I bought a new PC but I’m having an annoying problem with it: if I shut it down for awhile, I don’t get an image at all when booting, although it does boot succesfully into windows (I can hear the windows sound). I manage to get an image eventually by booting several times, turning off the power on the power supply etc, although this seems random and I haven’t figured out a combination that works every time. Rebooting from Windows works fine. Also, when it boots unsuccesfully, the fan of my graphics card runs at a very high speed. Another weird thing is that if I shut down my PC the keyboard light (numlock) stays on.
I’ve tried changing the power connectors to the graphics card, various combinations of the motherboard power connectors (4/8 pin and 20/24 pin), reseating the graphics card, running it with everything disconnected except the graphics card, tried an old power supply… can’t think of anything else to try now.
My PC specs are:
-AMD Phenom II 955
-Sapphire ATI Radeon 4890 Vapor-X
-Asrock M3A770 DE motherboard
-4 GB DDR3
-Antec 500W power supply
-2 SATA HD’s
-DVD-writer
-Windows 7
Maybe the power supply is insufficient, but my system is very stable while playing demanding games etc.
Anyone have any suggestions on what to try next?
Sounds to me like either the graphics card is overheating, or the computer thinks that the graphics card is overheating (i.e. a bad temperature sensor).
The next few times that you have a problem with it, turn it off for 5 minutes so that everything gets a chance to cool down. If that reliably gets it to start up then it’s probably heat related.
Obviously the card is not overheating if the problem only occurs on cold starts. Reason the fan is loud is the driver does not get loaded. (It goes at 100% until told not to.)
The problem is an engineering fault somewhere. Either electronic (some component isn’t waiting long enough for power to stabilize) or software (there is a race condition–a non-deterministic bug that depends on some random outside conditions). If the problem is electronic, then you’re stuck. If it is software, try updating your BIOS. Also try changing random BIOS settings.
That’s pretty weird. The +5V standby current (that the PSU supplies when power is “off”) is being used for things it shouldn’t be. It might be screwing things up, making some components think power has not turned off. (How much did you pay for your motherboard, again?) Have you tried unplugging the computer from the wall for ~100 seconds and giving it a true cold start?
Hi, thanks for your replies. I spent the afternoon trying all your suggestions and some other stuff, and I think I fixed it. I looked at my motherboard’s manual again and found two jumper settings that might be related. First, I disabled the jumper setting for power-on-ps2/usb which fixed the keyboard light. My motherboard also has a jumper setting for “EuP” which is on by default, it’s some kind of European Union standard for decreasing power consumption when the pc is turned off. I disabled it, waited 1h15 and succesfully booted, so I’m cautiously optimistic that this setting was the cause of my problems. (damn Eurocrats :p) It’s only been one succesful boot and after a short period of time, but if it works tomorrow morning after being turned off during the night, I’ll know for sure.
About 60-70€ IIRC. Why, does Asrock have a bad reputation or something?
