URGENT: PC won't boot! Help needed!

Hello there!

I never imagined I would actually find myself in this position, but I have officially hit a wall and could really use some help.

So, I work in IT and have spent plenty of time working in repair services, but I’ve hit a wall. I am completely stumped by this problem and just can't seem to wrap my head around it.

So, here's the situation: my PC was working perfectly fine, but then one day I power it on and... nothing. Well, technically, the BIOS flashes on the screen for a split second and then vanishes. The computer itself stays powered on—all the lights are glowing and everything looks active—but the screen remains completely blank. To make matters worse, when I tried to shut it down normally by holding the power button for ten seconds, it just refused to respond. I eventually had to force a hard shutdown by cutting the power entirely.

It keeps cutting in and out, and honestly, I’m at my wit's end with it. At this point, I’ve decided to just drop it off at the local repair shop and let the pros handle it.

I’ll try digging through it all again, but I doubt anything will change. If I just pull out one stick of RAM and fire it up, it should at least boot to the BIOS. But once I'm in there, it's showing absolutely nothing—no SSD, no HDD, not even the DVD drive.

Whenever I try to put my RAM back in—I've got three 2x2GB sticks and one 4GB stick—it’s the same old story: the BIOS just refuses to boot.

I tried pulling the drives out and back in, but no luck—they're still acting up. Now, if I pop in a DVD and boot from my mini Windows XP setup, everything seems to work fine. I even ran a memory test by testing each stick individually in its own slot, and they all passed without any issues. However, once I plug the drives back in, the system just won't recognize them.

I connected the drive to my work PC, and both are functioning perfectly fine.

I just swapped out my graphics card for this absolute beast, and honestly, I have no clue which specific model it is—feel free to roast me for not knowing! All I know is that it's absolutely crushing Battlefield 4 and Grand Theft Auto V, even with only 2 GB of VRAM.
By the way, I'm running a 650W power supply. It really should be more than enough, especially since this entire configuration was working perfectly fine before all of this started happening.

I tried swapping in a different SD card, but I’m still seeing absolutely no progress whatsoever.

I’ve decided to go with a different power supply—it doesn't have all the connectors and is a bit lower wattage, but since I'm sticking with a less demanding graphics card, I won't actually need those extra PCIe power cables anyway. Everything booted up perfectly, and Windows 8.1 loaded right up without a hitch. Honestly, I was starting to get a little worried, but it looks like the power supply was indeed the culprit!

I’ve hooked up the power supply to the tester, and everything seems to be running smoothly, but honestly, I'm just worried about who's going to screw me over when it comes to the warranty.

I dropped the unit off at the same shop where I originally bought it, left the power supply with it, and then waited until the following day just to hear that it had passed all their tests and was working perfectly. Honestly, I’m a bit baffled because I distinctly remember hearing this thing whining occasionally—which is usually a dead giveaway that something is wrong. I specifically pointed that out to them, so now I'm genuinely confused as to how they've deemed it "functional" after I left the entire PC there for testing. I dropped it off on Friday, and after hearing nothing over the weekend, I called them on Tuesday. They told me they finished the diagnostics and everything works fine; they even booted up their own drive, loaded Windows, and ran Grand Theft Auto V for a while to make sure it held up.

He said it was fine. To be honest, though, I’m still scratching my head over how that actually happened. I spent an hour and a half working on it, finally got everything hooked up at home, and then—boom—it actually works. I have to admit, I was braced for impact, thinking the headache was finally going to be my problem to deal with.

I booted the system up to take a look at the registry and scan for errors, and honestly, all I could find was that the machine had shut down unexpectedly. Aside from that, there wasn't much else to report.

I’ve been running into this frustrating issue where my PC goes into sleep mode, but the monitor refuses to wake up. It’s incredibly strange because I can actually hear all the standard Windows startup sounds playing in the background, signaling that the system has booted, yet the screen stays completely black. Trying to perform a simple restart doesn't fix anything either; the only way to get things moving is to do a full power cycle—shutting everything down and turning it back on—which then allows Windows to load normally. I decided to dig into the BIOS to see what was going on, especially since a colleague of mine had been tinkering with some settings at the office recently. It turns out he had adjusted a few configurations and left the initialization priority set to standard PCI instead of PCI Express, which is exactly where my graphics card is connected. Once I corrected that setting and switched it back to PCI Express, everything worked perfectly. Now, when I put the computer to sleep and move the mouse, the screen wakes up immediately just like it should.

That sounds great. I’ve been playing a ton of Grand Theft Auto V lately. It’s honestly such a blast, though I have to admit I get a little frustrated when the game crashes right at the beginning of a session. It really throws a wrench in the mood!😠 🙂

I’m having a bit of a nightmare here. I try to power it on, but all I get is a black screen—it just won't boot at all! Then, I try pulling out some old hardware, and it actually boots up, but now my drives aren't showing up anywhere. Any ideas?

I am honestly losing my mind here. I just tried disconnecting the drives again to see if that would help, but absolutely nothing is happening. It’s just sitting there, completely unresponsive, and I can't get it to budge at all. 😠

Just a heads-up for anyone interested: I actually disabled Windows Update about a month ago. It was starting to eat up my SSD way too fast—it was ballooning up to 120GB! That drive is strictly for my OS, and even though I still have about 15GB of breathing room left, that's just getting a bit too close for comfort for my liking.

I still have my doubts about the power supply unit. Every time I flip the switch, I hear that distinct "thud" from the relay. It’s a bit unsettling, even if everything seems to pass the initial stress tests just fine.

Check your BIOS settings. SATA connectors, SSD, and HDD all handle things differently, so watch those operation modes.

If that doesn't fix it, try turning it off once it boots up—it keeps jumping into sleep or hibernation mode.

If neither of those works, then something’s seriously busted...

Now we're back to square one—it's failing to detect the drives again.

I'm thinking the issue might actually be with the motherboard 🤷

It looks like my system won't boot; I'm just getting this message in the BIOS

"AMD data Change... update New data to DMI!"

I'm honestly a little worried that during the installation process, the boot partition ended up on the HDD instead of the SSD where the OS actually lives. 😛

So, I popped in a Windows installation disk and ran a repair, so we'll see how that goes.

EDIT: Oh my goodness, I inserted the disc—zero luck initially—but then I restarted and Windows booted up perfectly! Who knows what happened there? Haha, I suppose the bootloader somehow found its way home?

Also, looks like a motherboard issue... You didn't mention which one you're using...

Just asking, for what it's worth: did clearing the CMOS do anything? And regarding those missing drives—is it just the disks themselves, or is the BIOS resetting to defaults? Check the battery.

I tried resetting the CMOS, but it didn't help at all. If there was too much RAM installed, the system wouldn't even attempt to boot the BIOS; it would just sit there with a black screen. Once I pulled out the USB drive and booted from my Windows installation media, I ran a repair attempt, but it just gave me an error message saying it failed. I tried using a system restore, but it couldn't restart, so I had to boot directly into Windows. After plugging the USB back in, everything seemed to load normally for now, but I have no idea how long this will last. My plan is to flash the BIOS to the latest version and then see if I can figure out why that error message popped up in the first place.

EDIT: The motherboard is a Gigabyte model.

I've finished flashing the BIOS to the newest version, so I'll have to wait and see if I run into any more trouble tomorrow.

I’d say it’s a faulty motherboard.

I would suggest trying a different motherboard, since I'm not quite sure if you've had a chance to test that specific variable yet.

That sounds interesting... not the usual nonsense. That’s why I’m reaching out; I have zero interest in wasting my time on basic errors.
It could be one tiny, specific thing gone wrong... and since there are endless possibilities, I won't list them all here.
It is 100% a hardware issue, though there are many ways it could manifest.
Send me a DM.

I fired up my PC today, and once again, I’m right back at square one. 😠 Honestly, I’m halfway tempted to just smash the thing; it’s driving me absolutely insane. 🙂

Jessica Nelson4 said:I would suggest trying a different motherboard, since I'm not quite sure if you've had a chance to test that specific variable yet.

I don't have another one on hand; the office only uses Intel boards, so there isn't an AMD option available.

Look, you should probably try the process of elimination here. If I recall correctly—since you already tested the PSU—your next move should be testing a different motherboard. Or, if you want to take a complete longshot, just buy a new CMOS battery.

I find it hard to believe the battery is actually dead, considering the BIOS clock is still showing the correct time.

I’ve been searching Google, and it seems like quite a few people have run into this exact same issue, yet I haven't found a single reliable fix out there. 😢

Brenda Alvarez11 said:I don't have another one on hand; the office only uses Intel boards, so there isn't an AMD option available.

A major reason I tend to lean toward Intel is simply because most people already have what they need on hand if a situation arises.😛

So, I finally managed to get this sorted out. 🎉

To make a long story short, it looks like my power supply was just being pushed way too hard.

At first, I swapped in a weaker graphics card, and the PC actually booted right into Windows—something it absolutely refused to do before.

Then, I went ahead and disconnected all those extra fans and SATA drives. Honestly, I never even use them; they just came bundled with the motherboard, but they clearly draw enough power to cause issues.

Once I popped the beefier graphics card back in, lo and behold, it worked perfectly. Eventually, I reconnected the fans and the unused SATA drives while keeping them unplugged from the actual hardware, and it held up. I also tried cycling the power switch and unplugging it from the wall to let the capacitors drain a few times, and that seemed to help get it running. 😛

I guess I’ll wait until tomorrow to see if it decides to surprise me again. 🍿

I have to admit, I was pretty confused while digging through forums online. So many people have run into this exact same error message during bootup—where the system just can't detect any drives or similar issues—and there were tons of threads pointing toward a failing or insufficient power supply as the culprit.

Now that summer is rolling in, I'm wondering if the heat is playing a part. My room gets pretty sweltering, and since the sun beats down directly on my desk area, the PC might be struggling with the temperature.

Anyway, it looks like I'll be shopping for a much more robust power supply very soon.