Question Mini PC Not Booting ?

[gabs247]

I purchased a Qotom Q190G4U Mini PC a few years ago, had pfsense installed and running as a router until it stopped working in 2020. I tried resurrecting the idea of getting it running again, and thought it needed a new Hard Drive, so just purchased a new 64GB MSATA card, but that's not the problem; it happened to boot off a USB (Live Linux Mint bootable image) a few weeks ago fine, but now it won't even do that; it fooled me...

The issue is that it is just not going past the BIOS splash screen. I'm now wondering if it's the RAM that's the issue? But I don't really want to spend more money for nothing. I'm not sure if it's the actual motherboard or some other component that's causing the problem?
I can access the BIOS via the Delete key, but if I change anything, save and exit, it shows the Splash screen then immediately resets again, over and over again. Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[helpstar]

replace the BIOS battery

 

[gabs247]

Ah...ok, I'll take a look tomorrow, thanks!

 

[gabs247]

replace the BIOS battery

Ok, I can see that removing the battery and replacing it reverted the system clock from 2020 back to 2015, but still having same issue with it continually rebooting after splash screen.

I was able to get the Linux Mint Bootable USB to do a Memory Test which also seems fine, so doesn't look like it's the MSATA, RAM, Bios Battery...I'm wondering if the power brick might be an issue or else it's something on the motherboard itself?

 

[helpstar]

if you can boot with usb, it might be wrong boot priority
the battery is correctly inserted with the plus visible while plugged in?
can you get into bios?

 

[gabs247]

I turned it off just now, and it booted off the MSATA, actually loaded up pfSense to prompt 3 times, then I tried to get to BIOS and after that stopped booting at all again.

It attempted booting Linux Mint off the USB, but failed on splash screen (some ACPI error.

It seems that the issue is intermittent, does that sound like it's the power supply?

I have no problems getting into the BIOS, just hit Del, can get in, change settings, save and exit. It's that the bootloader is stuffed and keeps resetting...