Well, this Post-a-Day May might as well keep up the grand PMS tradition of demanding free help troubleshooting hardware problems.
So I get home, go to turn PC on (from standby), login screen comes up, mouse moves cursor but otherwise none of the inputs do a thing. (That is, I clicked around frantically and hit space bar a few times.) Turned off (holding down the power button for a bit) and now the thing just won't turn on. (Fans spin up--CPU, GPU, case, all the fans. SSD LEDs go on, that sort of thing. But there's no graphical output and keyboard/mouse don't do their usual turning on thing with the lights flashing.)
I then dicked around for a bit (unplugged USB components, popped out the RAM/video card to see if it would do anything without those) and then my roommate brought a young woman home and it was too frustrating to keep at that work with the now necessary headphones, so I turn to you, PMS, for insight.
Only recent hardware change was installing an external (USB) HDD for backup purposes. I believe I've booted since installing that (and it wasn't plugged in at this point), but maybe not from standby? If that matters?
(In a flash of alcohol induced responsibility, I had a sudden and uncontrollable urge to back up my files maybe two weeks ago. I bought said backup media, which arrived to my great surprise at work some days later, and after about a week of that I finally got around to backing up those files, so I guess that happened just in time?)
So basically: Any ideas? The next steps I'm seeing from everything are to bench test, but I don't have any spare components lying around. Is there a way out of this without having to buy redundant hardware one thing at a time and swap it in until I figure out what the issue is? Because then dammit.
(Though I guess it could only be like two or three components.)
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
It's the motherboard, if I had to guess. What brand of computer is this? Or did you build it yourself?
HeyDude posted...
It's the motherboard, if I had to guess. What brand of computer is this? Or did you build it yourself?
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I'm tired of trying to please the world that spins around me; This time I'm doing it for me and me alone; I don't need anyone, don't think I ever did.
Yeah this is that same one. Mobo is a gigabyte something something. So I can see if it's still under warranty? Or would that make me a mook and this is just a sign that it's time to upgrade many-a-thing?
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
Ol' Mith trying to get his post count up. LOL
Definitely check if it's still under warranty. This is actually a nice thing because they don't want to replace it for free if it ain't broken, so they'll take you through some troubleshooting.
So I've been about ground down to the point of just upgrading the system. (I wanted to get a better gpu, but it turns out that I've missed the boat on that one if I want a mobo that will accommodate my cpu, etc., which is a tale as old as time or at least as old as time ca 1990.)
Sooooo guess it's back to moonlight freelancing for me!
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
I hate to see a problem brought up and then not solved. You sure you don't wanna troubleshoot more? I'm on AIM (yeah you and James and Kodi are 3 of the 5 people I have seen on AIM in the past 2 years).
I mean I don't know what there is to do short of picking up dummy components and switching them out.
Also I already ordered a new mobo, cpu, and gpu soooooooooo. Yeah.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
So your motherboard wasn't under warranty I assume.
Lamentably, no.
Ugggh guys reassure me that no one's ever gotten a new system to boot on the first go. The new mobo isn't picking up the SSD in BIOS and I am googling many things to work out the implications of this V_V
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
I hate this guy for having the same problem and giving up:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/312634-30-p8z77-bios-detect
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
Okay just because I've been talking this through with my roommate and he has no idea what I'm talking about I see three main branches of thing to do:
1) I can keep trying troubleshooting steps (e.g. flashing the BIOS) to see whether that will help. I'm kind of reluctant on that because my apartment has terrible wiring and I am paranoid about bricking the component when the lights flicker. (Let me know if this is unreasonable.)
2) I can hope that the drive will be detected as a storage device even if it is not detected as a boot device. In that case, it seems reasonable to cut my losses and install Windows on the HDD and just use the SSD for big heavy programs.
(And there are sub-decisions inherent in this, since that backup I did the other day for some reason is like 3/4 of a backup. So I either need to try to recover that which means mucking about with Unix which might just invite further catastrophe.)
3) I guess I can look into returning the mobo, but I'm sure that will involve restocking fees and other thing that drive a man to wrath.
Am I being crazy about the perils of flashing one's BIOS? Or should I just go with the second one?
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
And because I'm already in too deep I'm just going to keep posting. I probably am just going to try booting into ubuntu to recover my stupid data and then wipe the HDD, which in addition to a bunch of files from before has a full Windows install from two machines ago that I just never bothered to clear off because it has a *whole* terabyte and no one will ever be able to use that much space. So it's disorderly and I'm looking on this as an opportunity.
(It will also be a test of whether the machine will detect the SSD as a storage-but-not-boot device.)
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
Well, mine booted first try, but I think there was some problem with it nonetheless.
So right now, it sounds like it "boots" but if you start it up with a Windows disc to install Windows, it tells you it doesn't detect any drives to install WIndows onto?
Well, it detects the HDD and the whatever-the-three-letter-acronym-for-a-DVD-drive-is, just not the SSD.
I am just about done recovering my stupid data (thanks, uBuntu), but sadly it's still not detecting the SSD.
I might just install an OS onto the HDD and return to this problem farther down the road. (I had foolishly, nay, hubristically, set aside Saturday as my "tweak new system into usability" evening, so in the absence of said system I'm just going to buy beer and Mexican takeout and play TWEWY, as readers of my other topic will know).
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
ODD. Optical Disc Drive.
Does the SSD still detect OK by any other computer? Man I wish I was there. We could tag team this thang.
Yeah! Knew there had to be one.
I don't have another computer handy to do even basic tests. This got so bad that I nearly swiped a discarded Compaq from my neighbor's trash walking home from brunch yesterday. (Because yes I went to brunch. I am cosmopolitan man, dammit.)
My current plan is to find the nearest data recovery place and see how much they want to mount the thing just to tell me whether it works. I am deciding in advance that I would pay as much as five American dollars for that information.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir