Troubleshooting a Desktop Box That Won't Boot

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JimmyH

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#303335 2-Feb-2023 11:05

I have a repurposed desktop I have now been running reliably for about 18 months, with Windows 10 and an HDMI dummy plug, as a headless Jellyfin server. No changes whatsoever have been made to it recently. Other than the HDMI dummy plug there are ordinarily no peripherals plugged in to it at all - no keyboard, mouse, screen or USB drives etc - it accesses NAS media shares over Ethernet.

Today it won't boot. The lights come on and the fans spin up, so the power supply is clearly working. The drive activity lights flash a few times (they are SSDs so I can't tell if the drives are doing anything. However:

there are no beeps on startup
nothing will connect to it over the network (Jellyfin, TightVNC etc),
plugging in a screen doesn't give graphics, it appears that nothing is being outputted, no BIOs setup loading/screen or anything.

I'm not a hardware guy, and the last PC I seriously messed around inside of had IDE drives. Are there any simple steps I can take to troubleshoot this. I need to determine whether it may be able to be resuscitated, or whether it is dead and needing to be replaced?

I would be grateful for anyone with experience who can offer any tips on what I could usefully do to try and establish whether it's fixable or not.

NB: I am confident it's not a graphics card issue. It doesn't have one, and on the rare occasions I connect a screen I use integrated graphics.

NNB: It's not worth spending money much on. It's an elderly Haswell unit. While it will be a gigantic pain, if I'm going to spend anything significant I might as well bite the bullet and replace.

xpd

Geek @ Coastguard NZ
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#3030836 2-Feb-2023 11:14

Disconnect everything except a stick of RAM. Remove CMOS battery for 5-10mins.

Reinstall CMOS battery and try powering on - fingers crossed you get BIOS warning and away you go, then slowly start adding drives etc back. Power off, connect drive, power on, all good, power off, repeat.

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

LinkTree

fe31nz

1228 posts

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#3031095 2-Feb-2023 22:56

Check your motherboard manual - many motherboards have at least a few LEDs that tell you when the CPU and RAM and Video are working or not. My old Asus M5A97EVO, for example, has DRAM, CPU, VGA and BOOT_DEVICE LEDs. My new Asus ROG STRIX X570-E GAMING motherboards have a very useful 2 digit 7-segment display that tells you the current BIOS state at all times.

SomeoneSomewhere

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#3031102 2-Feb-2023 23:27

If possible, try another power supply anyway. Occasionally they fail by spitting out so much ripple that nothing aside from fans can actually treat it as usable power.

richms

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#3031202 3-Feb-2023 10:49

All good suggestions, but I would add reseat the CPU, I have had some move over time as the board bends and some of the silly pins were not making contact that well, reseating the CPU got the machine up and running again.

Richard rich.ms

Silvrav

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#3031214 3-Feb-2023 11:18

As most have suggested here, but my bet is on PSU, they like to fail first in long running PC's.

1. unplug everything as suggested

2. reseat CPU

3. plug back in only one ram chip, CPU and power supply.

4. power up and see if still the same

5. if still the same try second ram stick or different ram slot

6. If still the same try different PSU (if you have one)

7. if still the same its then either the mobo or CPU.

Do you have the module number of the board? then I can check what you can do to check error codes.

JimmyH

2886 posts

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#3031220 3-Feb-2023 11:31

Thanks for those suggestions. I will give them a whirl tomorrow - except for the PSU (I don't have another one) and the motherboard manual (which I also don't have).

If they don't work, I will pick up another box. PB has a couple of refurbished i5 boxes that should be able to affordably be used as a new server.

SomeoneSomewhere

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#3031446 3-Feb-2023 18:59

Motherboard manual should be readily available online.

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JimmyH

2886 posts

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#3031779 4-Feb-2023 16:04

Thanks for all the help. After trying the steps above, I have concluded it's dead, or at least beyond my capabilities and not economically worth fixing (generic desktop, Haswell i5, 8GB of Ram).

PB has some refurbished models on clearance, so I have picked up a similar box (with a Skylake i5 and 512GB SSD) for $400. I will transplant the 1TB SSD I had fitted to the other box in the hope that it's OK and all my Jellyfin metadata has survived - I would hate having to re-scrape it all and then fix all the incorrect matches manually again. Slightly faster CPU and lower power consumption, so should be able to be dropped straight in as replacement a media server.

I appreciate those of you who tried to help.