consider these a package deal. Look for
> > swollen capacitor tops. Just for fun, replace the coin battery.
> > Make sure the heat sink fan is spinning. When I've narrowed it to
> > mobo and CPU, and there's no likely simple cause for them to be
> > malfunctioning, I usually buy a new computer.
> > 
> > SteveT
> > 
> > Steve Litt 
> > April 2016 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
> > http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21 [1]
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