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Troubleshooting my newly built computer
Heys all, finally got all my parts in and spent hours sifting through non-detailed instructions(although they did have picture diagrams) and finally completed(or so i thought) successfully my new computer. connected all the peripherals and went to turn the power switch, for about 3/4ths of a second i was blissfully happy, until the computer started to power down again. It seemed to repeat the process without me touching the power button a 2nd time indefinitely as well.
After pushing the button, i see the led light up and i also saw one led on the motherboard light up as well, and i hear the fan(not sure which, there's 4 maybe im hearing all 4 of them tho) start up but just as quickly it all dies down and after 2 or 3 seconds later it repeats the process.
So with those clues, can anyone please help me in troubleshooting this?
A couple other things that might be an issue that i wouldnt know, when i was applying the heatsink, i didn't realize how fast the thermal paste dried and i took to long screwing in the mount for the heatsink and end result, the heatsink got shifted just a tiny little bit so its a little crooked and the paste dried so...can't move it.
Also Quizz suggested i get the sapphire radeon hd 6950 1gb video card but when i as finalizing my purchase, in the time between me selecting it and about to checkout, the card sold out. so i ended up buying the sapphire radeon hd 6950 2gb video card, i dont know if that extra 1g ram means my power supply just can't power it up and i need a stronger one than a 650w?
And lastly, i dont know if this happened while i was assembling the computer or if it arrived this way, but one of the Sata pair connectors on the motherboard seems to be missing, specifically the sata 7-8(which sucks because 1-2 and 7-8 are the sata 3 connections). I was hoping even though that seemed to be missing that it would still work but maybe not given how things are...
That's everything i can think of, hopefully whatever you guys think may be the problem is a simple one and that i won't have to buy or replace anything, but let me know and i'll see what i can do.
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Comments
Could be a number of things. To help narrow down, list the specs of your build with brand names and all. motherboard, video card, processor, hard drives, etc. And let us know what all was hooked up at the time you tried to power on.
Did you use a surge protector or power strip?
I've seen something like that happen because a power button was simply stuck. So give it another look over, and list your specs please
if you use w7 it will restart a lot of time before it is done!check the website of your nobo vendor get the paper for your mobo there
read them make sure all is connected has they say (on average it is all plug and play so you wont have many issue understanding
when that is done go in bios ,make sure all is according to the same booklet again it is all faily simple(to access bios press del key (spam the key about every second till the screen change(not the black one if you get a black screen restart and try to time better,once in adjust like mentionned in booklet,once that is done .you should be fine
make sure cd drive or dvd drive is first boot put ms window 7 disk in (make sure to use 64 bit or 32 bit depending what you chose(it prob is 64 bit)
lets it run for 30 minute watch it once in a while read what it ask chose what you want ,again its plug and play so it is all self explanatory.
after a bunch of reboot ,update (will probably need a bunch of restart to get all updated ,get microsoft security essential,ms sweeper (beta)to be used once a month when you re sleeping.
go to ati/amd website and search for you update there ,(always uninstall yours first.)the screen will change size its normal you will be at ms default size.
once you updated ati driver your done restart and enjoy your system.
and as far as your sata connectors are concerned. you have to watch REAL closely to the model of the motherboard. Sometimes they give you a generic picture of that series of motherboard, but the SPECIFIC board you have, doesn't have those.
Example they may show a pic of the Asus k85743 and you have a k854743 ..one freakin number off! and its different. hehe.
You must have pluged in the the main 20+4 pin, but did you plug in the 4/6 pin power connector? (Right Above the CPU Socket)
Pics of Guts Help
Receive any error Code? (did you plug in Mobo speaker to hear beep codes?)
This happened to my friend, similar result. He thought it was the motherboard for the longest time, but it was the case he bought and the power button would get stuck down when he tried turning it on. Would turn on for a few seconds then turn off.
This also happens occasionally when the motherboard is shorted by its back touching the metal case. Make sure if your case/motherboard has pegs to raise it off the case that you use them.
If you are concerned with the video card drawing too much power, you should be able to boot up the system without it (of course you wouldn't be able to see anything unless you have onboard video). Just unplug the power and video card and try turning on the system and seeing if the result is the same.
"They essentially want to say 'Correlation proves Causation' when it's just not true." - Sovrath
i did plug in the huge 24 pin one! but i didn't know there was another pin power connector that i was supposed to plug something into. i'll look into this. meanwhile here's my specs
Gfx card- Sapphire flex hd6950 2g ram
psu - corsair 650W TXV2
ssd - 64g crucial m4
memory- 4gx2 corsair vengeance ddr3
motherboard- msi p67a-gd55
processor- intel i5 sandy bridge 2500k
cd/dvd- asus dvdrw-24B1ST
hdd- 2 tb western digital caviar black 7200rpm
cpu cooler/heatsink - cooler master hyper 212 plus
that should be everything
to answer a couple other questions, to the person who mentioned something about w7, this is the very first time the computer is being turned on, so i haven't had a chance to even set up the bios yet let alone install an OS.
and i plugged it into a surge protector. not just a 6-way strip but an actual surge protector
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ok this is probably the problem, I'm looking at a picture of your motherboard now. plug in your 24 pin power connector and theres another 8 pin over by the back i/o panel, Try that and see what happens
I Also just took a look at your video card. If i found the right one, be sure to connect the 2 6 pin pci-e power connectors to it as well. This wouldn't cause a restart if it wasn't connected, but your video card wouldn't perform to its potential
gravitz i will love you for a very long time man, i totally missed that other 8pin connector, i see it in my manual now. i'm gonna open it up and try it, i hope i have time cause i have to leave for work soon hah. as for the gfx connectors i did that. but i think you found my problem, thanks so much and ill report back with hopefully good news soon.
EDIt: just got the 8 pin connector in, was hard too...not enough room to manuever fingers. anyway wont have enough time to test it and switch computers to report but i will be back in about 6 hours so youll hear from me then, thanks again for all the help and hopefully everything will check out
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
Hah, no problem. You can feel free to PM me any time if you need anything else!
Okay that 8pin connector turned out to be the issue, its now able to properly turn on. and it loaded the bios menu by itself the first time. but that's where i start having issues.
first off, the screen seems a bit distorted. it doesn't look like it should in the manual. it seems to be a resolution error(i'm using a 22 inch( i think) tv as my computer monitor) that's a minor issue however, but a slightly bigger and annoying one is the text that details what an option does tends to not clear itself out when i exit out to see a new menu and it overlaps over old information. again that's a minor issue that i was sure would work it self out when i installed windows/drivers.
i finally found the boot up screen in the bios and set my dvd drive to be the first bootable device saved changes and restarted my computer after putting in the windows 7 disc but nothing ever came up. it showed the msi screen that's actually the gfx on the box the motherboard came in for half a sec then goes to a black screen with a never-ending blinking underscore. the OS disc never got loaded up.
i dont think the issue is with the cd/dvd drive because it opens up just fine, the green led shows up after i close it making it look like its actually reading the disc, and i also can kinda hear its gears churning. and also the dvd does move after closing so i know it spun at least a little bit(as in i put the dvd facing one way, and when i take it out its facing another way).
anyone think they know what my issue is?
a little bit more information is the windows 7 that i was trying to install was windows 7 home premium OEM. i read somewhere that i needed something called an OPK? but i think thats only if i was intending to sell this computer which i dont but idk if you HAVE to have that to install an OEM or is that just something that has nothing to do with my needs.
also when i saw the boot up screen showing all the boot up options in the order, i did notice there was a couple diff cd/dvd drives, 1 was my asus dvd drive i bought, another was 'usb cd/dvd drive' another was uefi(i think) and i saw i could list my asus under as well. is my issue that i simply need to disable all these other drives even though i set the Asus as the 1st bootable device?
please help me ;_; thanks.
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Make sure your disc works on another computer.
You don't have to actually install it, but make sure it boots. I've had OEM discs go bunk before because of dirt/fingerprints/etc. IDK why the Win7 install dvd seems to be more finiky than most every other DVD, but yeah.
The OPK is only if you are making a blank HD image to transfer to a bunch of bulk pre-built computers. I've used OEM discs fine in the past.
If the disc boots fine on another computer - play with the BIOS settings some more. You should see your SATA DVD drive listed there and put it ahead of anything else.
When installing Windows, sometimes you have to wait a while. It will look like it isn't doing anything. Even when installing it to an SSD, it will sometimes take several minutes at a time in which it looks like the system has completely locked up. It's doing stuff in the background, but just isn't telling you about it. Now, if you leave it for an hour and still nothing happens, then something might be wrong. But try that first.
Ok, you have set your first bootable disc to the DVD reader and the secondary to a harddrive.
As Quizz said it could take a few minutes, I have seen up to 3 minutes delay during the hundred or so OSes I have installed so be a little patient.
You should hear the DVD start to run and when it does you should push the anykey, it might be that your TV misses that text because it is just out of the screen or something.
"Push any key to boot from the CD" is the usual message. If you don't you should get the message that it found no OS on your harddrive and ask you to push any key to reboot.
Does it do anything or just lock itself up?
Also power light and such doesnt mean that the board is finding your DVD drive
Can you confirm in the BIOS that the system can see the DVD drive?
Usually on the first screen in the BIOS it will list all your drives by their part number
You should have 3 drives listed - your 2 HDDs and the DVD drive
In the past i have had issues with where SATA drives are plugged in (this though is more to do with IDE controllers and having seen your mobo it doesnt have an IDE so dont worry, nice mobo by the way!)
resit your heatsink on the CPU, did you do the apply a pea size glob thermal compound in the middle then press the heat sink on to it?. I think this will even more likely be the reason if you used the stock cooler that come with CPU's, they're not that good and tricky for first time builders. The power on then off is normal if unpluged your PSU, but should boot up on the second, if repeating, then there's a good chance your CPU getting to hot and the built in Intel heat protection cycling the Pc boot to protect it from damage.
+1 on the cpu heatsink reaseating with correct thermal paste. I'd look online to see what the manufacturer says for exactly how to apply the thermal paste to the cpu. Some say apply them differently, but usually less is more.
I think there's something hardware related going on still. You shouldn't have screen corruption in your BIOS menu like you described. Might want to see how it operates with just one stick of RAM in there (and then the other) to see if there's possible memory issues. You might want to disconnect the SSD and hard drive too and just see if you can get it to boot off the DVD first.
I considered that when I did my earlier post as well, but I don't think it fits how it acts here.
Instead of locking up it should reboot as soon as it overheats. Usually is this due to the heatsink not sitting perfect, not the cooling paste in itself (but when you open it up and change the paste it will fix the problem anyways unless you mount it wrong the second time as well).
This might be the problem still and checking that the heat sink is correctly mounted is a good idea of course.
As for the DVD that the DVD opens is just proof that the powercord is plugged in, but it doesn't tells us anything more. However did OP put it as the main boot device and that means it is in.
I see one of 3 issues likely:
1. OP can due to his screen not see that he must hit space or another key to actually boot the DVD.
2. The DVD has some dirt, clean it.
3. Something is weird with the harddrive. Check that you can see it in the bios and check so it is the secondary boot device.
The fourth is that the heat sink isn't sitting straight against the processor. While the original cooling paste is so so it would be no problem with it just booting up W7, then it would overheat when he started to use a lot of processor power.
sorry for the delay in posting, i'll try to let it run a few minutes before i do anything else and also press a key to see if it was indeed just offscreen, even though i did still see the blinking underscore the short time i was waiting so i doubt its offscreen but i didnt let it sit for more than a minute, so that could be the issue.
the CD is crystal clean as well.
also my dvd drive does show up in the boot device list and i did select it to be number 1, i can't say if i selected one of the harddrives to be number 2 though, i didn't know that was important but i believe one of them were in the number 2 slot to begin with, but i'll double check when i try again to be sure.
and i thought of another issue that could be the reason why its not working. this is the dvd drive that i purchased. it IS capable of reading data from dvds right? i thought and still think when i went to check it again that it is but i could be wrong.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135204&Tpk=asus drw-24b1st dvd burner
also this talk about reseating the heatsink, how do you actually go about doing that when its literally glued on the processor? and i didnt use a small amount....i used the whole tiny bottle that the heatsink came with, didnt know i was supposed to use a tiny amount, the stupid picture diagrams were worth crap as far as explaining how to do things in detail. so i hope that wont cause any issues later down in the line. but how do you actually remove the heatsink if its glued on with the thermal paste.
one last thing, about the video distortion, i dont know if i mentioned it or not but my gfx card didn't come with a regular computer cable connector(the one that's blue and looks like a triangle with the top tip cut off) and i'm connecting with an hdmi cable from the tv to my computer(gfx card) so would that be a possible cause for the distortion?
thanks again for all the help and tips, i'll try to do each and every suggestion and hopefully we'll find the issue. i just hope its not the heatsink that i need to change, and more importantly that i didn't damage the processor permanently or anything else for that matter.
EDIT: oh god..i think i got just a dvd burner, not one that actually is capable of reading/playback of dvds. reason being is when i went to the link of the one i bought, and clicked on details, it shows this under type : DVD Burner. i just found a list of DVD drives complete separate to all DVD burners, and under type they actually say DVD-ROM Drive. Can someone comfirm this for me please if i'm right in this, it would explain why its not reading the disc. Please get back to me asap someone who knows so i can go out and buy an actual DVD-ROM drive tonight from some computer store. Thanks again.
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Click the details tab of the link you gave: DVD-ROM read speed: 16X. It can read DVDs just fine.
It sounds like you used way too much thermal paste. Even if that's not the immediate cause of the problem, you should redo that. You only want a little bit.
Relax dude, DVD burners do everything, it's what you wanted. Using HDMI is also not an issue.
Using an entire tube of thermal paste is a serious mess but the type of thermal paste stock heatsinks come with should NOT be conductive so it shouldn't be causing any issues. At some point you should probably pop that heatsink off and clean it up as best you can just so you don't have to deal with it in a couple years after it's hardened.
There ARE types of thermal paste with silver powder in them that are conductive like Arctic Silver 5 and can cause problems when you get them all over stuff. There was someone in here who had AS5 run down his video card and caused crashes until he cleaned it off. But the type that comes with stock heatsinks is a non-conductive, cheap ceramic based paste.
If you do try to clean it up, it can help to warm up the processor first - just leave it in the BIOS screen for a few minutes. Then undo the retention pegs, and do some twisting motions to get the stuff fluid and lift it off. If it's really fucking glued on there you may just have to give up, but this fresh of paste shouldn't be impossible to get off. I have seen old paste so strong that it ripped the CPU out of the socket trying to pull it out before (obsolete CPU, I didn't care so yanked as hard as I could) but that had years of hardening on its side.
Once you get it off, thermal paste is kinda of a pain to clean up but paper towels, Q-tips and rubbing alcohol are pretty much the best way to go about it. Just make sure to unplug the computer first and I'd pop out the CMOS battery too if you're gonna be cleaning up between capacitors and shit.
All that said I do doubt spilled thermal paste is causing the issues - I'd try singling out the RAM, try it with no hard drives in, and try clearing the CMOS (instructions in the manual, but it's usually a jumper right next to the CMOS battery that you move over for a few seconds then move back)
well i didnt just apply the thermal paste, i applied it 2 nights ago so its not moving, trust me. i tried to reposition it cause its only very very slightly off center and was half blocking one of the ram slots(with the fan) but i just moved the fan tot he other side and all was well again.
the fact that the dvd burner can read dvds is a bit depressing however. i was really hoping it was something simple. as far as taking out the hard drives, dont i need at least 1 in there to install the OS on? and when i do unplug them, should i unplug just the sata thats connecting to the drives it self or unplug the sata from the drive and the sata to the motherboard along with the power supply to them as well? or take it a step further and take them completely out of the case as well
also i didnt use a stock cpu heatsink/cooler, i got the cooler master hyper 212 plus cpu cooler/heatsink.
so if the paste is dried and hard as hell, is the only way to really get it off to just pull and pull and pull? i really REALLY dont want to fuck my processor up by doing that if it can be avoided.
also i'll try the suggestion with the ram sticks, and try with just 1 in and see if that works. may take me awhile to respond again, have to unplug all peripherals and plug them back into the other computer, and vise versa to respond again.
one last question too about this whole process to make sure im doing this right. i turn the computer on, press del to get to the setup screen and go over to the utilities and enter the boot device list menu, and first thing i do is make sure the boot device 1 is set to my ASUS dvd burner(which it does recognize and names it) and if i were to do this with my harddrives in, then number 2 would be the SSD and number 3 would be my HDD, and then i save and exit and restart the computer with the windows 7 disc in, and give it a few minutes and if i dont see any visual change then try to press a random key and it -should- work having done all that correct? or am i missing a step or three?
i was doing a little bit of reading and saw something saying about changing drives to SATA mode instead of IDE mode and what not, not sure how to even go about doing that but is that not something i have to worry about or something?
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Thing is, the mid-quality thermal pastes that come with aftermarket heatsinks shouldn't dry out into concrete like the cheap stock stuff does so I still find it difficult to believe the paste is locking that heatsink on so hard. But I guess it's on there.
Also you are doing the BIOS boot options properly as you described.
As for the drives, yes you need a hard drive to install to but you do not need a hard drive in there to boot off the DVD and just see if it's working. It will boot up to the Windows 7 installer, give you a window with a list of hard drives you want to install to and just have none listed since there are no hard drives.
When you're troubleshooting something difficult to pin down it's best to remove as many variables as possible, so unplugging the hard drives (just need to disconnect the SATA no need to pull them out) is one more thing to remove from the equation.
edit: also if you really can't get the heatsink off there must just be a ton of thermal paste locking it down. If you can see any thermal paste coming out the sides that's way too much, but you can clean that off and see if it helps loosen it up. There is a thermal paste solvent you can buy from Newegg that may help break it down and get that heatsink off.
Oh, if you have a USB flash drive you should also try to make a bootable flash drive just to see if it's just the DVD drive not working. If you have a 4 GB one you can download the Win 7 iso here and use the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool here to make a Win7 USB installer.