PC powers up but won't POST, no HDD activity light, no beep codes, power button turns it on but not off.

[something287]

I turned off my PC after changing the power settings to "balanced" today, and now it won't boot, POST or anything. All of the fans turn on and don't stop, but the HDD activity light doesn't flicker. Also, the power button will turn the PC on, but holding it down won't turn it off (this is the strangest thing I think, I haven't seen it reported anywhere else with the other problems I'm having).

I've taken everything out and unhooked everything, tried individual sticks of RAM in different slots, tried it with no RAM, taken the CMOS battery out, I've tried just about everything search results could tell me to do except test my PSU with a voltage meter, which I don't have.

I don't think any specs matter at this point except the mobo and the PSU and maybe the processor. The motherboard is an ASUS M5A97, the PSU is a Corsair GS800 and the CPU is an AMD six-core processor and I don't know its exact model number. Anyone know what the issue might be?

Edit: One thing I just remembered that might be important is that just before turning the computer off, I attempted to play a song, but the sound was quiet, and when I turned it up, it sounded terrible. The volume was uneven, it flickered with some kind of popping sound. I don't know if it's important, but it's something that never happened before that happened just before I shut it down for the last time.

 

[Tradesman1]

May want to bench it and troubleshoot, have a guide that might help here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-1753671/bench-troubleshooting.html

 

[something287]

May want to bench it and troubleshoot, have a guide that might help here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-1753671/bench-troubleshooting.html

Thanks for responding. I tried all of that yesterday. Didn't work. However, later that night I plugged just the CPU, motherboard and power supply in and turned it on. The fans spun and all, no beeps, but when I tried to turn it off with the power button, it worked. Surprised, I hooked the GPU, HDD, RAM and sound card back up and it all booted just like normal other than a few BIOS checks. Then today I restarted it and it stopped working again, and the power button won't turn it off again. So today I took the motherboard out and nothing seems wrong with it. No burns or cracks or anything. I'm not sure what I should look for inside the power supply to tell if something is wrong there. Any ideas?

 

[Tradesman1]

Rather than go in the power supply, can be dangerous, even unplugged there's a lot of voltage in there, might see if you can borrow another PSU and try with that, yours may be going bad or not enough to power all

 

[GraphicMan]

Hey there, i was basically going to make a new topic to share my experience, but when i saw your topic i thought to share it here as an answer to yours,
I had built a pc recently using an old used mobo GA-MA770T-UD3P , also a second hand amd 965be cpu, new 4gbx2 kingston, new 7770 vga, i am used to put my pc to sleep all the times, rarely turn it off, so i just did and came back after 30min wake it up and nothing shown on screen, monitor did not wake up, pc power led on yes, no keyboard activity, no hdd activity, ect,, this is almost the first time this happens to me for all times not on this pc only, so i tried to turn it off by holding the power button, and nothing happened, at this time i was really worried, so i turned it off from the psu button, back on and nothing is happening!! no post no beep just the fans , no keyboard , usb mouse not even lighted up!!, pc was on sleep remember !, i have to say that this pc worked perfectly for the last v hot summer when i was gaming on it hard and testing it the first few month when i just made it (hot summer), i started to get things out of mobo, nothing, changing ram position , nothing, removing them completely , nothing, removing vga, all what u can imagine , and nothing, i have to say that my pc stays clean as i use filters, so it is not a bad contact, i even remove the cpu hs and turned pc on and noticed that it does not get warm!!, i removed cpu itself , no beep, put it back, nothing, did everything,remember i did not touch the pc when it was on sleep for 30min and it was working perfectly!, i also noticed that the vga fan stops after pc on by 10 seconds! and guess what was it?, i decided to do something i made the last time many years ago , clr_cmos, yes clr_cmos, i gave only 1/1000 chance for this to work, i shorted it few seconds, and the pc worked!!!, this i have never experienced in my life before even i am a pc technical since DOS, any1 experienced this before? do u guys think this might be an indicator for soon mobo death? only days will tell, but this is too weird specially with a mobo ud3 and dual bios, 140watt cpu ect.., please tell me your thought. and i hope this work for ur case!

 

[something287]

Okay, so I found out something interesting today that seems to indicate that the CPU is the issue here. I tried something I hadn't tried yet and took out the CPU and turned on the computer. Everything powered up, fans began spinning and all. Normally, I wouldn't be able to turn it off by holding down the power button. This time, I held down the power button and the computer turned off. I tried again to see if it was a fluke and it turned off again. I plugged the CPU back in to see if the whole computer was just miraculously working again, but no, holding the power button would not turn it off. Would this be a clear indicator that the CPU has failed and is the root of the problem?

 

[GraphicMan]

this is also possible, ur best bet is to try to replace it and see how things will go, usually these kind of problems usually tend to mobo , it is v rare for a cpu to die, did you try the clr_cmos trick?

 

[something287]

this is also possible, ur best bet is to try to replace it and see how things will go, usually these kind of problems usually tend to mobo , it is v rare for a cpu to die, did you try the clr_cmos trick?

I tried clearing CMOS both with the jumper and with the battery. Didn't solve anything. I didn't apply thermal paste applied to the CPU when I built the computer, so I think it probably overheated. Thanks for the responses.

 

[JMR120600]

Well, something, that was a bad idea, did you not know how important thermal paste is?

 

[something287]

Well, something, that was a bad idea, did you not know how important thermal paste is?

No, I didn't. No big deal though. It was the first time I ever built a computer. I'm just glad I have a likely solution.

 

[Umzipumzi]

Well, at least you did not learn the hard way.

 

[WaterShed]

A possible solution would be the psu. Use another to test and I hope it works out.