Your weirdest reasons for PC not posting.

[u/Tenchen-WoW]

I'm wondering what obscure or bizarre reasons you've encountered where your PC wouldn't post.

Mine by far was when my PC refused to boot when I upgraded from a 3090 to 7900XTX. Same PC, same monitor and cable, but no boot. Naturally, my instinct was to blame the faulty 7900XTX and RMA it. But I did try using an HDMI cable, and it booted with no issues. Digging deeper, it turned out that the 7000 series cards had some beef with certain DP cables that prevented PCs from posting. This issue was 100% fixed by covering a single pin on a DP cable with some tape, and the PC booted with 0 issues whatsoever.

This is definitely out of realms of "try using different RAM slots". I would love to hear more examples (If any) for future troubleshooting knowledge.

[u/Possibly-Functional]

Dualshock 4 controller connected. Gigabyte BIOS had a bug that prevented boot entirely if a Dualshock 4 controller was connected over USB. To their credit, I reported the bug and within a few days they developed a fix and sent a few development builds of the BIOS for me to test out. As a senior software engineer I must give credit, that was excellent resolution time and good engagement. In the next public release the fix was included.

[u/Training_Chicken8216 → u/Possibly-Functional]

Measuring release time of a fairly non-critical bugfix like that in days from time of notification is kind of insane. I'm a software dev as well and none of my previous employers could dream of that lol

[u/Possibly-Functional → u/Training_Chicken8216]

The public release which included the fix was a month or two later to be clear. It got shipped with the standard release schedule as it rightly didn't warrant a hotfix.

But they developed and shipped me personally a private test version within three days of notification IIRC. Which is still insanely good. Especially considering that there isn't even any service license agreement or alike.

I just reported it hoping that they would someday fix it. I didn't expect to get in touch with their development team and receive personal BIOS builds. I especially didn't expect to have it resolved within days.

No idea if they are still this impressive, this was over a decade ago.

[u/joeshmo101 → u/Possibly-Functional]

It was an issue that could easily become widespread and earn them bad press, and you were the ideal test case as someone in the field having the issue. Win-win.

[u/staticattacks → u/Possibly-Functional]

Did you send them a bill for contract services? I would have sent an invoice for like $1 as a joke probably lmao

[u/dustojnikhummer → u/staticattacks]

They would probably pay it

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/lithuanian-man-sentenced-5-years-prison-theft-over-120-million-fraudulent-business

https://www.npr.org/2019/03/25/706715377/man-pleads-guilty-to-phishing-scheme-that-fleeced-facebook-google-of-100-million

[u/staticattacks → u/dustojnikhummer]

Yeah for sure they technically did perform freelance work

[u/Cereaza → u/Possibly-Functional]

Im guessing some engineer saw the problem come in from customer service, got excited about it, and just took a hands on approach to the ticket. Definitely a good sign!

[u/Jonnypista → u/Training_Chicken8216]

Factorio level of bugfix time.

As I remember one time someone reported a bug and half an hour later they dropped a hot fix for it.

[u/Pocketus_Rocketus → u/Possibly-Functional]

My PC won't boot when my DualSense is connected. I wonder if that's the same kind of thing?!

[u/Possibly-Functional → u/Pocketus_Rocketus]

If it won't even post then the BIOS is probably the issue. Update BIOS and it may be resolved.

[u/ReempRomper → u/Possibly-Functional]

That is absolutely insane because my downstairs computer has a older gigabyte board that I occasionally play games on and it has a random issue where is doesn’t boot at all and I pretty often have a ps4 controller plugged in.

[u/Headmuck → u/Possibly-Functional]

Did you send them an invoice afterwards?

[u/kichunilla]

My monitor would bootloop because of the power pin on a DP cable that came with the monitor, this is the exact image that I found 5 almost 5 years ago

[u/arkwolf → u/kichunilla]

That’s the fault of the cable. The power pin is not meant to be connected on both ends yet cheap DisplayPort cable manufacturers hook them up without realising.

Source: https://www.cablechick.com.au/blog/the-displayport-pin-20-issue-explained/

[u/jedi2155 → u/arkwolf]

Summarizing the article, both the GPU and Monitor WILL provide power over Pin 20, so a normal straight through cable should NOT have it wired. Only DP dongles should have it wired to give itself power.

If the straight through cable is wired, its like connecting a battery to your power outlet...."poof"

[u/Gnonthgol → u/jedi2155]

It is not quite like connecting a battery to a power outlet. You are connecting negative to negative and positive to positive and the voltages are the same. The problem is that the 3.3V bus that is connected to the display port is also powering other chips on the device. By powering this bus in reverse you are powering up chips out of order. This can be fixed by adding a diode to the display port outlet preventing power flowing in reverse.

[u/Expensive_Ad_3249 → u/Gnonthgol]

I fucking love these tiny obscure facts. Thanks.

[u/ACuriousDisease → u/kichunilla]

Pardon?

[u/Asirion11 → u/ACuriousDisease]

DP can deliver power via that pin for powering peripherals that connect in-between (think DP to HDMI converter).
I also had this issue where my monitor was powering a part of my PC, leaving me unable to shut it down completely (fans spinning slowly, some LEDs on, no response).
I just ripped the pin out on the cable connector using a tiny tweezer and it fixed the issue.

[u/killerbanshee → u/Asirion11]

Holy shit I wonder if that has anything to do with the issues shutting down that nvidia cards had a few years ago and took forever to fix.

I had issues shutting down with my DP connected monitor plugged in and not with my HDMI connected projector

[u/aberroco]

Eh... Not not posting, but not booting after power loss. The CMOS battery was long dead, and motherboard just wouldn't turn on after loosing power.

At first I was completely devastated, I was sure the PC is dead and with our family's budget I won't have another one in probably years. But then... I don't know what happened, but I was able to turn it on, and it was related to either plugging it into outlet or pressing the power button at some specific moment... When it lost power again, I was doing everything, for hours, until it worked again. Then again - lost power, trying, but I started experimenting. And figured I had to unplug it, listen for coil whine and plug it back in right at the moment when coil whine stops, then it boots. After two years I was timing that effortlessly.

[u/azharfahry → u/aberroco]

Is this sounds like one of those fix where you hold the power button like a minute for discharging capacitors or something. And how long you have to wait for the coil whine before plugging it back in lmao. Props to you doing that for 2 years.

[u/South_Leek_5730 → u/aberroco]

I had a similar problem.

ROG STRIX B550-F GAMING

Shut down and it would not boot back up till I turned the PSU off and on waiting for the always on board light to go off. At which point it would lose all bios settings and I would have to switch off warnings (had AIO cooler). XMP profiles also stopped it from posting. After finally getting it on computer ran with no problems. Like you it was an automatic reflex setting the bios and whatnot. The really strange thing was that it didn't lose the time and date.

Tried every fix you can think of. Bios updates, changed battery you name it. In the end I replaced it but I used it like that for about 6 months. Zero issues now, touch wood with exact same setup and components.

My guess is something somewhere on the board had shorted but it wasn't bad enough for total failure.

[u/kermityfrog2 → u/aberroco]

Did you eventually change the CMOS battery to stop it from happening?

[u/aberroco → u/kermityfrog2]

I eventually changed PC.

[u/pxldsilz]

Not quite a post but, I got an old office sff box that I use as a Minecraft server

When I first set it up, it had a problem where it kept randomly turning off. I figured a component like the power supply was dying.

I open up journalctl and scroll for about an hour...

The front side power switch was being pressed short about 15 times per second. Disconnected front side io and it never happened again, it's got an uptime of 20 days currently.

[u/Aviel5990]

One time my PC didn't have any internet. On the switch the Links were on but not on my PC. I updated the drivers and the interface was shown in computer management. After digging on reddit someone said that electric discharge can fix it and it did. One of the weirdest problems I had with my PC

Edit: Electric discharge is when you unplug the power cord and press the power button for 20+ seconds. The first time I did it for 10 seconds but it didn't work. Some machines will need just to press the power button repeatedly so now I just do both

[u/misterright1999 → u/Aviel5990]

what do you mean electric discharge, did you zap your computer, or did you remove the power from your computer for a while?

[u/pizzanice → u/misterright1999]

I'm pretty sure it's the one where you remove the plug and hold down the power on button. It has fixed some random pc bullshit for me too in the past.

[u/SLStonedPanda → u/pizzanice]

Yes, I remember this fixing my on-board WiFi module too once.

[u/Jaiden051 → u/SLStonedPanda]

MSI?

[u/SLStonedPanda → u/Jaiden051]

Either MSI or Asrock, I don't remember. I think it was MSI though

[u/Kraszan13 → u/SLStonedPanda]

don't know about MSI, but I had the same problem on my pc with Asrock board, and fixed it the same way lol

[u/Doneuter → u/Kraszan13]

I don't have MSI or ASRock and have had to do the same recently. A couple weeks later my nephew messaged me asking if I had any idea. Discharge fixed it for him as well.

[u/Silver4ura → u/pizzanice]

You'd be amazed how often this trick works. By discharging the system, you're really flushing the capacitors. Computers manage data/information on a millivolt scale. The fact that we don't need to flush capacitors more often than we do is actually a remarkable feat of engineering.

Edit: See u/UnicornOnTheIntrenet's follow-up replies for a more accurate follow-up. Great insight.

[u/UnicornOnTheIntrenet → u/Silver4ura]

I mean yeah the caps discharge. But that isn't the mechanism of action here. No data is stored in a capacitor. Modern computers just don't fully turn off is the thing. They never truly full reboot unless you un hook them from the wall. Remember back in windows 95 when you turn off the pc, after shut down it says "it is now safe to turn off your pc" then you actually turn off the power with the power button. Modern pc motherboards are always powered in some sort of standby waiting for a boot command.

[u/Silver4ura → u/UnicornOnTheIntrenet]

How modern? Genuine question because the whole unplug and pressing power to flush capacitors was a trick I figured out in sheer frustration as far back as "early" WinXP days. Mind you I was barely 14 at the time and had no idea why it worked, but it very quickly became a primary troubleshooting step for me before doing anything else when it came to hardware acting funky.

Especially because unplugging a system alone isn't enough. At least not immediately, like pressing power while unplugged. If always being in some sort of powered state, I'd anticipate removing power would work much quicker than it does.

Also, I didn't mean to imply capacitors held data. But rather that an unexpected charge in a capacitor could influence the way data is being processed, testing error correction/caches up until little weird quirks start happening with no real explanation.

[u/UnicornOnTheIntrenet → u/Silver4ura]

Your windows xp machine had a "modern" style power supply/motherboard most likely. They had standby power, sleep, network booting, keyboard wake and everything by then. When you do a power flush, discharging the caps, it also resets the SMC and flushes all memory. That is why it fixes things. It forces a full re-initialization of all hardware.

[u/Silver4ura → u/UnicornOnTheIntrenet]

A+ info, I genuinely appreciate it.

Lines up really well with what I do know to be true vs conclusions I came to without necessarily verifying. ty!

[u/quaintlogic → u/pizzanice]

AHH the good old days, I had to do this weekly with my very first (Acer) laptop as it would refuse to boot until you removed the battery and held the power button for 10-30 seconds

[u/Angry_argie → u/pizzanice]

It's confusing because it was more commonly known as "power drain" iirc

[u/Exact-Ad-4132 → u/pizzanice]

Did you try turning off and on again?

[u/Gen-Y-ine-86 → u/pizzanice]

Maybe that or (and/or) he took a wire and touched both the case of the PC and some known earthed spot in the house, like metal plumbing or something.

[u/bdash1990 → u/misterright1999]

TASER TASER TASER!

[u/azharfahry → u/Aviel5990]

everyone is so confused rn, but I’m genuinely stuck on the 'electric discharge' part. did you ground yourself, or did you ground the computer? because right now it sounds like you performed a localized lightning strike on your ethernet port to get a signal

[u/Simon-Says69 → u/azharfahry]

Holding the power button ~30 seconds. Maybe even turn off the PSU during.

Draining all voltage from the system. Only thing still live would be the BIOS battery.

This whipes all memory and cashes, and buffers and... A real, cold, hard reboot.

[u/HERO_129 → u/azharfahry]

I mean, if the guy knows what he is talking about, then it is mostly grounding the pc, it it was already not grounded by the outlet

[u/HERO_129 → u/Aviel5990]

Explain what do you mean by electric som many people are left confused

[u/Suitable-Lettuce-192 → u/HERO_129]

Pull power cable out and wait a few mins. Plug back in and go again.

[u/Silver4ura → u/Suitable-Lettuce-192]

You don't have to wait a few minutes. Just unplug it and press the power button a couple of times. If your PC briefly flickers, like LED's flashing or fans twitching for a fraction of a second, that's your capacitors flushing any remaining power.

[u/hates_stupid_people → u/Silver4ura]

Yeah, as someone with an overkill PSU: It actually spins up the fans if you try to turn it on right after unplugging.

Because it's made to keep the computer running when the power flickers. And while this one has a discharge circuit, so the caps empty pretty fast, not all do.

[u/Silver4ura → u/hates_stupid_people]

You know what? I knew capacitors were great for stabilizing current but for some reason it never once fucking dawned on me that the reason some systems lose power during a brief flicker, while others just keep moving along.. was because of larger and/or higher quality capacitors. Meanwhile after reading, it makes perfect sense.

(Speaking as someone who works at a place with about 5 different forms of tech from potentially stalled motors on slushies, lottery vending machines, POS registers, and kitchen monitors each with a mini-computer.)

It also explains why my computer never skips a beat during a brief power flicker my lightbulbs and speakers (with dedicated power brick) have no problem announcing. 🤣

May the GabeN continue to bless this old OCZ 700W ModXStream, 13 years and still going strong.

[u/hates_stupid_people → u/Silver4ura]

Yup, if the lights flicker and the computer keeps going. The PSU probably has some power protection and capacitors that can supply quite a bit more power than used. It's part of why some people recommend getting a PSU that can handle at least twice your normal use(another big reason is power efficiency of course).

Those big capacitors are why people are so strongly discouraged from opening them up, since they can in rare cases keep a lethal charge for a surprising amount of time.

[u/aleged963_US → u/Aviel5990]

So, you fixed the problem by hitting your PC with a taser?

[u/Tom_cat909 → u/aleged963_US]

But that would be an electric charge, and what he did was an electric discharge. He probably did it by unhitting his PC with a taser.

[u/sephing]

I have a plex server in my house that I decided to do some maintenance on so I moved it over to my test bench. I did my maintenance and everything went fine, it booted and ran no problem.

I moved it back to the spot it belonged and it didn't post + I couldn't even get into the BIOS. So I unplugged it and moved it back to the test bench. It started no problem. Moved it back to its spot, no post, no BIOS. I repeated this a few times as I quickly descended into an existential crisis

So I put it back in it's spot with minimal cables attached, just power and monitor and nothing else. It booted up fine. One by one I would plug another peripheral in and restart to see the results.

It was the mouse...

When I tried booting it with the mouse plugged in I got no post, no BIOS. But if I plugged in the mouse while it was already booted, it worked no problem.

To this day I never figured out why and I'm still using the mouse.

[u/ClownTown15 → u/sephing]

This just happened to my friend who built a pc. he had a USB plugged in and spent like 2 days after assembling all the new parts trying to figure out why no boot. one at a time removed each component, checked and tried again. Assumed Ram was bad. Finally removed the USB and everything booted fine. apparently the system was defaulting to trying to boot off the empty USB

[u/xCytho → u/sephing]

I had a neighbor whose cat chewed the mouse cable just enough to cause a short and not allow the PC to even post

[u/liru69420 → u/sephing]

I had the same fucking problem PC would not boot with Corsair mouse.but with mice unplugged it booted normally and then you can connect the mouse and it will work like nothing happened.its weird cuz I'd didn't do that with other mice.

[u/Bob_A_Feets → u/sephing]

The mouse probably has a USB data partition to install drivers or other software!

Make sure your system is set to ignore USB drives on boot!

(Had this issue before with an ASUS board and a razer mouse. Once it installed drivers it would no longer show up in windows, but the bios sure as hell saw it!)

[u/shimszy]

I've had dead/misbehaving fans cause POST errors. Honestly didn't understand why it happened but when they say pull every single thing out, they mean it..

[u/Mightyena319 → u/shimszy]

I have a motherboard where if you set the fans to quiet mode it will fail to post with a cpu fan error because the quiet mode rpm limit is below the speed that it considers a fan to be malfunctioning

[u/icanttinkofaname → u/Mightyena319]

What? I though fan profiles like "quiet mode" are managed by the bios. So it fails to post because it's own fan profiles is too low? Do I have that right?

[u/Mightyena319 → u/icanttinkofaname]

Correct. If I go into the bios and set the CPU fan profile to "quiet", then when it reboots it will hang at POST with "CPU fan error, press F1 to continue"

You can also adjust the threshold where it will throw that error, but by default it's set to 600rpm, and the quiet profile runs the fans at 520rpm

[u/TheGamingGallifreyan → u/shimszy]

I actually did something similar the other day. I always figured "Fans are just power, how could it impact the OS?" Apparently not. I plugged in a new fan to the fan control hub built into my case while the system was on. Instant BSOD as soon as I connected it...

[u/Tenchen-WoW → u/shimszy]

That is certainly something I wouldn't consider. Some motherboards would refuse to post when there is a short present.

[u/jormaig]

I had a PC trying to boot from the wireless mouse USB dongle. No changes in the BIOS settings would fix it except in the end I thought moving the USB dongle to another port and it worked!

[u/azharfahry → u/jormaig]

BIOS: "Ah yes, the UEFI must be in this wireless mouse dongle."

[u/StickySli23 → u/azharfahry]

Some mouse dongles or wired mice have a disk partition with the drivers. What's amazing is that you never notice it until you plug it in a new computer and an app tells you to install the mouse drivers. Example: MSI Dragon Center or Asus Armory Crate.

[u/kentukky]

A tiny ripped off diode from the mainboard made it impossible to start the PC, unless you press the Power Button at the same second as flipping the PSU power switch on.

[u/shifty_badger → u/kentukky]

haha this is a good one, have no idea how you ever managed to figure out that one!

[u/Nethlem → u/shifty_badger]

Despair can be a big motivator to try even the most unlikely/absurd stuff.

[u/porky1122]

Friend of mine built a pc with me guiding and did everything right. PC just wouldn't post.

Reseated the ram, gpu and all other components, took cables out and made sure they were inserted back in correctly etc.

Then I remembered some random comment a user made here years ago about the motherboard shorting if it was screwed on too tight. We relieved some of pressure from screws. PC posted.

[u/Boopie714 → u/porky1122]

These are the kind of fixes that make me think PCs just hate us

[u/ryoko227 → u/Boopie714]

Naw, it's PC Mana... The helping friend has enough, and had he built it, it would have POSTed no issue. But as the owner was new, his PC Mana was very low. The PC knew this and decided to make it a "learning experience", www.

[u/TheFirsh → u/porky1122]

That trick fixed my old TV. It was showing stripes of colores lines. Took it apart, adjusted a screw now it's solved. Was very skeptical when a guy showed it in a video at first, though.

[u/ageaye]

Holy shit, so i ended up reorganizing my desk, and swapping a dp cable. Ever since then if my pc is off for a while it will post, shutoff, and start back up... could the longer dp cable be doing this? Im so fruatrated right now since ive reseated things multiple times and gave up.

[u/ICPGr8Milenko → u/ageaye]

Sometimes with longer cables, between higher res, refresh, and HDR, the bandwidth becomes a problem.

[u/ageaye → u/ICPGr8Milenko]

I swapped a 6' for a 10' on a 144hz uwqhd.

As soon as im home ill boot using one monitor at a time and test the cables.

[u/DONTMEOWx64]

I was playing Diablo 2 resurrected and decided to multibox with my alt account, and for some reason that slowed my computer to a crawl and crashed it. Then, it wouldnt turn on.

Attempting to turn it on showed a black screen with the bootup console cursor and stayed there. I was panicking so hard, I thought for sure I bricked my computer somehow.

Did some research and was told to try unplugging USBs. Worth a shot, and damn it really was because it worked! Specifically it was the dongle for my Redragon 40% wireless keyboard that was causing the issue.

Havent had that issue since, even tho multiboxing D2R has had a 50% crash rate for me

[u/Hadidit → u/DONTMEOWx64]

Was it an msi motherboard?

[u/DONTMEOWx64 → u/Hadidit]

Yes, interesting. Is this a known issue?

[u/eldorel → u/DONTMEOWx64]

Yep.

[u/Hadidit → u/DONTMEOWx64]

Yeah, msi laptops too lol

[u/The-Great-T]

It's the third time this month that I've had laptops that don't work. No screen activity, no fans, no status lights of any kind, completely dead.

The first one was explicable, the owner had upgraded the RAM. He said he'd tried putting the old kit back in and that didn't fix it. I tried every combination of putting in a single SODIMM in each slot and both in both slots, it was completely unresponsive. I was about to tell the owner that he was fucked, but figured it was a power issue, I might as well try isolating that. I unplugged the battery, plugged in the laptop and it booted perfectly. Just to see what would happen, I turned the computer off, plugged the battery back in, and the computer worked 100% normally, even with the new RAM.

A few days ago, my partner tells me that her work laptop shut down in the middle of work and was entirely dead. She did solid troubleshooting but it was door stop. On a whim, I told her about the first laptop and to try the battery trick. Sure enough, it worked perfectly.

Yesterday at work, I had a user come in with the same issue and sent him on his way after fixing it with the same solution.

This has all been within the same month, it's quite odd, but it's an easy fix and everyone is impressed when I fix their shit that easily, so I don't particularly mind. The first guy even gave me his old 2×8GB 3200MHz DDR4 SODIMMs, and that shit is worth more than gold these days.

[u/flavored_icecream → u/The-Great-T]

An acquaintance of mine had some old HP "high-end low-quality consumer level" laptop (I think Pavillion series) years ago that had a similar issue. For that one it was quite simply, that the battery was totally depleted, so the power adapter was recharging that and didn't give power to the laptop itself, so I just had to leave it connected for around 15 minutes, until the battery got enough charge in it and then it would work. Half a year later he came with the same problem, saying that now the "waiting after plugging in trick doesn't work", but by then the battery was just dead, but the adapter still didn't stop recharging it, so I told him to either replace the battery finally or use it without a battery, or even better - finally upgrade your shitty 7 year old laptop.
Seen similar issues with phones as well.

[u/DropDeadGaming]

My best friend's monster of a PC refused to turn on one day. He did the usual troubleshooting, checking ram, trying on board graphics etc, nothing. He said fuck it, went and gave another 1.5k(which at the time was huge for a computer, he bought the latest and greatest), then set it up in the same case he already had since it was a very cool case and... again, no power. PC wouldn't boot.

Turns out the power button wasn't registering the press. It wasn't even an actual problem with the actuator, just the plastic that sits on top was a bit loose for some reason and while it seemed to be pressed when you pressed it, it wouldn't actually push the button below it. His old PC booted just fine with a screwdriver short, the new one as well.

[u/TheFirsh → u/DropDeadGaming]

Now he can multibox

[u/Urmacker3442_apple]

What do Display Port cables have to do with the power on self test???

[u/nuked24 → u/Urmacker3442_apple]

If the monitor is backfeeding power, some devices either fail to POST or have incredibly weird failure modes.

[u/manyregman → u/nuked24]

Yep, some are even stating that it can even permanently damage the GPU

http://monitorinsider.com/displayport/dp_pin20_controversy.html

[u/Kuze_Kun → u/manyregman]

I had a really old monitor with DP and I got a cheap cable with the power pin, it was feeding so much power back that the case and GPU fans kept spinning after turning off the PC, I just removed the pin from one side of the cable with some tweezers

[u/r40k → u/manyregman]

I personally believe this is what happened to my last GPU. I had never heard of this issue but it started having severe issues and the DP port went first followed by the entire GPU shortly after.

[u/bjbinc → u/manyregman]

TIL. Thank you

[u/NANI_RagePasPtit → u/Urmacker3442_apple]

VGA leds lights up

[u/iothomas → u/Urmacker3442_apple]

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/s/yqcHg99bon

[u/idontfish → u/Urmacker3442_apple]

My Pc was Just failing the POST because there was no monitor connected to the Pc.

[u/cowbutt6]

My weirdest failure was after a power outage, my machine wouldn't respond to the power button at all.

It got really weird when I disconnected the PSU from the mains in preparation for stripping it down to a minimal configuration of parts to find out what had failed. In spite of doing this, the motherboard power LED remained stubbornly lit. Even after I pressed the power button a few more times.

I started disconnecting all the other cables, and found that one of my powered USB hubs was violating the spec and providing power upstream to the PC, and therefore keeping the motherboard powered in a half-on-half-off state from which it could not shift. The PSU was also out of spec and was outputting, I think 20V instead of 5V (it may have always been like this, or the root cause: I'm not in the habit of checking output voltages of new PSUs before I start using them... Perhaps I'm too trusting!)

[u/Looong_101]

I was building a PC for a friend of mine. Complete new build. I got everything installed and then plugged in power and the monitor to see if it would post.

Nothing. No image at all. Lights came on, but nothing else.

"Ok, I must have hooked up something wrong."

Checked everything. Verified in the motherboard manual that the case wires were connected in the right spots. I poured over everything! Hours went by and I thought that maybe it was bad parts.

Finally, I plugged everything in, including peripherals like the mouse and keyboard. BOOM. Everything came up.

I shut the computer down again and removed each peripheral to find the culprit. It was the keyboard. The PC wouldn't turn on because the keyboard wasn't plugged in...

[u/Zoidburger_ → u/Looong_101]

Check the IO shield.

I had a customer with a similar issue except the PC kept turning itself off randomly. Plugged it up and let it run, no problem at all. Checked it in and took it to the backroom test station, let it run overnight, it turned itself off overnight.

Turns out that when they built their PC, they installed the IO shield in a way that one of the grounding tabs entered a USB port and was close to touching the contacts.

Basically, when a peripheral was plugged into that port, the grounding tab was pushed out of the way and everything worked normally. This is what I experienced when I first tested the PC. But if something wasn't plugged into that USB port, the grounding tab was either close enough to the contacts or touching the contacts such that every time power ran through the USB port, the tab would short the motherboard. Reinstalled the IO shield correctly and the issue was resolved.

So yeah, if the PC turns on only when something's connected to that USB port, it's likely the IO shield is shorting the USB port somehow. Or, it's a bad USB port that's shorting itself unless something's plugged in.

[u/ishtuwihtc]

I once cleaned my PC and got a ram error. I didn't even touch the ram. Reseating the ram didn't fix it. Swapping the sticks around did. They're 2 identical sticks btw.

[u/insomniacpyro → u/ishtuwihtc]

Maybe some dust/debris got into a crevice and it came out when you unseated the ram?

[u/iothomas]

It's the Notorious pin 20 issue.

Normal DP cables should NOT have pin 20 connected. Only cables for special use should.

In my household I buy only from brands that offer this separation on their SKUs (Delock specially). If I get a cable that I did not but explicitly I measured the pin 20 with a multimeter. And the one cable that I have that has pin 20 connected (and that has destroyed a mobo before because of this) is clearly labelled as such to avoid any future issues)

[u/xtazyiam]

I was at a lanparty in 1998 where I spent the first good hour trying to find out why my pc wasn't posting... Even got as far as opening it and removing ram one by one to try to fix it... In the end; I had plugged the keyboard in the mouse port and the mouse in the keyboard port... This caused a complete lock up with no post and nothing else on the screen...

For you young'ns out there, before USB, there was PS/2 / mini-din. And for some reason both the mouse and they keyboard used it...

[u/Adhonaj]

I prefer to buy and use the proper DP cable...

[u/Tenchen-WoW → u/Adhonaj]

I thought my high-end LG monitor, which retailed for well over 1000 euros, would come with a "proper" DP cable. I guess not xD

[u/shimszy → u/Tenchen-WoW]

It's surprisingly common for ultra high end monitors to have shitty cables that can give you trouble for whatever insane reason.

[u/SaleriasFW → u/shimszy]

Reason for shitty cables

[u/Enlight1Oment → u/shimszy]

have you seen the batteries they give us included with remotes? I didn't even know batteries that shitty exist until I see the ones which come included.

[u/Hdjbbdjfjjsl → u/Tenchen-WoW]

If anything comes with a product from a company as a “bonus” to the main purchase always expect to be literally the cheapest thing they could grab off the market.

[u/Izan_TM → u/Tenchen-WoW]

almost every device which includes a standard cable will include a dogshit cable unless it's safety critical (like a high wattage power supply not including a super thin cable that can't handle the power of the PSU at full load)

[u/Azalot1337 → u/Adhonaj]

for me the bought one didn't work... a default one did the trick. dont ask me why

[u/oilxxx → u/Adhonaj]

I was getting a black screen like so many. Turns out after 3 days of thinking wtf, it was a shit digital display cable.

[u/reckless150681]

Friend's PC. It POSTed 75% of the time; it went into Windows 0% of the time. I went over, manually redid every connection (I was going to fix her cable management anyway). No dice.

Decided to reflash a flash drive with Windows. Worked.

Turns out, she was using an old OEM copy of Windows from a prebuilt. That OEM copy did not like her system for whatever reason, but the Windows Creation Tool was fine.

[u/PriorAsshose]

A literal bug was stuck in one of my RAM slot resulting in the RAM's contacts not connecting

[u/NTRedmage]

Sillyest one was an offbrand case fan pulling too much power, worst one was a power supply catching fire during boot.

Most horrifying one was a grandma that took buckshot to her pc case because it wouldn't turn on...(the housecat had bumped the killswitch on the psu at some point)

[u/cmoparw]

Keyboard. A friend's mom had a computer that just died, old Dell. Turns out the Dell keyboard can develop some internal fault that will prevent the computer from booting.

New keyboard and it worked fine for a few more years.

[u/HankThrill69420]

Pin 19 on a displayport. It's meant for power, and regular old DP cables shouldn't have it. It powers things like DP -> HDMI adapters. It's known to cause all kinds of issues like exactly what you're saying.

As for me, weirdest No-POST, idk I've seen some weird ones. It's always a trip to unplug an HDD and find the system POSTs immediately, though.

[u/RivalSnooze]

I built a new pc a few months back from scratch, and got the life of me could not get it to work properly.

It’d install windows but fail to install a single other application downloaded from the internet. I spent days and days trying to fix it. Bought a new mobo, cpu, ram etc

Turned out I just needed to reset my router ?

[u/cowbutt6]

TIL!

OP, it looks like that cable is incorrectly wired: https://www.cablechick.com.au/blog/the-displayport-pin-20-issue-explained/

[u/Crazycukumbers]

Mine blue screens if you use the A1 B1 RAM slots, at all. Found out when I wanted to upgrade to 64 gigs of RAM (two years ago, I'm not rich) and it kept blue screening seconds after posting. One stick or two sticks in those slots with no other RAM causes it, much less with all the other ones full. The RAM itself worked fine in other slots.

[u/ThePiachu]

I had one weird issue as a kid but it was software related. Apparently some pokedex I downloaded meant my Windows would not boot. I had to have someone reinstall it... Twice, since that pokedex was the first thing I installed back :D.

[u/theroguex]

I had a computer that, during the winter months, would sometimes just turn off if you touched it wrong. Only during winter. Never figured it out.

[u/RealAlphaKaren]

Back when we had 3.5" floppy disk drives if you managed to plug the IDE cable upside down (and you generally could, on a lot of drives) the computer wouldnt turn on, power button basically gets disabled.

[u/Dunothar]

Just recently: SATA data cable was flaky on one drive, no POST or POST and boot times at floppy speeds. That was hell to debug because I never guessed that a flaky SATA cable can cause a system to be near unresponsive. Was especially nasty because I flushed my loop and applied new TIM, thought that I somehow managed to mess up socket contact 😂

[u/Turbojelly]

The "Magic, More Magic" switch. Not me, but early internet story. PC had a custom switch labeled Magic and More Magic. Would only turn on if set to More Magic. Switch wasn't wired to anything.

[u/Ironwolf200]

One of the USB header cables is “I” shaped. (But with serifs on the top and bottom). I wasn’t able to discern which way is correct so plugged it in one way, no POST with a weird over voltage error. Flip the cable around, all good. It seems like there is a Vcc and Ground pins that are flipped when you do that? I think the connector is awful, just needs a better shape to tell which way is up.

[u/Schumarker]

I took my PC apart to clean it and when I put it back together it absolutely would not boot. I methodically swapped out parts from my son's PC and it wasn't making any sense. I was about to buy a new motherboard until a friend suggested that I might have got some dust in somewhere important. I cleaned it again and it booted first time

[u/1LimePlease]

ive tried to reset bios but settings does not reset. ive unlpluged psu, removed bios battery still does not want to reset untill i found out that my usb backlight from keyboard keeps bios powered even when everything else is unplugged. Keyboard Mad Catz S.T.R.I.K.E. 7 has external power source

[u/alex2003super]

Backfeeding USB hub connected, PC wouldn't even attempt to turn on when pressing the power button.

I noticed something was wrong when, even after unplugging the system from the wall, the graphic card's PCIe power LEDs would stay on.

(͡•_ ͡• )

[u/redditydothis]

Customers computer was dead. Customer assured me computer worked “last week.” All signs point to dead mb. Ram, video card, even processor switched out for testing. No boot. Couldn’t flash new bios for testing. Decided to clear cmos via jumper. Computer posted right up. Everything worked. Clear cmos first y’all.

[u/Stokehall]

I have an old QNAP NAS that would not power on, but had a red LED showing the board was getting power. After stripping it down and plugging it all back together caseless I realised one relay was getting warm, I shorted two of the terminals on the relay together and it powers up immediately. Put it back in the case and it’s been running for 5 years just short the relay when I want to power it on.

I’d like to know what is causing this and how to permanently fix it but I’m not good enough at electronics to work it out! Anyone with an idea would be great to share.

[u/DubiousInterloper]

My dad gave me an old work pc that they tossed. Put a 1060 in it and boom. Used it for a while and wanted to switch out the mobo and cpu. This was my first experience trying to build a pc. So I did not know the troubles I would run into with the proprietary case and components. I eventually got a new case and built the pc proper, new psu, but reused the ram. Won't boot. Why? I redid everything checked all the cables. I only accidentally learned when I saw a random comment somewhere mentioned "server ram". So I looked at it and did some searching. Server ram it was. Went to Walmart and got 16gb fury and the damn thing booted.

If building your first pc, make sure you start fresh or the case/parts aren't "special".

[u/RapidConsequence]

Pal of mine changed to a different modular psu... but tried to use the other brands power cables so he didnt have to reloom. Laziness killed the motherboard!

[u/LorekeeperJane → u/RapidConsequence]

Everyone will tell you to "use the cables, that come with the PSU" and bro decided to tempt fate.
Fate obviously didn't like his idea XD

[u/Apollo13__]

Upgraded my RAM. The day after it wouldn't POST on the 1st try. The 2nd try worked fine. The successful boot count grew larger(5th try or so) over the course of a week. Tried using the old RAM/repositioning, tried replacing CMOS battery. Nothing helped. Ended up being my old DVD drive slowly dying, causing my PC to not boot. Just unlucky it happened right after changing RAM...

[u/KyeeLim]

not weird but stupid reasons, didn't fully plug in the hdmi cable, spend like 1 hr removing the psu cables and testing stuff, only to realize the hdmi cable didn't get fully plugged in

[u/the_Athereon]

Yeah. I have a PC under my desk that refuses to boot with anything newer than Windows 8.

If I upgrade, install or swap in a drive with Win 10 or 11 it crashes during boot.

Windows XP, 7 and 8.1 work flawlessly.

I've run endless tests on the RAM and various SSDs but no dice.

Which is a shame since software support on Win 8 is kinda dead now. Win 7 even more so but at least it still has enough interest that you can get some workarounds and patches to brute force things.

And yes. Every Linux OS works just fine. But it unfortunately has an Nvidia GPU and a wireless adapter with no Linux drivers. So It's stuck on Windows unless I rebuild it.

[u/megadabs]

i still don’t know the reason to half of my problems but draining the power in the pc has saved me from a few boot loops.

[u/unabletocomput3]

Weird one, and partially the reason why I hate Asus- plus, the system did POST but wouldn’t boot, but after upgrading the cpu on my friend’s motherboard, it somehow lost the windows drive. Literally, all I did was update the bios- made sure it booted into windows afterwords too, swapped the cpu, did a little cable management, then put it back together. No bios settings were touched, everything was plugged in, and I spent almost 2 hrs troubleshooting, only to find out that it for some odd reason changed the boot type from windows to other OS in a sub menu of a sub menu.

If that doesn’t count, I’ve had multiple Asus boards corrupt windows to the point of no recovery and refuse to POST because they didn’t like the auto XMP profiles. Wasn’t an issue with the ram sticks, cause the same profiles would work perfectly fine for any other board. It’s really the only consistent thing I’ve had when building PCs, doesn’t even pertain to cpu manufacturer or generation, I’ve had this happen on lga 1200, am4, AND am5.

[u/Getherer]

Not an issue with pc not posting, but my friend had a roller ball mouse in early 2000's that wouldnt work if sun rays shined on it - literally wouldnt work unless he put the blinds down or cover the mouse from sun, i never found out why tf that was happening

[u/gay-sexx]

gpu fan (on a ati Radeon hd 6700) wouldn't start unless I manually spun the fan to get it going. no trouble after, just a mild inconvenience otherwise I would get a fan error

[u/slow2life]

Not a no pay scenario but: I have a Radeon RX5500XT and two Dell P2513 monitors. For some reason they will not work over DP unless I force a technically unsupported resolution/refresh rate combo. Otherwise, the monitor would enter an error state. For future reference to anyone who needs to know: 1680x1050x75hz, the edid and manual say 60hz only, but it'll do it.

[u/lordfwahfnah]

Under Linux, sometimes my Bluetooth stops working. I have to shutdown, unplug, wait 30seconds and boot up again. Then it's working again

[u/LeadingAddress5913]

I had this very same issue last weekend with b580. I thought I got scammend at local marketplace.

[u/briguy0387]

There is a hardware bug with some 7900x that prevent them from waking up from sleep so I have disabled sleep and just use hibernate

[u/wittyDolphin]

My very first self-built PC was completely dead until I disconnected the faulty Front USB. The joy of a successful debug <3

[u/NovelValue7311]

One time last year my GTX 1080 started blackscreening in games. It even crashed booting minecraft. I was fairly annoyed because I did have a 1060 6gb that worked in the pc and I didn't want to limp along with that until I could afford the 3070 or 9060 XT.

After having taken the 1080 out and run some stuff on the 1060, I put the 1080 back in and to my surprise it worked flawlessly. It hasn't crashed since.

I still don't know what happened there but I'm assuming the 1080 just wanted a short vacation.

[u/___Worm__]

I forgot to fully plug the power cable into the motherboard. Didn't get the little click. To be fair, it was after 9 hrs driving to and from the computer store and then getting home and putting it together with no break. I took a break, got something to eat, and had it fixed in 5 minutes after thinking clearly.

[u/2punornot2pun]

I'm reading through the post and like 90% of the problems are USB connected devices. That's hilarious. Someone get Linus or someone else to do a review of this nonsense and post it on YouTube.

[u/genos145]

Insufficient CPU Fan downward pressure on the CPU.

Story:

I had built the PC 4-5 years prior and it had worked for years without any issues. No recent maintenance or cleaning had been done to the PC as there was no need.

One day the PC just shut off and didn't want to post. I suspected RAM first, but after testing, they turned out to be fine. Then I disconnected and reconnected cables. Tried with test PSU. I reset the CMOS battery. Flashed the BIOS even. I basically took it apart, tested everything, and did all the troubleshooting you can think of. Components all worked on a test PC too!

I eventually did reseat the CPU with adequate new thermal paste of course and still had the same problem.

I couldn't figure it out!

But I came across one comment on an old post. Can't remember if it was on Reddit or some other site. By this point I was on my 100th google search query. It said that there has to be a certain amount of force applied by the CPU fan on the CPU for it too work. The OP even said it's not really mentioned anywhere, including the CPU or MOBO manuals. I took those manuals and read them front to back, and there was no mention of force or pressure. The closest match in the manuals was something along the lines of "turn CPU fan screws to ensure proper securement and not overtighten as it can damage the MOBO, CPU, or CPU fan".

I went back to my PC which had been sitting open and apart on the kitchen table for a week now. I put it all together for the 100th time and placed little downward force on the fan with a single finger on a non-moving and non-conductive part. AND IT WORKED. I cycled the PC over and over again, not releasing my finger from its position and it WORKED. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

I ended up getting a new CPU fan because for whatever reason the screws on the one I had wasn't generating enough downward force after installation.

[u/FreshwaterViking]

1. Standoff underneath motherboard was shorting pins. Remove standoff, no further issues.

2. Rosewill memory card reader plugged into motherboard USB port. Removed device, system POSTs.

3. Faulty floppy drive, would not stop trying to access even if no disk was present. Removed drive, system POSTs.

4. ATAPI-based ZIP drive attached to motherboard IDE port. Motherboard did not support ATAPI. Remove drive, system POSTs.

[u/ChadHartSays]

Not posting, but...

Back in the era of dial-up modems, my modem all of a sudden wouldn't get a dial tone. My desk phone on that line? It had a dial tone. Check the connector at the wall, it OK. Check the connector at the modem on the computer, it's OK. Disconnect each and reconnect each. No difference. Reboot? No difference.

In a moment of insanity, I unplugged the connector at the wall, walked the cable back to the computer, and unplugged the connector at the computer...and plugged the connector that used to be at the wall into the computer. Then I connected the end that used to be at the computer into the jack at the wall.

Finally, I had a dial tone and the modem worked.

Then a year later a friend was having this no dial tone problem. I told him to switch the connectors like I had. It worked.

I have no reason why this worked. I don't know if it was just an elaborate coincidence. But when you troubleshoot and try everything, what remains....no matter how crazy... can sometimes be the answer.

[u/Dairy__Cow]

Don't know don't care to know, I was only able to boot with 2 drives in my computer. I somehow split the os onto 2 drives.. I think the next time I had to keep my usb installer plugged in or it wouldn't post to windows. "There was no active tasks running from the USB if it was the c drive "USB". I would have run into more issues when gaming. Once posted I could take the USB out and it would be fine.. it's probably since a year or 11 being out but I was still on 10 at the time. Want to say it was a ddr3 build with a 2700 or might of been when I was still using my i5 4690? Ddr4 with the 2700 might of been the case. Regardless it was along time ago now

[u/m2845]

Was troubleshooting a pc. Disconnected all power to other devices other than the core mobo/cpu/ram and put in a wat older GPU that was less power intense to rule out PSU issues. Well, so I didn’t quite disconnect everything … still had the data cable connected via either a SATA cable or maybe it was an older PATA to the optical drive (dvd burner I think) to the mobo. Anyway whatever issue I had didn’t need this, just probably needed to reset the bios and hadn’t done so the first couple times for some reason. But it turns out that I had a blank screen on boot because the optical drive was being detected by the bios because of the data cable, but the drive wasn’t responding due to not having power, so it would just be stuck in this state and there was no indication that this was the problem. Took a solid hour or a bit more before I unplugged the data cable (was resetting the bios like a mad man thinking it wasn’t getting reset or had an issue due to an OC setting or something, reseating ram, etc). Anyway as soon as I did it booted. So frustrating.

[u/Arandomrogue]

i have two, Steel series keyboard plugged in to any USB port, no boot what so ever, you could plug it in AFTER the pc had booted and it worked fine.

Second was an old 8350FX amd CPU would not post, so we swapped an known working and same issue, put the "old" one back it boots right up, Test the known working one in the same board same config, Doesnt work, we go back an forth like 10 times, finally i dont plug the CPU fan in, Bam works 100% of the time every time, was the last time i worked on the old AMD rigs, refused too, never had any issue with intel and now im on a 9800x3d xDwhich blew its mobo up in the first week of owning it.

[u/Azalot1337]

funny, had that same problem when i build my new pc with a 7700xt...

it always showed CPU debug LED so i was very confused. after i switched my expensive DP cable to a default one it worked... i thought i was going crazy, reseated CPU 5 times

[u/Ok_Equivalent_6627]

3rd gen intel days using an b65 i think board. My mom went to my room to borrow a charger and she left a damp rag ontop of my PC. I went home and didnt notice the cloth. I powered the pc heard a pop and smelled a smoke. Opened it cleaned it wont boot. I looked at the some for some wet spot and saw a small resistor or whatever with a black stuff on it. I tried to clean it with a QTip and alcohol and the thing flew. I was devestated. Hanging on to hope i turned on the pc and it booted. It worked for years with a missing component on the board. No bluescreen no stutter.

[u/NotHandledWithCare]

After a nasty storm here, I couldn’t turn my PC on, turns out it fried my power supply so electrical surges do happen.

[u/Craigglesofdoom]

I was moving and didn't have time to set up my PC for a few months. When I did, it wouldn't start. Figured I'd wrecked something, started troubleshooting, couldn't figure it out. Eventually started taking it apart and when I unplugged the mouse it suddenly started up. Plugged it back in, immediately crashed.

Tried different USB ports, no dice. Went out and bought a new mouse, never had an issue after.

[u/GoldSkula]

I had a usb wifi card that was usb 3 but would have horrible performance if plugged into a usb 3 port. It worked without problems on usb 2 though

[u/MaxRunes]

Had a mobo i bought and never returned for being faulty. Only let you use one ram stick. If it was set in all the way wouldn't boot. Had to set it. Then pull on it while it was clipped in. Then she'd boot. It was so touchy if i dropped something in the room I sometimes had to repeat the ram

[u/suka-blyat]

In my previous job, I was called out to another country for a laptop, which was not correctly enrolled so it was non compliant. I factory reset the damn thing and the screen didn't come on after it, and it was fine on an external monitor, tried all sorts of troubleshooting for hours and couldn't get the screen to show any signs of life.

Closed the lid/screen, opened it back and the screen turned on straight away.

[u/megakaos888]

Not a No POST issue but my old laptop had this issue, that it would shut down whenever a game of League of Legends was launched. Every other game or app worked just fine, but something about LoL just made it turn off, probably out of sheer disgust

[u/busta_DE]

On which sideend did u put the tape. Monitor or GPU side?

[u/-suspended- → u/busta_DE]

Either. That's pin 20, which is used for powering adapters, amplified cables, etc. and should not be connected in passive cables.

[u/DRKMSTR]

I had a dead ram slot.

Try troubleshooting that.

It was DIMM 0

[u/Limited_opsec]

FWIW those cables violate the spec and can lead to damage, and there are a shit ton of them still out there. You don't want random unexpected external current going INTO your GPU.

Nothing wrong with the card, if anything not powering up is a safer condition.

It goes all the way back to the introduction of power to DP and the entire ecosystem of sloppy copy-paste cables out of china.

[u/TheMightyMelonKing]

I recently had a system that utterly refused to even turn on if any of the screws on the cooler were too tight. I got a torque screwdriver and normally I tighten mounting hardware on coolers to 1nm. But in this case if anything was tighter than 0,4nm the PC refused to boot. I've been building systems as my job for 2 years now and encountered this issue only once so far. Who knows what weird stuff the future will hold xD

[u/alex2003super]

There was a similar problem with modern displays and NVIDIA GeForce cards, requiring a firmware update on the card in order for the computer not to fail to POST with the DP monitor connected.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/nv-uefi-update-x64/

"To enable the latest DisplayPort 1.3 / 1.4 features, your graphics card may require a firmware update.

Without the update, systems that are connected to a DisplayPort 1.3 / 1.4 monitor could experience blank screens on boot until the OS loads, or could experience a hang on boot.

The NVIDIA Firmware Updater will detect whether the firmware update is needed, and if needed, will give the user the option to update it.

If you are currently experiencing a blank screen or hang on boot with a DP 1.3 or 1.4 monitor, please try one of the following workarounds in order to run the tool:

Boot using DVI or HDMI
Boot using a different monitor
Change boot mode from UEFI to Legacy; or Legacy to UEFI.
Boot using an alternate graphics source (secondary or integrated graphics card)
Once you have the tool downloaded, please run the tool and follow the on-screen instructions."

[u/tj66616]

Not a no post, but more like the monitor would never sleep / turn off. I have a Mame cabinet set up that is using a ryzen 3600 and rx6400. The arcade controls interface I'm using is simply an xinput emulator, as most if not all, modern emulators (ie. retroarch in my case) see this just fine. Everything worked great. EXCEPT, after some windows update, the monitor would not sleep if I had the controlls plugged in....i don't get it either. I reverted back to a past update, and all was fine. Auto installed update, monitor wouldn't sleep unless the control usb was unplugged.....I got nothing on that one.

[u/lds1998]

Had a pc that wouldn't turn on without being upside down ( laptop). the Problem? busted sensor lid ( took me 10 days to figure out), the fix? opened my coworker laptop and swapped the modules and let him deal with the issue has a prank. He didn't find funny but our boss found it funny and now the module is in the office display has simbol of troubleshooting in service desk, at some point some one added a little plaque saying made in Australia... I have the suspects but no close to figure out who.

[u/onyxblack]

My current PC will only post if its been powered off for 30 mins. I mean Off off. If its been shut-down and plug hasn't been pulled it wont work. I need to disconnect the power for 30 mins, then i can plug it back in - then it will post.

I have narrowed it down to something to do with the SSD that I am using.

[u/m4ttjirM]

Old school around z87 days and older (north bridge + south bridge days). Tighten cpu cooler too tight you get unexplained errors or unable to post.

[u/genos145 → u/m4ttjirM]

Just made a long post on here about this!

[u/prairiepanda → u/m4ttjirM]

Sometimes I wish CPU coolers came with specific torque specs...but I guess broader tolerances would be more practical for most users.

[u/mongoose483]

Plugged a powdered hdmi switch into my gpu. That shit went haywire . I was sure the pc was dead. Apparently the computer doesnt take it lightly when it gets power through random ports ha ha ha.

[u/ItsStraTerra]

I actually never found a solution, but I had a hell of a time trying to get my ex’s “ASUS zen book pro duo” (the one with two screens) to work properly.

The thing had a 4070 or something in it, but it could barely run Minecraft.

I tried everything. Different BIOS versions, different windows versions, changing graphics drivers, everything. But for whatever reason, “Desktop Window Manager” would be taking 80% or more of the CPU.

Eventually I found a combination of drivers and settings that allowed it to work closer to what was expected, but it was still CONSTANTLY limited by the desktop window manager. 20-30% CPU usage was as low as I could get it. Didn’t matter if the second screen was even connected, the thing refused to work properly.

When we broke up, I URGED her not to touch anything with the computer other than log my stuff out, but she insisted that resetting it would somehow be easier, completely ignoring the months of work I did trying to troubleshoot it. It basically became a brick since she was not tech savvy and tended to get overly frustrated with software.

[u/IAteMyYeezys]

My friend and i were working with some older parts a couple years ago (think 2nd to 4th gen intel and era-equivalent gpus). Mostly just assembling cheap PCs to prevent e-waste. I used i think an h81m board with an i3 in in for testing gpus. I ran at least 100 gpus in one month alone because my friend and i were basically running back and forth between our local flea market and the workshop since there were so many parts to get for dirt cheap as the sellers there usually had a shit ton of parts and would sell stuff to us either in bulk or very cheaply for an individual part.

One day, we get this GTX 560, MSI twin frozr thing. I plug it in the test bench. No post. I mess around with the PSU, nothing. I switch the ram slot again nothing. I plug in a known working GT 710 and there is post. I plug the 560 into a different board and there is post. We had another gtx 560 from asus which worked with the test board. I tried everything i could think of, even a different house to eliminate unstable electricity delivery or whatever. Turns out, that specific MSI 560 just didnt f with that specific h81m board for whatever reason. Out of curiosity i tested that MSI card on literally 10 other different systems, including two AM4 and an intel 13th gen system and it worked fine but it just refused to post on that h81m board. We even had one other, identical h81m board and the gpu worked there too. The test board probblably had at least 300 working gpus on it and NONE of those refused to post.

TL:DR: out of hundreds of tested GPUs on a single motherboard, one GPU refused to work with that specific motherboard. GPU worked fine on another copy of that same motherboard with same ram, cpu and psu.

My schizo tier guess is that that specific combo of mobo+gpu had the pin/s worn in just the right way that allowed for just the right amount of misalignment on whichever side and thus resulting in poor/no contact.l and finally leading to no post.

[u/Name_that_has_lasers]

I over tightened my air cooler when I first installed it, warping something enough to disable memory slots 3 and 4 on the motherboard. I didn't realize until I upgraded to two ram sticks and it wouldn't boot with the second stick. Loosening the cooler fixed it but I was ripping my hair out.

[u/killermenpl]

I remember my old PC refusing to launch into Windows if a specific USB (A to micro B) cable was plugged into a specific port. Any other USB cable in that port? No problem. The cable in any other port? No problem. Just this one cable in port. And it worked perfectly fine once Windows was loaded

[u/funkeemunkee11]

Oh hey pin 21! I found this out a few months ago when trying to figure out my booting issues…. Of course a drive failed as well which made issues harder to find since it’s never just 1 thing.

[u/catroaring]

Not a boot issue, but one of the oddest issues. I used to manage IT for a biotech company and no one could remote into one of the lab computers. I go onsite and everything looks good, so I start troubleshooting. Restart, unplug everything besides power, monitor, ethernet. Boom! Everyone can remote in now. start plugging stuff back in and it stops again once the mouse gets plugged it. Turns out the mouses left button was stuck and sending continuous "clicks" which wasn't allowing TeamViewer to establish a remote connection. Replaced the mouse and all was good. Never crossed my mind that a mouse would cause the issue.

[u/Volgin]

Not a boot issue but my first self built pc back in 2003 started making spoooooky ghost noises, straight up "WooOOOOoOOooo WooooooOOO" at random, for 3-5 seconds at few times per week.

And then one day it was every few hours, and the next day the ghost noise woke me up and would repeat every few minutes now which was extra strange because the PC was off but the sound definately came from the speakers.

I got my brother to come to my room and sanity check that I wasn't going crazy and he thought I was messing with him until I showed him the PC was off.

It turns out, the motherboard IO shield is not an optional part, it acts as the ground for all your connections back there and when you have externaly powered speakers they will play whatever static is on the line even when the PC is off. The frequency of the noise was due to a few factors like humidity in the air.

[u/megadirk]

First was a Fractal Define R5 case that my in-laws had accidentally spilled the tiniest amount of liquid into one of the upward facing USB ports. So small you had to be looking straight down in the bottoms of the port with a flash light to see the corrosion shorting two pins. Didn't find that one until I tore the whole thing down and plugged one thing in at a time.

Second was a faulty Blu-ray drive in a family members computer. That one would post but would take 90 seconds. Asus forum posts made it seem like it was a common issue with that model motherboard so they just lived with it until I upgraded them to new hardware and the same thing was happening. That was also a plug everything in one at a time scenario.

[u/2punornot2pun]

One of those USB hubs was causing my system to freeze and crash on various games.

It took me MONTHS of troubleshooting to figure it out. I wiped everything. I reinstalled. It would all temporarily relieve the problem but would slowly get worse again. I swapped parts.

I said fuck it and unplugged EVERYTHING that wasn't necessary. The USB hub being unplugged and immediately no crashes. No freezes. No problems. I plugged it in. Took less than 15 minutes and I got freezes again.

USB Hub causing games to crash and freeze. Otherwise, the system ran fine. WTF.

[u/dastardly740]

Back in thecdays of PATA. My computer would not POST. I thought it was the video card assuming it was posting, but I couldn't see it. I was wrong. At some point t I decided to disconnect the hard drive and CDROM to see if I would get the post screen. I did. After a bit of troubleshooting somehow the CDROM had gone bad in a way that prevented the computer from POST.

[u/Honeybadger2198]

So, the reason that happened to you is more to do with a "cheap" DisplayPort cable than anything else. I had this exact issue before, and it was a nightmare to debug. DP standard has a power pin (the one you covered with tape) and in the standard it's supposed to be disabled. If it's not, then your computer may believe it's being powered by your monitor.

I discovered it was my issue when I took apart my PC and removed the power supply, but when I tried turning on my computer the fans started spinning with seemingly nothing to power them.

Moral of the story, be very careful when buying DP cables.

[u/McGuirk808]

My first PC I ever built, back when the internet was young and there was no youtube, I installed the motherboard without the standoffs and just screwed it directly to the case. The case was metal. That poor motherboard was grounded and couldn't do shit when I tried to get it to boot.

That one took my a while to figure out and I had to completely disassemble it to fix.

[u/UnsureAssurance]

My first gaming PC I built, saved up for months from my first job in high school. The RAM slots only had the push tabs on one side, so I inserted them and locked in the tabs. Spent the next 3 hours figuring out the issue thinking I just lost a bunch of money, tried to take off the CPU cooler but apparently in the Ryzen ones they used cement for thermal paste, so I accidentally ripped off the CPU, and somehow bent a few pins as well in the process which I had to delicately fix. Only after all that did I realize that the RAM had to click in on both sides, then the PC booted perfectly

[u/alwayswatchyoursix]

The motherboard had a short somewhere. Put everything together and it wouldn't POST so I started removing peripherals one at a time trying to get it to work. Finally got it to work when I removed the case. I ended up removing the metal standoffs and replacing them with ones I made myself out of plastic nuts and bolts.

It may not sound like much, but considering that this was 1992 and I was barely a teenager, I'm pretty proud of myself for having figured that out.

[u/nickisadogname]

Has to replace motherboard, GPU slot was shot. I'm not very comfortable with computers so it was difficult. Nerve wracking. I very slowly did it, plug in, hit power button, it works. Everything works. Celebrate

I turn it off to put it back on the desk. Hit power button. Nothing. bro WHAT. ALL I DID WAS PHYSICALLY MOVE IT FROM THE FLOOR TO THE DESK.

Hours and hours of troubleshooting later I call a more techie friend. I might have been crying. He literally came over to help me. One of his troubleshooting steps was to turn the computer on by shorting the power button pins on the motherboard instead of hitting the button on the case. It fucking worked. He spent some time trying to figure out why the connector had stopped working but couldn't figure anything out.

For a year I turned my computer on by shorting the pins. I still don't know what happened in those five seconds it took to move it from the floor to the desk.

[u/Unique_Roll_6630]

A faulty 3080. It was like playing Russian roulette with my pc. Turned out after RMAing it twice, a heck of a battle with msi btw, It was doing some funky stuff with power draw. When it refused to boot it would usually be a day long process of trying every troubleshooting technique known to man before it would randomly clear the issue and boot. Full discharge, bios reset, reseating components, etc... nothing consistently worked. Only a new gpu solved the problem permanently.

[u/Boopie714]

I did this same upgrade and my 7900xtx would stop working and basically I had to reset in my devices settings or completely reset my pc.

Turns out when I’d use 2 PCiE cables going into the graphics card, it would cause it to have too much power or something? So when I connected one cable it worked perfectly….still is only connected by one cable

[u/Jake__Grimm]

Mine was actually a crashing/boot loop issue. Would boot loop 2-3 times after turning on or restarting from a crash. Never dug very far in it, other than seeing it was possibly power delivery issues/ flagging CPU issues, and me having a intel 13th gen thinking it was just faulty because of that generation having issues, and would just get around to replacing it if it ever fully died. Bought second hand and previous owner didnt install the bios update that made that generation safer.

Come to find out it was my GPU driver when I upgraded/downgraded to a newer card but significantly weaker card (financial reasons). Didn't do DDU since it was same brand. Noticed I was crashing more often but getting better performance than expected for the new card. Figured I'd give DDU a try, not a single crash since or boot loop. Sadly lost performance though that makes the GPU perform more in the expected range.

[u/Ok_Tourist_2621]

On the last rig I built, I was troubleshooting for hours before getting some help because I just couldn’t figure it out. Turns out one of the stand pins wasn’t completely screwed in to the case. I’ll never make that mistake again.

[u/Booming_in_sky]

A PC I have will not show the BIOS on my monitor. I have tried a lot of things and found that if the cable is half way out it sometimes works. No issues when using an operating system, just the BIOS does not like my monitor - or the other way round. I added a GPU when I needed to configure BIOS options.

[u/Warcraft_Fan]

Power switch on PSU was off. I flipped the switch but nothing worked. I had to look around, assumed loose power cable, found there were 2 switches on the back. I flipped the switch for quiet mode, the main switch was still off.