PC won't boot up properly

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Vinyl Richie

Bronze Level Poster
Hi guys. I got my new PC from PC Specialist about 5 weeks ago. I was using it last night and closed it down normally. This morning when I turned it on it started booting up but died after like 3 seconds. Then it automatically tried booting up again itself, but it doesn't get far. it doesn't die again but it just sits there with nothing showing up on the monitor and the keyboard lights stay off. I tried using the restart button and this time it did the boot up and restart after 3 seconds thing twice before staying on, but again I can't use the pc - nothing on the monitor and keyboard lights not on (ie it's off). I know it's not an issue with the monitor or keyboard or anything as I'm using my old PC now as I am working from home today and have work to do. Anyone got any advice before I call the helpline? I checked all connections of course, and I use a surge protector.

Any help greatly appreciated.

Thanks
 
vanthus

vanthus

Member Resting in Peace
Could be a hardware problem ,possibly RAM,do you have any post beeps as mentioned by steaky.Alternatively try starting in safe mode,if it starts in safemode it would probably rule out a hardware issue.to do this,
1) Tap F8 on startup.
2) If boot menu appears, select your HDD and press enter
3) Immediately begin tapping F8 again
4) Windows Boot Menu will appear./select safemode.
If you can start in safe mode,
Type msconfig in the Start Search box and then press ENTER.
untick all startup items in system configuration under "startup" tab,then restart normally if it restarts ok tick startup items one at a time,till you isolate the problem,or if there's loads tick half of them to quicken the process.
or you can try it this way,
Type msconfig in the Start Search box and then press ENTER.
On the General tab, click Selective Startup.
Under Selective Startup, click to clear the Load Startup Items check box.
Click the Services tab, click to select the Hide All Microsoft Services check box, and then click Disable All.
Click OK.then restart.
if pc boots ok you need to isolate the problem startup item.
If you can't start in safe mode try a startup repair,
Insert windows7 os disk, & tap f8 key on startup.
This will bring up boot menu,choose optical drive as boot source,then press any key to boot from the windows7 disc.choose preferences for language & time.
Click on repair your computer.
Click on start up repair.
Might be worth trying a system restore first from the same location.
 
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Vinyl Richie

Bronze Level Poster
Hi guys, thanks for your comments. To answer your questions, there are no beeps and the system is not overclocked.

I spoke to support on the phone but we didn't really get too far yet. After a reset it somehow brought up a screen listing devices etc and at the bottom saying something like "Overclocking failed, hit F1 to enter setup and re-configure". The tech guy said that's just a default message. So hit F1, then F10, then enter. PC reset again and this time it booted and managed to get to the windows password screen. Tech guy told me to shut it down again before entering pw, to see if the issue was resolved. It wasn't. So he told me to hold the power button in for 15 seconds after shutting down. Did that but no change. Infact this time when I turned it on it booted for 5 secs, then restarted, booted for 8 seconds, then restarted, then finally stopped restarting but was stuck again at a blank screen. He then asked me to go inside the PC and I told him I'd call back after I got a screwdriver and stuff. His suggestion was to unscrew components until we found what the error was, starting with the GPU. Anyway I called back but was in a queue for a while and had to hang up - meetings for work.

In the meantime I tried what vanthus suggested. See below:

- Turn PC on, no beeps, it restarts itself after about 8-10 secs, no beeps, hangs at blank screen with no keyboard lights on etc.
- I held in the restart button rather than OFF (it beeped when i did this)
- Does the same thing again, except this time after 2nd restart it goes to that setup screen again (I was tapping F8 as suggested but keyboard lights weren't on) ... "Overclocking Failed. F1 to Run Setup".
- Hit F1 and in there was an option F8 for boot menu. Hit F8, selected the HDD, hit enter. i started tapping F8 but it just loaded windows as normal... I entered my password and now I'm back in.

There was an error message box on the desktop when it logged me in "Windows cannot find UpdateTool.exe". Dunno what that is or if it's of any significance.

Thing is, what to do now? Do a system restore? I guarantee it won't boot again if i do a restart. I'm currently just backing up some work data that is on the PC onto an external HD.

Would the fact that I am in windows are normal now suggest it isn't hardware related??

Thanks!
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Last edited:
vanthus

vanthus

Member Resting in Peace
Vinyl Richie said:
Thing is, what to do now? Do a system restore? I guarantee it won't boot again if i do a restart. I'm currently just backing up some work data that is on the PC onto an external HD.

Would the fact that I am in windows are normal now suggest it isn't hardware related??

Thanks!
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Click to expand...
I could suggest a few things,but best wait now,keep system on and contact PCS again.
 
V

Vinyl Richie

Bronze Level Poster
Spoke to Support again, they want me to do a memory test by removing the RAM and use trial and error to see if it's that causing an issue. Wasn't able to run the windows memory test because when the system reboots to do it, it doesn't start up again!

Impressed with the customer support though, friendly and helpful. Will update later.
 
vanthus

vanthus

Member Resting in Peace
A shot in the dark really,but try booting into bios settings,
on startup press del(delete key)
Check your motherboard user guide to get more info,
check that first boot device is set to your OS hard drive and not something like USB,also unplug any USB flash drive sticks if you have any connected.
 
V

Vinyl Richie

Bronze Level Poster
I removed both sticks of RAM and powered up the PC. No difference. Machine turned itself off and on a couple of times before just idling as usual. So I'm ruling out memory as the cause.

I put the RAM back in and removed the GPU. Power up the PC. This time it did not turn itself off and on again... however it did just idle with a blank screen and didn't boot Windows.

I held the restart button in and it beeped and rebooted. The "Overclocking Failed - Press F1 to Reconfigure" error screen appeared. I went into setup as before, hit F8 and choose to boot from HDD. Windows then loaded normally... well it started to load. Then it started running the Windows Memory Diagnostics Tool which I had tried to run earlier (when the tool restarted the PC but of course it didn't boot back up again). That finished and didn't find any problems (so can def rule memory out now methinks). Then I was able to enter my password and am using my new PC right now.

However as before, when I reboot I'm pretty sure it won't load windows again. If it lets me, I'll try what you say, vanthus. But normally when it doesn't load windows it's a blank screen and you can't use keyboard, so banging delete to get into bios isn't an option.

Wonder what the heck could be causing this. :wacko:
 
V

Vinyl Richie

Bronze Level Poster
Well it has to be sent back. :( :(

I gather that I only need to send the PC and power cable back. I still have the original box it came in and the 2 bits of polystyrene, but not bubble wrap or anything. Guess I should bulk the box up with old newspapers or something.
 
vanthus

vanthus

Member Resting in Peace
You only need to send the PC back far as I can remember and you should be OK packing it up with newspaper.
 
V

Vinyl Richie

Bronze Level Poster
So I sent it back, they returned it a week later, after 2 days the issue resurfaced and now I have EXACTLY the same issue I had before. I am absolutely furious right now if truth be told.

Latest advice is to "try removing the battery on the mainboard for approx 1 minute then reseating". I don't have much of a clue hardware wise, hence I bought off a company like this instead of building my own. Nevertheless, I opened up the PC and had a look inside. Google and Youtube had made me think I'd be looking for a watch type battery which was easily removable. There is nothing like that in there. I don't know what I should be disconnecting and when I did try to pull out a cable it wouldn't budge.

Anyone have any advice? Spec

Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-3570 (3.4GHz) 6MB Cache
ASUS® P8Z77-V: PCI-E 3.0 READY, WIFI, SLI, CROSSFIREX
8GB SAMSUNG DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz
2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 670
2TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD2002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
CORSAIR 750W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX750 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE
SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE INTEL CPU COOLER

Thanks
 
V

Vinyl Richie

Bronze Level Poster
Found it, it was under the GPU which I needed to remove first. At first i thought it had worked up as PC booted straight away after turning it on. However I shut it down and turned it back on again and the problem was still there, except worse this time. It wouldn't boot windows at all, OR show an error screen. After about 10 manual restarts it eventually let me on. I'll be phoning tomorrow and I guess asking for a full refund.
 
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