New computer won't boot anything

[Aisling]

We haven't taken the front panel off at all, and everything around the buttons seems to be quite secure. But I'll take a peek at that next time we have it open.

[suburbandecay]

If you have a multimeter, you can perform voltage tests with and without load. If you want to start a power supply without it hooked to anything, jump the green wire to any black wire with a paperclip and the PSU will run while it's stuck in there. red to black should be +5 and yellow to black should be +12. If it's good there, plug it into a minimal amount of hardware and test the voltages again. I had a power supply that tested as good without a load, but voltages on the 12 volt rail dropped to 10 if I had any sort of load connected.

[Aisling]

I have no idea what that is, so I'm going to assume we don't have one.

[dalesys]

Multimeter: A high-tech substitute for licking an index finger, touching one point in an electrical circuit and touching another point in the circuit with the tongue-tip. Voltage is indicated by how fast the tester's eyeballs spin. Smoke emission indicates it's time to obtain a new tester.

[Aisling]

Sounds technical. I'm not really supposed to go near technical things. I can't even get Legos to work.

No, I'm serious. In shop class, 7th grade, we had these Lego kits to make pumps and things. I built everything perfectly, but nothing ever worked.

[Aisling]

Update:

No good news, unfortunately. We got the new power supply installed. We got the computer to boot once. We tried to restart, got a blue screen that flashed too quickly for us to read what the error was, and now we're unable to get the computer to boot. The monitor isn't getting a signal at all. One attempt gave us the flickering power problem again. All the fans and lights in the case start up, just not the picture.

Yes, we've made sure everything's plugged in as securely as we possibly can. Yes, we checked the power button on the tower. No, it's never been connected to the Internet, so it can't possibly be a virus (unless the virus is in Windows or some piece of hardware).

Pulling out all but 1 memory let it boot. An attempt to restart didn't work. Again, no video signal.

Trying to get video from the motherboard instead of the graphics card didn't work either.

So, wise ones, how do we troubleshoot next? I'm going to make a list of things to try.

[RichS]

This is what I'd try:

Unplug the system, press the power button to drain power, then detach all accessories/cards/drives from both the motherboard and power, so all you have is motherboard with processor and memory, power supply with all necessary power connectors attached to the motherboard, and video card if you don't have onboard video on the motherboard. Make sure if the video card needs additional power, that the power connectors are attached from the power supply to the card. Connect the system to keyboard/mouse/monitor, plug in the system, power on and see if you get a BIOS screen.

If you do, it'll probably complain that there's no boot device or no OS found; don't worry about that. Power it on/off a number of times, including one power off - unplug supply and press power button to drain power - plug in supply - turn on sequence. If you're not able to turn on the system, or you run into the problem of it turns on successfully once, then nothing, you know that the problem is one of those 3 or 4 pieces of hardware. If it's consistently powering on, then there's a fault with one of the devices that was disconnected from the system.

Now, start connecting devices/cards one at a time with the same powering on/off procedure. Be sure to unplug/drain power between installing each device. Start with any cards. After the cards, optical drives (DVD/CD drives), then case accessories (Front USB ports, memory card readers, etc.), and lastly the hard drive(s). You should be able to find whatever is causing the issue this way.

Almost forgot: you want to do this in as much as a non-static area as possible. Place cards that are disconnected from the system in an antistatic bag, or on a non-static surface, such as a wooden bench.

[Der Cute]

have you removed battery and drained the power there too?

[Aisling]

Removed the battery... from the motherboard? No, we didn't try that.

[Chromatix]

Ah yes, resetting the CMOS RAM is a reasonable step. There should be a jumper labelled CLRTC or similar - with the PSU switched off *completely* (including standby power), move it to the other side for a few seconds, then move it back.

There's no need to remove the battery itself. You only do that if it's gone flat, which won't happen for years.

[wolfie]

What concerns me however is that Diablotek is not a PSU brand that I recognise - which is a huge red flag. The name sounds like it was chosen to appeal to gamers who don't know any better, rather than to techies and enthusiasts who do.

A lot of these "off-brands" are re-badged Phar Ting-Duk, which is a make to be avoided. A simple rule-of-thumb for power supplies is that for the same wattage rating, a good brand will weigh more than a piece of crap. After all, a PSU contains transformers (iron core, copper winding) and capacitors, and the cheap way to go is to push things to the limit, while the right way to go is to have a little extra margin.

[Aisling]

We replaced it with a Corsair GS600. So we know it's not the POS PSU. :P

[sms001]

Any further updates? I hate to say it, but it sounds more and more like the MB. Can you borrow some memory from someone to rule that out?

[Aisling]

No updates. Sweetie worked more than 40 hours last week (training for something new), and he's too tired to care today. I might just bring it to the shop and have someone better qualified figure it out.