Question Will not POST (sometimes)

[StaStr]

Most times my computer will not POST, and I have to try it 3 or 4 or 5 times - I turn it on, the power button lights and fans go on, and after some seconds the light on the power button goes off, and then on again in 2 - 3 seconds, and then nothing till I cut the power. It's been like this for maybe 6 to 10 months. One in a while it'll go on ok.

When it does this, I turn off the power strip it's plugged into for a few seconds and try again. It often takes 4 or 5 tries to get it to POST. When it does, it boots and runs nicely with no other apparent problems.

A couple of months ago I added 2x4GB sticks of RAM doubling it. At that time I cleaned out any dust and reseated the RAM. The problem was there before this and it made no difference.

It's basically a stock system, no overclocking or other modifications.and it's not used for gaming.

(I'm thinking that if it can't be fixed, I'd like to know how to bypass the 'soft start.' and turn it on with the switch on the back of the PS. It used to be that the power switch on a PC turned on the power supply, and the system would POST and boot.)

ASRock H87M Pro4 LGA
i5-4570
Corsair CX Series 650Watt
250G Samsung SSD 850
2TB WD drive (rotating)

 

[Lutfij]

A couple of months ago I added 2x4GB sticks of RAM doubling it.
So you're mixing and matching sticks of ram? Try working with only the 2x4GB kit(if you've got a kit i.e)

You might also want to see if your motherboard is pending any BIOS updates.

 

[StaStr]

Thanks for your reply.

I'm not mixing and matching RAM sticks. I bought the same RAM I bought when I put the system together, and now all 4 slots have the same RAM - same mfgr, same part number, & same spec. They even came in the same packaging. I added the RAM months after the problem started and it made absolutely no difference.

Nevertheless, when the system won't POST, it doesn't even get as far as looking at the RAM - and It always starts within 5 tries (max), maybe 20% of the time the first time.