Computer having problems starting up

[aurora.dust]

Hi, I see from reading around that a few others have experienced a similar issue- however, I am still not sure what the cause is or how to identify it.
The problem is my computer has problems starting up after it has been shut down. If I just restart the computer there seems no problem. It is when it is starting up afresh after a proper shutdown. I hear a motor turning over with what sound like revs to try and get things going – It does this repeatedly. Eventually, it kicks in and I get the start-up screens and away I go.
I guess the problem has been going on for a year but it has become dramatically worse and today took 40 minutes of revving up before it eventually started.
My computer was built for me by a reputable firm about 3 years ago. I went for 10% overclocking done by the company. Things seemed fine, except for a sound problem which I will not go into now until this problem starting up out of the blue about a year ago but now a major issue.
(I upgraded to Windows 10, post this problem first starting.)
My computer build is as follows:

OcUK Extreme 4KG - Intel Haswell Full Tower Extreme 4K Gaming
PC
CM-061-BX BitFenix Alchemy Premium Modding LED Strip - Connect White
60cm
SW-131-MS Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GLC-02389) *** changed to Windows 10 latest version
CA-007-SF SuperFlower Leadex Platinum 1200W Fully Modular "80 Plus
Platinum" Power Supply - White
CD-004-OK OcUK Value Blu-ray / DVDRW combi SATA - OEM
HD-256-SE Seagate Barracuda 3TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM
(ST3000DM001) HDD
HD-171-SA Samsung 1TB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE1T0BW)
GX-352-SP Sapphire AMD Radeon R9 295 X2 OC 8192MB GDDR5 *** replaced with during Autumn 2017 :
*** EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti FTW3 GAMING

- Also added Autumn 2017 ML120 Pro LED White 120mm Premium Magnetic Levitation Fan

PCI-Express Graphics Card - Metal Box LTD Edition with FREE
Superflower 1200W PSU
MY-042-TG TeamGroup Vulcan GOLD 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-17100C11
2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLYD316G2133HC11ADC01)
MB-485-GI Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming G1-Wifi BK Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3
ATX Motherboard
WC-232-XS XSPC RayStorm D5 AX240 WaterCooling Kit
CP-539-IN Intel Core i7-4790K 4.00GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150
Processor - Retail
XX-059-OK Stage 1: Overclock of CPU - 10% Overclock (Proceesor speed
x1.10)
CA-112-NX NZXT Phantom 820 Enthusiast Ultra Tower Case - White
XX-003-OP Standard Build Systems - Dispatched within 7 working days
FG-004-CS Corsair AF120 Performance Series Low Noise High Airflow - Single
Pack (CO-9050003-WW)
FG-004-CS Corsair AF120 Performance Series Low Noise High Airflow - Single
Pack (CO-9050003-WW)

I am hoping someone can advise me and thank you for any help.

 

[rocktalkrock]

You say "I hear a motor turning over with what sound like revs to try and get things going – It does this repeatedly." Have you isolated which motor this is? Perhaps the motor in the Water Cooling Kit?

 

[aurora.dust]

You say "I hear a motor turning over with what sound like revs to try and get things going – It does this repeatedly." Have you isolated which motor this is? Perhaps the motor in the Water Cooling Kit?

It just seems to be the PSU. I hear a click before the motor clicks in and that seems to correspnd with a light changing indicating change of switch i guess and electrical contact- that is to the left of the battery on psu.

 

[jr9]

Power supplies can lose wattage over the years or just slowly fail. Do you have another power supply you can try?

 

[aurora.dust]

Power supplies can lose wattage over the years or just slowly fail. Do you have another power supply you can try?

Unfortunately I do not have another power supply.
(The pc is about 3 years old.)
However, something of note has happened: yesterday, iIwent to power up the pc again, but this time it took about an hour before it started. I eventually got a message saying the main bios had been corrupted and did I want to start up from recovery ones, which I did . The window then closed ( there are no windows durring the power up struggles) - PC tried to boot up a few times again and this time after several tries did so- presumably from the recovery bios.
I have not turned the computer off since ! I have been afraid to. I am currently trying to back things up before I find out what to do.

 

[jr9]

It seems you are now having motherboard problems as well. You likely won't have a spare hashwell motherboard and you also don't have a spare PSU, which is fine these are not household items after all!

It may be better for you to bring it into a shop that does free estimates/diagnostic and they will tell you which part it is. You definitely have a low lying hardware issue though and you don't want to start buying parts and guessing which one will work. Without swapping the parts for known working ones you may never know, but what you are describing is a serious issue that goes deeper than Windows or hard drives.

Your data is fine. I'd recommend disconnecting the 2 HDD cables ASAP. If your power supply is going nuts it can damage and HDD or SDD.

Your PC is worth getting fixed it is still a powerful system and I'd even replace the motherboard if it needed it no question.

 

[aurora.dust]

It seems you are now having motherboard problems as well. You likely won't have a spare hashwell motherboard and you also don't have a spare PSU, which is fine these are not household items after all!

It may be better for you to bring it into a shop that does free estimates/diagnostic and they will tell you which part it is. You definitely have a low lying hardware issue though and you don't want to start buying parts and guessing which one will work. Without swapping the parts for known working ones you may never know, but what you are describing is a serious issue that goes deeper than Windows or hard drives.

Your data is fine. I'd recommend disconnecting the 2 HDD cables ASAP. If your power supply is going nuts it can damage and HDD or SDD.

Your PC is worth getting fixed it is still a powerful system and I'd even replace the motherboard if it needed it no question.

Good point. I would really need someone to visit my place as I have no car and pc is huge and heavy.
However, I have been given some advice as to how to change the motherboard battery and reset things- i am bit wary of doing it, but guess I ought to look at it.

 

[aurora.dust]

Well I have been given further advice: I have in effect 2 accounts in use on the computer. My original one - let's called it Susan and a local Admin account as I found that although Susan was administrator that the Susan account could not access everything in the admin settings and all the admin for Susan seemed to revolve around MS account.
The admin account subsequently created is a local account not an MS one, but I guess both are admin accounts. It is just that the MS one is limited to well MS stuff!
A problem that arose and I thought was unrelated to Start-up of the computer is that sometimes when I log in the start-up menu is missing and windows start button does not work. I am routinely logging in on the Susan account. When this happens I have to open task manager and disconnect user and then I can log in on the local Admin account. In the local Admin account the start-up menu and button works – I then restart and log into the Susan account and the start-up menu works.
I have been told that there is a conflict when windows tries to start-up from powered- off state as there are these 2 admin accounts. The Windows Start menu problem which I had thought was unrelated would support this. Further told I need to delete the Susan account and just use the local Admin one. I’ve tried to back things up from the Susan account with a view to doing this. Not wanting to really as everything revolves around the Susan account- all bookmarks etc. (the Firefox ones do not seem to be exporting properly- I’ll look at that again.)
Anyway, that is where I am at. (I have not touched the motherboard battery as well this account conflict sounds logical.)

 

[rocktalkrock]

Well I have been given further advice: I have in effect 2 accounts in use on the computer. My original one - let's called it Susan and a local Admin account as I found that although Susan was administrator that the Susan account could not access everything in the admin settings and all the admin for Susan seemed to revolve around MS account.
The admin account subsequently created is a local account not an MS one, but I guess both are admin accounts. It is just that the MS one is limited to well MS stuff!
A problem that arose and I thought was unrelated to Start-up of the computer is that sometimes when I log in the start-up menu is missing and windows start button does not work. I am routinely logging in on the Susan account. When this happens I have to open task manager and disconnect user and then I can log in on the local Admin account. In the local Admin account the start-up menu and button works – I then restart and log into the Susan account and the start-up menu works.
I have been told that there is a conflict when windows tries to start-up from powered- off state as there are these 2 admin accounts. The Windows Start menu problem which I had thought was unrelated would support this. Further told I need to delete the Susan account and just use the local Admin one. I’ve tried to back things up from the Susan account with a view to doing this. Not wanting to really as everything revolves around the Susan account- all bookmarks etc. (the Firefox ones do not seem to be exporting properly- I’ll look at that again.)
Anyway, that is where I am at. (I have not touched the motherboard battery as well this account conflict sounds logical.)

It sounds like you should change the default user account Windows first boots into on startup.

 

[aurora.dust]

Well I have been given further advice: I have in effect 2 accounts in use on the computer. My original one - let's called it Susan and a local Admin account as I found that although Susan was administrator that the Susan account could not access everything in the admin settings and all the admin for Susan seemed to revolve around MS account.
The admin account subsequently created is a local account not an MS one, but I guess both are admin accounts. It is just that the MS one is limited to well MS stuff!
A problem that arose and I thought was unrelated to Start-up of the computer is that sometimes when I log in the start-up menu is missing and windows start button does not work. I am routinely logging in on the Susan account. When this happens I have to open task manager and disconnect user and then I can log in on the local Admin account. In the local Admin account the start-up menu and button works – I then restart and log into the Susan account and the start-up menu works.
I have been told that there is a conflict when windows tries to start-up from powered- off state as there are these 2 admin accounts. The Windows Start menu problem which I had thought was unrelated would support this. Further told I need to delete the Susan account and just use the local Admin one. I’ve tried to back things up from the Susan account with a view to doing this. Not wanting to really as everything revolves around the Susan account- all bookmarks etc. (the Firefox ones do not seem to be exporting properly- I’ll look at that again.)
Anyway, that is where I am at. (I have not touched the motherboard battery as well this account conflict sounds logical.)

It sounds like you should change the default user account Windows first boots into on startup.

Not 100% sure how to do that - it is probably simple but don't know method offhand.

 

[rocktalkrock]

Well I have been given further advice: I have in effect 2 accounts in use on the computer. My original one - let's called it Susan and a local Admin account as I found that although Susan was administrator that the Susan account could not access everything in the admin settings and all the admin for Susan seemed to revolve around MS account.
The admin account subsequently created is a local account not an MS one, but I guess both are admin accounts. It is just that the MS one is limited to well MS stuff!
A problem that arose and I thought was unrelated to Start-up of the computer is that sometimes when I log in the start-up menu is missing and windows start button does not work. I am routinely logging in on the Susan account. When this happens I have to open task manager and disconnect user and then I can log in on the local Admin account. In the local Admin account the start-up menu and button works – I then restart and log into the Susan account and the start-up menu works.
I have been told that there is a conflict when windows tries to start-up from powered- off state as there are these 2 admin accounts. The Windows Start menu problem which I had thought was unrelated would support this. Further told I need to delete the Susan account and just use the local Admin one. I’ve tried to back things up from the Susan account with a view to doing this. Not wanting to really as everything revolves around the Susan account- all bookmarks etc. (the Firefox ones do not seem to be exporting properly- I’ll look at that again.)
Anyway, that is where I am at. (I have not touched the motherboard battery as well this account conflict sounds logical.)

It sounds like you should change the default user account Windows first boots into on startup.

Not 100% sure how to do that - it is probably simple but don't know method offhand.

You would go to "Control Panel > User Accounts". You should see both accounts listed and you can select either one to be the Default Account.

 

[aurora.dust]

Well I have been to user accounts - I only see the "Susan" MS account if I go into the LOCAL admin a/c and then it is only via " manage another account" or some such term.
When on MS Susan account- I cannot see the local account- There is an option to create one but well there is one already.
I noted though that although the MS Susan account says "administrator" when I looked into the account it is a "standard user" and not an admin- there was an option to change it to admin but was greyed out and not usable. On trying to do this for the MS Susan account from the LOCAL admin account I not do it from there either.
I think things are complicated as re the accounts are different types : one is an MS account (Susan) and the other is a LOCAL admin account.
There is an option from the LOCAL admin account to delete the Susan account. I have tried to back up things from the Susan account, but the Susan account has all my TeamSpeak bookmarks and TS contacts on and I would like to back that up if I have to resort to deleting the Susan account, but the db file for that in app data I cannot seem to find. Well that is digressing a bit.
Anyway, one account is LOCAL admin and the other an MS one - Susan.

 

[rocktalkrock]

Well I have been to user accounts - I only see the "Susan" MS account if I go into the LOCAL admin a/c and then it is only via " manage another account" or some such term.
When on MS Susan account- I cannot see the local account- There is an option to create one but well there is one already.
I noted though that although the MS Susan account says "administrator" when I looked into the account it is a "standard user" and not an admin- there was an option to change it to admin but was greyed out and not usable. On trying to do this for the MS Susan account from the LOCAL admin account I not do it from there either.
I think things are complicated as re the accounts are different types : one is an MS account (Susan) and the other is a LOCAL admin account.
There is an option from the LOCAL admin account to delete the Susan account. I have tried to back up things from the Susan account, but the Susan account has all my TeamSpeak bookmarks and TS contacts on and I would like to back that up if I have to resort to deleting the Susan account, but the db file for that in app data I cannot seem to find. Well that is digressing a bit.
Anyway, one account is LOCAL admin and the other an MS one - Susan.

I'm not too familiar with this, i have only one account myself. It would probably be useful for you ask about MS accounts and finding the db file in the "Software > Windows 10" section of the forum. Someone there should have a better understanding of the steps you need to take.

 

[aurora.dust]

Well I changed the “Susan” MS account to a local one just to see if it might make a difference. It did not.
The Start Up problem of the pc from turned off status and the Windows start up may well be 2 different problems.
I am not keen to take measures which may well not solve the problem. I will look into how to back up TeamSpeak contacts and then might possibly consider deleting the Susan account. Having done so then it would bring it down to hardware and maybe that bios motherboard battery. I am thinking I will have to see if I can get someone to visit to look at the pc. I now do not turn pc off at night, and just restart Windows. I am using the Susan account and whenever I restart windows from there the start-up menu is once again missing, so I have to disconnect user Susan and log in as Administrator and then can restart pc and then when I go into the Susan account the start-up menu is back.

 

[rocktalkrock]

Have you tried contacting Microsoft Customer Support for help with this problem?

 

[aurora.dust]

No, but well it might be hardware related with the booting of pc. Really no idea now.

 

[aurora.dust]

Well looks like a disaster now. Not sure what to do. I started up pc today and there sounded one revolution of the motor then nothing. Now on pressing computer start switch nothing happens. Seems dead.

 

[aurora.dust]

Update I changed the CMOS battery on motherboard (nothing more- just a simple swap over of battery) and computer started, after a few revs. Was given option of settings bios or going with default optimised ones. Went with latter. I have tried rebooting the computer since- still seems to take a few revs to get going but maybe this will settle.
I had Windows start menu on both users:Admin and "Susan".
Will see how things go over the weekend.

 

[aurora.dust]

Update: I deleted the “Susan” account. Problem still persisting with computer regarding the PSU revving up – starting up all fans etc. and but not getting to any start screen – well not till after numerous attempts by it.
Having received the message about corrupted bios for mother board some time ago (only got that once and msg said it was going to use the recovery ones) I still suspect it is mb bios related. I took the CMOS battery out again and pressed the reset buttons for 10 secs. Following advice of a friend I downloaded what I thought were the latest bios from mother board manufacturer and extracted those to an usb. I went to use those but msg said they were not the correct ones. I need to contact manufacturer’s support.
Friend also suggested I use “Portable Apps” to run some virus checks form external source. I down loaded that to an usb but could not figure out how to set up the virus program there, but I did run the Trojan rootkill checker. However, after that I found things had been reset in various thing s to default settings- e.g. Language on pc. Reset things but found reset again next day. Then I got a black screen with flashing cursor- could not get to Task Manager- hit the external restart switch and got back in. Problem occurred randomly again with same solution. I googled re this and found reference to an external device causing the problem. I removed the USB device and no more black screen episodes. I subsequently deleted Portable Apps from the USB device. I was only going to use it to see if my ESET Smart Security had missed anything.

Anyway, I still feel it has to do with the mother board bios, so I’ll will contact mb support re that.
I suppose it could be the fan but well fan is starting up all other things and I did have that message one time about corrupted mb bios.
I guess I should reinstall Windows too, and would have to do that via media creation tool, but mb support next step.

 

[aurora.dust]

Have since contacted gigabyte mb manufacturer,who have been helpful. Given link and guidance for updating/flashing bios. However, final phase of updating those bios meant a computer reboot which was attempted by the process , BUT since the computer never restarted -back to the revving up hard ware but no final sound of continuous motor run and no start up screens. ie same as before but now not startig at all and flash bios did not complete I guess as never had that restart completion.
I diecided to get another psu to try to swap out to test, but found it was incompatible- differnt cables and connections. PC custom built and cables run through to other side of metal plate and backout again but a maze.
Sought help and a rechnician visited today but could not fix the problem.he did not have a voltmeter with him to test original PSU (which is what I should have done- I have ordered one now) and well on looking at the sea of cables he could see it was a big job to put in the new one.
Anyway, I have ordered a voltmeter to test my original PSU. Seems all connections on that are "universal" apart from larger motherboard one.
If it turns out PSU is faulty then I ought to be able to find a similar LEADEX PLATINUM one. I think 850 would be enough. I have 1200 but been told not necessary. On replacing I could then see if things started and also check the motherboard bios version to see if they updated to latest F8 ones.