[SOLVED] Blank screen on boot, USB deviced receive power, GPU ruled out

[gammarik]

Hi all,

Starting this morning, my PC is refusing to boot. I am met with a black screen before the BIOS screen. (I'm now realising that I don't remember if I usually see it, but I know I'm normally able to enter setup or the boot order with DELETE and F11, neither of which work at the moment)

All of my devices receive power, as both my keyboard, headset and mic are lighting up. My monitors are receiving some kind of signal as well, since one lists the HDMI input as ACTIVE and leaves the backlight on, while the other lights up briefly before going to sleep. The boot screen usually shows on the HDMI one.

My first thought was that the GPU was the problem, so I switched it with a spare, but with no luck there. My second thought was that the motherboard was the problem. The problem is that I don't know which stage of booting it is stuck on. Pressing CTRL+ALT+DELETE reboots the computer (all devices turn off and then back on, so I assume it is rebooting). Is this a Windows thing, or is it a motherboard thing?

I have also tried unplugging all my drives except a USB drive with a Windows recovery image on it, but it doesn't react.

The only idea as to what might've caused this I have, is that I ran the Windows driver verifier tool a couple days ago, not realising until looking it up just now, that it is a developer tool. Yesterday night was the first time I actually shut down my PC since then, so it might be trying to check the drivers or something. I'm not too sure about this though, since that should be a Windows thing, and booting onto the recovery-USB without the boot drive plugged in shouldn't be impaired, right?

If any other pieces of information can be useful, please let me know. Any help or suggestions as to what might be the problem are highly appreciated.

 

[Terox]

Firstly you should always start any support thread with a full list of hardware connected, especially motherboard, ram, cpu and psu. They are the 3 components that are needed to boot into bios.
When trying to diagnose any start up issues always start by unplugging everything else including gpu, drives monitor etc they are not needed to test the first stage.
You can leave a monitor plugged in to the onboard vga slot if the processor you have installed supports video (Hence one of the reasons to always supply your hardware specs)

So on a system that has been working and now is not
First thing to do is strip out the non essentials and then with the bare bones set up

1. Unplug and replug the PSU connectors to the motherboard (Both of them)
2. 2) Reseat your ram
3. boot up

What you are looking for is any LED's that light up on the board.
Most have a set of LED's that are labelled CPU, DRAM, VGA, BOOT
Take note of any led's that light up, in what order, what colour and if they go on and off or just stay on.
Specifically look in your motherboards user handbook for whhere these led's are and what they indicate.
Some motherboards also have a small LED display onboard that shows two characters. These are also diagnosis tools.

3) Once you have that info report back

Typically CPU red light on = something wrong between board and cpu
..... CPU borked
..... Motherboard borked
..... Power connectors to motherboard (Both ) not connected properly
.... If no led's illuminated on the motherboard, maybe psu issue

Typically DRAM led stuck on
..... DRAM chip issue (Try using 1 strip at a time in each slot, so 4 slots 2 strips = 8 attempts in each slot, resetting cmos between attempts
..... Mem processor on CPU borked
..... On new system DRAm not compatible with board (BIOS update etc)

other than that i have never heard of a failure on VGA and after that it should boot into bios


Once you are into BIOS report back

 

[gammarik]

Thank you for the input on what to include, I will keep that in mind for future posts!

I followed your steps of unplugging everything except a single monitor in the onboard VGA port, and finally made it to the bios screen. I then plugged in a keyboard and my boot SSD at managed to boot. I ran into a blue screen, which driver verifier was the cause of. Booting into safe-mode and disabling it fixed this as well. Everything seems to be running as it should now. Thank you for your help, I will save your post so I know what to try first in the future!

Off-topic question: My motherboard (MSI Z87-G45) doesn't have any LEDs or screen. Am I just outta luck when in a these types of situations?

Have a great day,
Gammarik