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.
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 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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
printers would often start working after an elevator ride, apparently. oh tech support
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.
If your computer is acting haunted, its the PSU.
If its being temperamental like a fussy teenager, its typically ram.
If it’s acting more like an elderly Belgian woman, you may want to update your BIOS.
This is fun.
I need more context. What are elderly Belgian women known for?
Waffles?
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
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
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.
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 thats true a lot has changed since AM4. Only the pricier B boards and not all X boards (but most) had them when I last kept tabs on the majority of boards. A cursory google shows at least a few solidly midrange boards with lights (and some without) so you may very well be right.
Pretty much all boards will either have lights, beeps, or both. OEM builds will usually have them on the front IO ports (Dell usually has A/B/C lights). I don’t think I’ve ever seen a board with nothing. Some are more cryptic than others (Lenovo has an app for their laptops that decodes the weird noises they make) but they should have something.
In my experience beepers tend to be very simple. My cheap B-board, but major brand (MSI), only beeps when it POSTs. If it doesn’t post then there’s nothing. Good for when you’re using it headless but otherwise pretty pointless imo.
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 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.
If A/B describe separate bus lanes, then A1, B1, A2, B2 make sense. If A/B describe your paired RAM, then A1, A2, B1, B2 make sense.
Only valid rule is to RTFM
But how does 2 before 1 make sense?
Not always. But always confirm by reading the manual which slot order to use.
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.
Pushing the power switch shouldn’t do anything to static electricity.
Yeah iirc all that does is make sure all of the capacitors on the motherboard and in the PSU are discharged. Still a good thing do do before working in a pc, to reduce the chance of accidentally shorting a still charged cap with a screw or something.
Removed
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.
