YSK if you've built a computer and it won't boot, sometimes the issue can be resolved by taking the memory out and putting it back.
YSK if you've built a computer and it won't boot, sometimes the issue can be resolved by taking the memory out and putting it back.
Or by only putting one stick of memory in, or changing the slot you're using.
I was assembling a computer and everything seemed to be correct, the fan would spin up, I'd get some lights, but there was no image on the screen, not even the BIOS. I saw someone else make this suggestion and didn't think it was likely to work, but it did. First I just tried one stick, and it booted. Then I tried both sticks and it didn't work, but I reseated and then it did.
(Also worth pointing out that your motherboard should have diagnostic lights which if you check the documentation may point out which component has an issue)
Thinking about Lemmy's demographics many here may have heard of something like this, or have more helpful suggestions about troubleshooting which would be welcome. But thought I'd write out a little post about my experience to contribute to Lemmy SEO supremacy.
Many modern motherboards will also do memory training the first time you boot with new RAM sticks, and sometimes this is very slow. Your PC will boot to a black screen and behave exactly like it would with a dead CPU or RAM... there's no visual feedback.
This once caught me off guard and I spent a good hour panicking trying to diagnose a non-existing issue. Sometimes, you just literally have to wait in a black screen for a while.
This seriously stressed me out when I put my last computer together. I was patient and waited hoping it would fix itself (which it did), but my heart sank when I didn't see anything on the monitor.
Good to know this is what is happening. Some visual feedback would be nice.
This 100%. Had a buddy recently that went as far as buying an entirely new PSU and memory kit trying to troubleshoot over 3 days. He just needed to let it sit for about 15 minutes to memory train the first time.
I have never run into this with any builds, at least in the last 15 or so years. Is this a more recent thing, or am I now finding out that my first build, circa 2007 on my new DFI lanparty mobo, may have not been a defect and I'm just impatient? That was DDR2 and PATA for a time frame.
Yup, I put new RAM in a brand new laptop after booting it up only once previously. Boot it up, black screen. I got insanely scared I messed up the display to mobo ribbon or something. Nope, just was doing its RAM thing and sat on a black screen for like a minute before actually booting to bios
I put too way too much effort in this reply... Yes.. it's nerve racking, especially if you are resorting to BIOS flashback to boot the CPU on an older (new) board.
Can't get visuals (except maybe leds/indicators on the motherboard itself) when your CPU is incapable of accessing the ram or the devices yet. All external devices normally communicate through the RAM. (And by external, I mean not on the CPU package) Yet, the CPU has to solve out this chicken-and-egg problem of how to progress from the cold-boot without knowing what external RAM is installed. There are plethora of timing/clock-cycle/voltage settings for one stick of ram, which are tested on POST. Establishing sane DDR5/4 parameters is non-trivial. (I think it is order of +20!, twenty factorial: 2432902008176640000, if there were no starting point of XMP, JEDEC etc.)
I use hand tuned settings for DDR4, and on cold boot, the BIOS adjust the settings which I didn't forbid it to do. Unless I unplug the PSU from the wall, the BIOS won't retrain the memory again. I suspect my settings still aren't 100% stable. (over period of years) Non-cold-boot assumes the ram works 100% same on each power up. If some OC setting drifts past a threshold once the system is heat soaked or receives more EMI interference, this could provoke a crash/BSOD etc. in absurd theory having a busy wifi router next the ram could cause the bios to select more robust/conservative settings to counter the EMI interference. Would be fun to know, if this would be true.
Didn't know about this. How long are we talking, minutes, hours?
Anything from 30 seconds to 10 minutes, depending on your specific combination of RAM, CPU and chipset.
I just bought an MSI motherboard. The memory slots are labeled, A1, A2, B1, B2. So of course it makes sense that the first populated slot must be A2. Followed by B2. Then A1, and finally B1.
Make sure the memory is in the right slots.
I call it “re-seating” the memory because it makes me sound like I have an actual clue.
I have half a clue and also call it reseating.
I have 40 years of PC building experience and I too call it “reseating”.
There’s probably a hundred reasons it might not post. One time, my CPU wasn’t seated properly. I have heard RAM is a common way. If you’re using only one stick, be sure it’s in the right slot. Edit: or even with two, make sure it’s the right slots, read that manual!
Multiple times I had issues with two identical DIMMs in a two-slot board, and simply switching both sticks to the opposing slot fixed everything.
Maybe it was a seating issue, maybe it was ghosts. Who knows?
It's almost always labeled on the mb which slots to use first. And for some reason it's usually the #2 slots
Sometimes it can also be because you forgot to actually plug it in. 😳
I prefer to flip the PSU switch to the wrong position. Because there's no other point in time when I ever use that switch.
I've also fixed them by just unplugging them, holding the power button for like 30s, then plugging it back in.
It really shouldn't work, but hey, we tricked rocks into doing math for us with electricity, so what do you really expect?
It should work. Doing that discharges any electricity still in the mobo. A build up of static electricity can cause a computer to not post.
If you have to do this regularly, get a humidifier for the room your computer is in, and verify your outlet is properly grounded.
A much dumber reason is because you forgot to install the riser screws before screwing in the motherboard and shorting the entire motherboard against the case.
My best friend did this on his first PC bless his heart lol
WTF case is that?
I dont think I've seen a case in 20 years that even had removable/installable risers.
Hm, they're removable in about every case I've used in the past 20 years. I mostly use Fractal Design cases though, so I suppose it's something they tend to do.
I can't recall, but he did overspend on his motherboard and it was not damaged by the short. I figured out the issue, and he reinstalled it and it works just fine to this day. That was like 7 years ago.
I think the Corsair 4000D does iirc (my case).
One time, my brother and I were building a new rig for him. After spending an hour putting the thing together, it wouldn't boot. Like, push the power switch and NOTHING happened. We called his buddy who's a real wizard with computers. His first question was, "Did you try reseating all the power connectors on the board?" And that's right when we discovered we didn't connect the power for the CPU.
IMHO...99 times out of a 100 (roll a die of your choosing for a multiplier, I have been at this for a long time), OP is right on. ONCE in a long while, it's PSU/mobo related.
I miss beep codes so you know what messed up.
I think all motherboards support this, they just don't come with speakers. You can grab a speaker for you motherboard for about $2 or like 100 for $20
Exactly, then having to go through a thick-ass manual to find out what code it is. Oh, I just need to move a jumper...
All mobos are a bit different. Best tip: RTFM
As long as we're going for general tips, sometimes it's as simple as remembering to turn on the switch on the power supply and surge protector/UPS if plugged into such things (hopefully it is)
Only higher end boards tend to have diagnostic lights.
I would say most mid range boards have diagnostic LEDs now. My gigabyte b450 board has some, for example, which I consider solidly mid range not high end.
If something is super fucky and defying all logic, try a different PSU. It's the one thing apart from the motherboard that can effect every area of your PC.
I have a folder of photos on my PC, shared over the network. I could browse that folder fine locally. I could look in other shared folders over the network. If I looked in the photo folder over the network, the PC would power off instantly.
Swapped it out for a different one (I'd borrowed it from work while mine was being repaired), problem went away and never happened again.
There is zero logic I can see for this, and makes me want to throw computers down a well and live in a cave.
Ive built 7 or so computers in my time
in that same time 3 PSUs were DOA, 2 died a month in under pathetic loads, and one fried in a lightning strike (this one gets a pass as only the PSU fried so it did it's job)
It's so often the goddamn PSU
This. I built a new machine and assumed the PSU was the least likely to be the issue. After testing the video card, ram, cpu and motherboard.... I tried my spare PSU and it worked great. smh
My cousin and I have run into having to clear the cmos using the jumper in a couple of our builds before it would boot the first time too. Not sure why.
If you don't want to try and find the correct pins to jumper, you can also unplug the pc from power (which it already should be if you're digging around in it) and pull the little watch battery for about 30 seconds.
I've got a computer that randomly reboots itself for no apparent reason once every two months or so. Always outputs some cryptic information about some hardware issue on the following boot. It's a problem that's just far enough on the far side of the annoyance-to-effort curve that I've been just using it that way for years now without figuring out what's wrong with it.
First check its plugged in. Then check the power supply is turned on. Then check that the power button is connected to the motherboard.
It's probably something dumb keeping your PC from working. You probably were worried about the memory or CPU so you paid attention. It's the trivial things that are missed.
The first paragraph is autobiographical. I messed all those up on my first attempt. :-/
The first time I built a computer, it didn't boot on the first several tries. Turned out I had the motherboard screwed onto the chassis too tightly, causing a short.
The list in your comment is a good one. There's just so many little basic electrical things that can potentially go wrong.
Well, the real YSK is that memory and expansion cards have distinctive positions they should take within each slot, with a detente that holds them in place. Your system will only work reliably if the devices are fully seated.
When you first assemble the system, plug and unplug each item several times so you get the feel of it. There will always be a distinct detente when the device is fully seated. It's a lot easier to do this exercise with everything out on the bench, rather than mounted in the case when it will be a stone cold bee-atch to reach in and reseat the parts.
and it takes a lot more effort than most people expect to seat the ram and get it to snap into place.
I spent half an hour arguing on the phone with someone telling them their ram wasnt installed all the way to push it down further/firmer and they kept screaming it wouldnt go any further and that i was gonna break their PC. I could tell cause they sent me pics. It was almost all the way, but not quite there.
I gave up and made them to bring it over, and I pushed the ram down with an audible click while staring at him. He had the good graces to say nothing but a sheepish thankyou.
The practice of pulling and reseating expansion cards and cables in an effort to eliminate poor connections and hardware-dependent boot errors is, in the ancient era of blinkenlights called gestures and incantations.
I swear every time I build one it's the process of put it together, it doesn't boot, swap the memory stick positions, and now it magically boots!
Lucky. I've only had that happen once, but I've got shipped a bad motherboard twice over the years.
Ugh, luckily I've only been shipped a bad GPU once as the only DOA part I've dealt with
I would go so far as to say that 99.999999% of all issues where a new build won't boot is to just push harder on the RAM.
Been building computers for almost 3 decades now and I STILL am a little bitch when it comes to seating RAM. It is the least expensive component in the case and mobos are literally designed to let you know when you push hard enough but I still will never push hard enough (for all the sticks) on the first try.
My aging work PC (Xeon E3 1230V2) regularly stops booting, and this works for me. It had 16gb of memory, but I had to throw out one of the sticks. The other thing that gets it working again sometimes is tightening or loosening the CPU cooler screws. Thankfully, it's old enough to still do the BIOs beep codes which tipped me off to the tightening the CPU fix. I've got some newer parts lying around (an AMD 2600x and 16gb of DD4) I'll turn into a full PC when it finally dies, but for now it just keeps going and going.
Some motherboards in 2024 still don't work if you put the ram in the wrong ram slots. I ran into that problem on an am5 board recently.
Indeed. Every motherboard has a small speaker that will beep if a error is found. Usually you can find the beep error codes for a particular board online or in its manual. I think for mine its 4 fast beeps to let me know my ram is not seated properly.
Every board does not have this feature, some newer ones do and for older ones you can buy a post beeper that inserts into a speaker slot. Your manual will tell you if you have one
Unless you haven't attached the CPU power cables, only the motherboard ones. In which case it will boot, the fans will spin up, the SSD will activate, but it won't boot and it won't beep.
That was a fun one to diagnose :)
Memories... thats def a fun one
printers would often start working after an elevator ride, apparently. oh tech support
Reseating cards and chips is the first step every time.
And power connectors. I've re-seated a lot of loose 24pin and 8pin power cables in my life.
This can be the culprit along with hundreds of others. Another common one in more powerful PCs is your power supply does not have enough juice.
An underpowered PSU will usually show issues when actually running heavier loads, not immediately at boot I think.
This isn't just for new computers. After a few hundred heat/cool cycles, the ram can become unseated enough to cause issues. Although it's definitely not as big of an issue as it was a decade or so ago.
I bought a pre-build PC once, and it refused to boot. And you know what was missing? A fucking SATA data cable god have mercy. That's some advanced assembling. I even had to go and buy one as I hadn't a spare one at hand.
Although yeah I definitely had some screw ups with not inserting RAM sticks all the way or messing some other stuff like not connecting the video card to power supply.
Blowing on it helps. The humidity in your breath reinvigorates the silicon.
One time for me it was the DVD drive. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Very good tip, this was also the issue on an old desktop of mine. For 3 years I thought it was just cursed until I finally removed and reinserted the RAM sticks. Now it works flawlessly!
Removed