PC No Longer Posts

SD-[Inc]

SD-[Inc]

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Was working perfectly fine. Wouldn't wake one morning. Powered on and off many times and no Post :(

It's an ASUS TUF Gaming x570-plus motherboard. The DRAM LED turns yellow and stays yellow. No other lights came on at all. I tried swapping memory into different slots and such and same thing. I have 2 sticks and tried different configurations of 1 or 2 with no luck. I doubt both sticks could have failed at same time. So probably MB died. Any other ideas before I tear the whole thing do to replace MB?
 
Have you cleared CMOS? Any dark/burnt spots on the board, specifically near the DIMM slots?

I'm assuming no POST LED, eh?
 
Clearing CMOS didn't change things. Can't See any visible damage on top of board. I'll have to yank the whole thing out to look underneath. I tried pulling video card and using onboard video still nothing. Swapping PSU could be worth it. Need to see if I can find one.
 
IIRC I not too long ago had the same problem of the PC not posting. Yadda yadda yadda, I disconnected an external USB HD bay that had a hard drive in it, and then the PC booted fine.
Same motherboard, though the WiFi version.

P.S. A week ago I noticed horrible read speeds on an internal SSD. I could write to it full speed, but reading from it was terrible. I have a Phantek case with the SSD mounted in little doors, and I guess a cable came slightly loose. Pressed it in, problem solved.

P.P.S. I have a hub for external drives, and yadda yadda yadda, I found that the ones powered from it stopped performing poorly once I hooked them directly up to USB ports. I now only use that hub for the keyboard, mouse, and an external drive that gets its power from the wall.
 
Another hint is that it’s not the first time the PC would not wake. But power off/on fixed it. Not this time.
 
Try turning off the PSU, unplugging it, and then holding the power on button of the PC. Very doubtful that would do anything at this point, but that might help empty any capacitors that are holding some juice. Do that, then try booting again. You can also try holding down the power button. I had an old Dell XPS 420 that that trick was sometimes necessary with. It was a backup PC, and I refused to let it die for a long time.
 
It's probably the PSU. Just be happy it didn't take the whole rig with it :)
 
Have you tried removing the CR2032 battery from the motherboard for about 20 minutes and putting in a fresh one? I've had all sorts of weird posting grief fixed by that on some motherboards after about 3-5 years of owning 'em.

If not that then the PSU would be my first choice also, but you'd be surprised what a fresh battery can do.
 
digitalwanderer said:
Have you tried removing the CR2032 battery from the motherboard for about 20 minutes and putting in a fresh one? I've had all sorts of weird posting grief fixed by that on some motherboards after about 3-5 years of owning 'em.

If not that then the PSU would be my first choice also, but you'd be surprised what a fresh battery can do.
Click to expand...

Thanks. That’s a cheap and easy try. Even makes sense given the symptoms. Fingers crossed.
 
It sound like the easiest way to debug this thing is to pull it out of the case and set up a test bench. What do you guys do for a power switch when running on a test bench? I have never run a MB like this before. Is there any other tips? I bought an nice anti-static pad. What else might I need?
 
One thing you may try is putting your memory in, making sure it's seated firmly, and then jiggle it a little bit back in forth in the slot (not with extreme force, but enough that it shakes back in forth in the slot a bit).

For some reason that has helped me get boards back to booting again when showing strange DRAM errors on boot. I guess the sticks might not have been making good contact and that technique manages to get them seated more firmly? I'm not sure. I actually just had that problem with one of my boards earlier today.

The other thing is unplug everything from the board including all SATA, GPU and other PCI-E cards, and see if that helps get it to boot. It should boot past memory error lights even with no GPU in. Some boards actually boot entirely sans-GPU although obviously you get no video signal. In any case, that can troubleshoot whether something else is causing a fault.

SD-[Inc] said:
It sound like the easiest way to debug this thing is to pull it out of the case and set up a test bench. What do you guys do for a power switch when running on a test bench? I have never run a MB like this before. Is there any other tips? I bought an nice anti-static pad. What else might I need?
Click to expand...

For power switch you can just use a screwdriver to jump the power switch pins on the board. It's easiest with a Phillip's head since it's not as wide and you can kind of just slide the diamond shape in between the two pins.
 
Nagorak said:
One thing you may try is putting your memory in, making sure it's seated firmly, and then jiggle it a little bit back in forth in the slot (not with extreme force, but enough that it shakes back in forth in the slot a bit).

For some reason that has helped me get boards back to booting again when showing strange DRAM errors on boot. I guess the sticks might not have been making good contact and that technique manages to get them seated more firmly? I'm not sure. I actually just had that problem with one of my boards earlier today.

The other thing is unplug everything from the board including all SATA, GPU and other PCI-E cards, and see if that helps get it to boot. It should boot past memory error lights even with no GPU in. Some boards actually boot entirely sans-GPU although obviously you get no video signal. In any case, that can troubleshoot whether something else is causing a fault.



For power switch you can just use a screwdriver to jump the power switch pins on the board. It's easiest with a Phillip's head since it's not as wide and you can kind of just slide the diamond shape in between the two pins.
Click to expand...

Thanks. That’s all the first stuff I tried. I did find on Amazon a cheap button setup you can just plug into motherboard headers that is perfect for this job. I am bummed my motherboard doesn’t support BIOS flashback feature so I can’t reload bios in case it is corrupt. That’s another thing I wanted to try. Now I need to start swapping PSU, mb, memory, and/or cpu until I get it working again. :(
 
SD-[Inc] said:
It sound like the easiest way to debug this thing is to pull it out of the case and set up a test bench. What do you guys do for a power switch when running on a test bench? I have never run a MB like this before. Is there any other tips? I bought an nice anti-static pad. What else might I need?
Click to expand...


Note that I take no responsibility for someone frying their PSu by doing something wrong. :)


To test the power supply independently from anything else, you can push a wire into the motherboard connector, shorting the green wire (power on) and an adjacent black wire. This is the PSU pin that the motherboard shorts in software via the BIOS when you hit the momentary power button on your computer. If it works, it should start supplying 5 and 12v.

If you had a fan or something wired in you could see it. If you have a voltmeter you could test the lines directly (yellow/black = 12v, red/black = 5v)

IF you short the green pin and nothing at all happens then your power supply is dead as a doornail. If it works, then that's not saying that the PSU is 100% (maybe a coil died, or it tops out at a certain amount of current) but it's an indicator that your motherboard or one of the things in it could be the problem.

A short in the system (loose screw in a place it shouldn't be?) will cause the PSU to shut off immediately.
 
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I'm also going to go with PSU dieded.

I experienced something similar.

It worked one day, died sometime in the middle of sleep mode and wouldnt wake. no post or nothing. MOBO lights were still on and pulsating though.

I left it alone for a day (turned off PSU), and it started right up again the next day.

Soon after same thing happened but nothing would make it wake anymore and when it finally did it didnt stay awake for very long. I put in a new PSU and havent had any issues since. Lucky for me none of the times it died was when i was using the PC, so it either died in sleep mode, or it died just idling.

I've had that PSU since building a Phenom II system way back when, so it most likely outlived its useful service life.
 
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