Questions about multiple problems linked to a loose power supply to motherboard cable

jtp542

Honorable
Sep 15, 2013
2
0
10,510
Hi, I'm a total computer amateur who built a computer about a year ago. This summer I started having some problems, and though I think I finally got them solved, I didn't go about the solving part in the greatest way and I'm just generally curious what exactly was going on.

At one point, my monitor unexpectedly shut down and displayed "No Signal". From that point on, whenever I would try to boot up Windows, it would get through the "Starting Windows" screen and then the monitor would, once again, display "No Signal" and I would have to power down the computer.
Then, today I powered up and it got past the "Starting Windows" screen, but when I typed in my password to log in, it stalled on the "Welcome" screen and wouldn't go any further. Next time I tried to power it up, it automatically prompted me to conduct a chkdsk. When I did, there were a whole lot of "File record segment ### is unreadable". I just let it do its thing, and when I started it up again, everything seemed to be working fine. However, after about half an hour of using the computer like normal, the monitor switched off again with its "No Signal" and the same problem as before occurred: As soon as I got past the Windows start screen the monitor would not get a signal.
Then, for a while, whenever I would try to turn on the computer, the LED lights of the fans and the PSU fan would pulse, but the computer would not turn on.

Finally, what fixed it (at least temporarily) was unplugging and replugging the PSU into the motherboard. Everything seems to be working fine now, and I'm assuming that the problem was just that the cable was loose. However, I'm just curious: could all of the problems that I experienced come from just that one loose cable? How exactly would it cause those problems? Is there potentially some deeper issue that I'm not seeing?

Sorry for the really long question, and thanks for any help!
 
Solution
I see, maybe while readjusting the main ATX connector you also readjusted the 2x6 pin connectors to the GPU? The symptoms you said are usually more associated to those connectors (which on some models tend to seem being connected correctly but are in fact loose).

Hopefully now your system won't give you any more problems, do a stress test on the gpu to make sure it was only some loose connection and not a faulty card.
Some more info regarding your pc specs (all of them) would help us to pinpoint the problem (very unlikely your pc would turn on at all having the main psu ATX cable loose).

Seems to me that your video card is having stability issues, but to verify that first we need to know which PSU you have, exact model of GPU or IGP (integrated video), mobo model etc.

As for the results in the chkdsk test, it seems some data was corrupted in your HDD, which could have been caused from so many failed starts and hard reboots.
 

jtp542

Honorable
Sep 15, 2013
2
0
10,510


Thanks for the reply! My PSU is 750 watts (Thermaltake), my GPU is a GTX 570, my motherboard is an ASRock Z77 Pro4, and my CPU is an i5 3570k.

 
I see, maybe while readjusting the main ATX connector you also readjusted the 2x6 pin connectors to the GPU? The symptoms you said are usually more associated to those connectors (which on some models tend to seem being connected correctly but are in fact loose).

Hopefully now your system won't give you any more problems, do a stress test on the gpu to make sure it was only some loose connection and not a faulty card.
 
Solution