- Jul 4, 2019
- 2
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Hey everyone. My computer suffered a power surge a little over a week ago and would not turn on. I thought maybe the power supply had died (Corsair RM850) only to find that an older one didn't help in booting the computer, and the theoretically dead one worked just fine in my old computer. It may matter to know that I used it in this computer for hours and days without any issue.
In this old computer I also tested my three drives and everything seemed to be perfectly intact. Also, my GTX 970 video card worked fine as well.
So motherboard, RAM, and processor were left. The RAM is DDR4, four sticks 4 gigs each of 2666 megahertz, and my old computer took DDR3 so I wasn't able to do anything to test those. The processor was a different socket architecture than my previous computer which is what prompted me to build a whole computer around it rather than just upgrading the processor when I got a really good deal on it. This meant that I had no easy way to test either the motherboard or the processor and as it turns out buying just a replacement motherboard was potentially more expensive than just upgrading the motherboard and processor which is what I chose to do.
So now I have a Gigabyte Aorus Ultra and an Intel i9 9900k. I figured if I ran into any additional issues I could assume that the RAM was bad and purchase an upgrade for those sticks as well as needed.
There seem to be multiple problems happening at this point but I think they were all rooted in this one issue. Basically, when I start the computer it turns on, it immediately turns off and turns back on again but this time after a second or two the fans get a little bit faster which sometimes happens when you boot a computer, it turns off again, and then it boots up a third time, with the fans getting even faster and this being the only time that the monitor, keyboard, and mouse receive any indication that they're being connected to the computer properly.
This pattern happens every single time I boot the computer, and the motherboard has a two digit LCD debug code that unfortunately is not very helpful. The first boot contains a single code that is not in the instruction manual, and the other two boots after that go through quite a variety of codes, most of which seem to be completely innocuous and the manual doesn't have any sort of real explanation for. (I can try to get a full list of these codes later if that would be helpful.)
It has done this with or without the drives attached, no difference whatsoever. Originally I thought it might have been a product of the drives, because what I'm trying to do is use a program my friend introduced me to, Acronis True Image, in order to image the computer with what was on the hard drive previously, but I guess it removes the core hardware drivers so that I can update them to my current hardware. And until then he suggested that the computer would not be able to get into Windows with that installation. But both attempting this and trying to use the Windows repair tool with my copy of Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit edition, both of those end up freezing at some point. Doing it with Windows will freeze it in the middle of the animated logo, and doing it with Acronis it will freeze just at some point while it's loading. The cursor will stop blinking on a DOS-like "now loading..._" message.
during some of the rebooting, at least two or three times I got a "Clear Cmos Notification" telling me that the BIOS had been reset. I'm not sure why it did it a few times it did and not the other times. There didn't seem to be a difference in the pattern of what was happening.
I would say the best problem to have right now would be that my ram is actually bad. BIOS recognized the RAM as all being 4096 megabytes each. I was previously made to understand that if any of the sticks of RAM were bad the computer would not even turn on, so I guess I'm looking for clarification on that issue. If not the RAM, what else could be the issue and what would be the most sane way to solve this? I know that no time is a good time to have your computer struck by lightning, but the amount of stress that this is caused with this bad timing and repeated series of tiered problems is something I could really do without right now. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!
In this old computer I also tested my three drives and everything seemed to be perfectly intact. Also, my GTX 970 video card worked fine as well.
So motherboard, RAM, and processor were left. The RAM is DDR4, four sticks 4 gigs each of 2666 megahertz, and my old computer took DDR3 so I wasn't able to do anything to test those. The processor was a different socket architecture than my previous computer which is what prompted me to build a whole computer around it rather than just upgrading the processor when I got a really good deal on it. This meant that I had no easy way to test either the motherboard or the processor and as it turns out buying just a replacement motherboard was potentially more expensive than just upgrading the motherboard and processor which is what I chose to do.
So now I have a Gigabyte Aorus Ultra and an Intel i9 9900k. I figured if I ran into any additional issues I could assume that the RAM was bad and purchase an upgrade for those sticks as well as needed.
There seem to be multiple problems happening at this point but I think they were all rooted in this one issue. Basically, when I start the computer it turns on, it immediately turns off and turns back on again but this time after a second or two the fans get a little bit faster which sometimes happens when you boot a computer, it turns off again, and then it boots up a third time, with the fans getting even faster and this being the only time that the monitor, keyboard, and mouse receive any indication that they're being connected to the computer properly.
This pattern happens every single time I boot the computer, and the motherboard has a two digit LCD debug code that unfortunately is not very helpful. The first boot contains a single code that is not in the instruction manual, and the other two boots after that go through quite a variety of codes, most of which seem to be completely innocuous and the manual doesn't have any sort of real explanation for. (I can try to get a full list of these codes later if that would be helpful.)
It has done this with or without the drives attached, no difference whatsoever. Originally I thought it might have been a product of the drives, because what I'm trying to do is use a program my friend introduced me to, Acronis True Image, in order to image the computer with what was on the hard drive previously, but I guess it removes the core hardware drivers so that I can update them to my current hardware. And until then he suggested that the computer would not be able to get into Windows with that installation. But both attempting this and trying to use the Windows repair tool with my copy of Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit edition, both of those end up freezing at some point. Doing it with Windows will freeze it in the middle of the animated logo, and doing it with Acronis it will freeze just at some point while it's loading. The cursor will stop blinking on a DOS-like "now loading..._" message.
during some of the rebooting, at least two or three times I got a "Clear Cmos Notification" telling me that the BIOS had been reset. I'm not sure why it did it a few times it did and not the other times. There didn't seem to be a difference in the pattern of what was happening.
I would say the best problem to have right now would be that my ram is actually bad. BIOS recognized the RAM as all being 4096 megabytes each. I was previously made to understand that if any of the sticks of RAM were bad the computer would not even turn on, so I guess I'm looking for clarification on that issue. If not the RAM, what else could be the issue and what would be the most sane way to solve this? I know that no time is a good time to have your computer struck by lightning, but the amount of stress that this is caused with this bad timing and repeated series of tiered problems is something I could really do without right now. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!
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