PC won't boot up

Hey everyone. For the last three days, I’ve been dealing with a frustrating issue when trying to boot my PC. When I hit the power button, the system starts to spin up, but after just a few seconds, it cuts out completely. The power button just keeps blinking, almost as if the machine thinks it's stuck in sleep mode. I’ve tried holding the power button down for 10 to 15 seconds to force a shutdown, but nothing happens—it’s totally unresponsive. Even the reset button does absolutely nothing. My only workaround so far is to flip the switch on the main power supply to kill the juice entirely, then flip it back on, which finally allows it to boot normally. It’s happened several times today alone, forcing me to cycle the power just to get work done. I ran a scan with Bitdefender, but everything came back clean; there's no sign of malware or anything similar.

If I had to take a guess, I'd say the power supply is shot... What kind is it, and how old are we talking?

fadedorca66 said:If I had to take a guess, I'd say the power supply is shot... What kind is it, and how old are we talking?

It's about 5 or 6 years old. I'm not entirely sure on the specific model—I'll have to check—but it was originally bought from Micro Center. It's an MSI motherboard with an AMD A10 7700-Radeon R7 processor.
8GB of RAM. Honestly, I'm leaning toward the PSU being the culprit. We had an earthquake a few days ago, and the lights in our house flickered twice like there was some kind of massive power surge. The PC didn't shut down right then, but things have been acting up ever since.

Maybe they just slapped a cheap power supply in there and it’s on its way out. Usually, this kind of thing means the capacitors have dried up or started bulging.

Let me jump in here since I’m stuck in this mess too—my rig just flat-out refused to boot, so we swapped out the Seagate BarraCuda HDD. Now, it actually starts up, but it gets trapped in that endless loop during the initial startup sequence. I tried tightening all the connections and now it boots normally and sounds like it's actually running, but there's absolutely nothing on the screen... just black. Honestly, I’m starting to suspect the power cable might be the culprit, especially since everything was working perfectly fine just last week.

So, which HDD did you end up swapping in? And did you go ahead and reinstall Windows again?

Seagate BarraCuda HDD, Windows hasn't been freshly installed yet, and the power supply is:
https://www.lc-power.com/en/product/...lc420h-12-v13/

copperdriver26 said:Let me jump in here since I’m stuck in this mess too—my rig just flat-out refused to boot, so we swapped out the Seagate BarraCuda HDD. Now, it actually starts up, but it gets trapped in that endless loop during the initial startup sequence. I tried tightening all the connections and now it boots normally and sounds like it's actually running, but there's absolutely nothing on the screen... just black. Honestly, I’m starting to suspect the power cable might be the culprit, especially since everything was working perfectly fine just last week.

There might be an issue with the BIOS. If I had to guess, that's where the problem lies, though I can't say for certain.

Robert Long7 said:Seagate BarraCuda HDD, Windows hasn't been freshly installed yet, and the power supply is:
https://www.lc-power.com/en/product/...lc420h-12-v13/

LC Power makes decent power supplies.

However, there is another possibility: one of the auxiliary power connections might not be seated properly. I am specifically thinking about the extra 12V rail for the CPU or the dedicated power connector for the graphics card. Quite often, when components draw too much current directly from the motherboard because they lack those supplemental power connections, the system essentially goes into a sleep state. Again, I cannot be entirely certain.

Robert Long7 said:Seagate BarraCuda HDD, Windows hasn't been freshly installed yet, and the power supply is:
https://www.lc-power.com/en/product/...lc420h-12-v13/

That HDD was meant for our little "paratrooper" project here. 😁

It's about as cheap as a power supply gets. If you can, maybe try a different one. If you're even slightly handy with PCs, the least you could do is crack it open and check if any capacitors are bulging (you could just snap a photo and post it here).

I tried swapping in a different power supply, but the PC still won't budge. I pulled this spare from an old rig that's been sitting idle for three or four years. Here's what I'm working with:
https://www.amazon.com/EVGA-PowerSupply-500W-80-Bronze/dp/B00M26S6YI I’m going to tear this thing down tomorrow to see if I can spot any bloated capacitors.

Robert Long7 said:I tried swapping in a different power supply, but the PC still won't budge. I pulled this spare from an old rig that's been sitting idle for three or four years. Here's what I'm working with:
https://www.amazon.com/EVGA-PowerSupply-500W-80-Bronze/dp/B00M26S6YI I’m going to tear this thing down tomorrow to see if I can spot any bloated capacitors.

I really wouldn't advise messing around with opening up a power supply unit, because if it still won't boot with a different one, then I suspect the issue probably isn't actually the power supply itself.

Maybe you could start by checking the CMOS battery? After that, I’d suggest taking the whole rig apart and giving everything a really thorough cleaning—you know, grabbing a nice soft brush, maybe one of those fine makeup brushes, and using it to carefully clear out the RAM and graphics card slots. Once you've got everything back together, give it another shot. You might also want to try moving the memory to a different slot, or perhaps just testing it with a single stick at a time to see if that does the trick.

I’ve definitely run into similar headaches myself, once due to a dead battery and another time because of some weirdness with the RAM. It sounds a bit bizarre, I know, but sometimes a computer just refuses to behave unless the memory sticks are seated in a very specific order in their exact slots. I mean, it’s totally strange, but I've had situations where two identical sticks would completely crash the system, yet if I just swapped their positions, everything would suddenly work perfectly fine.

The second power supply isn't even responding, and I've already swapped out the battery.

Robert Long7 said:The second power supply isn't even responding, and I've already swapped out the battery.

Maybe you could try shutting down the PC completely and pulling the power cord right out of the wall? After that, if you hold down the power button for about 15 to 20 seconds to drain any leftover charge, you can plug it back in and see if it'll boot up normally.🤔

Robert Long7 said:I tried swapping in a different power supply, but the PC still won't budge. I pulled this spare from an old rig that's been sitting idle for three or four years. Here's what I'm working with:
https://www.amazon.com/EVGA-PowerSupply-500W-80-Bronze/dp/B00M26S6YI I’m going to tear this thing down tomorrow to see if I can spot any bloated capacitors.

Honestly, this PSU looks even worse than your first one. Was it working before, though? And how old is it? Seems a bit weird that two different ones are failing you like this.

Maybe try pulling it out of the case (unplug all the cables) and testing it standalone to see if it even turns on. You'd just need to short the green and black wires on the main ATX connector—that big one that plugs into the motherboard:

I’ve tried shorting the green and black wires, and the fan spins, but that's about it. I went through all the connectors looking for any signs of swelling or cracks, but everything looks fine physically. I swapped out the main power cable, pulled the RAM to clean the contacts, and popped it back in, but no luck. Even trying to boot without the HDD connected yields the exact same result. When I hit the power button, there’s this weird clicking sound right as it shuts down, though I can't tell if it's coming from the motherboard or somewhere inside the PSU. Here's a video of what's happening:

Is it the hard drive itself or just a busted SATA cable?

Once it's warmed up, it boots perfectly fine. After running it for about an hour, I’ve shut it down a few times and it starts right back up without any issues.

So, is it the same deal with both power supplies?

fadedorca66 said:So, is it the same deal with both power supplies?

Nope, the second power supply doesn't change a thing. It still won't boot.

Just grab some cheap-ass power supply for testing purposes, you know? Something low-stakes where you don't have to worry about blowing anything up. If the same thing keeps happening, then the motherboard is definitely toast.