Won't boot.

[Fossaw]

Yesterday, I had to move two of my machines. When I set them up again, neither would work. Both had previously run 24/7 crunching BOINC projects. I can't remember when they were last powered down, but it was probably not this year. Both are quad core Intel machines.

First machine, when powered on, seems to be trying, the fans start etc. but after a "short while" it stops, then after another short while, seems to try again, and again, and again. The short while in quotes is not a fixed time period, it varies from less than a second, to as long as perhaps 7-8 seconds. It has an SSD which has been there about a year. It has Ubuntu on it.

The second machine powers up, fans running, but does nothing else. This machine is a little older than the other, with a mechanical hard disk, and Windows XP.

Neither machine is displaying any kind of boot messages, or BIOS type messages.

So, what is going on here?

[Mario F.]

I have a similar problem with an old HP machine. Don't know what got into me to once buy a branded computer, but we all make dumb mistakes once and a while. In nearly 30 years around computers I only twice owned a branded computer. That HP misery of a computer and my very first PC, an Amstrad PC 1512 that my father bought.

Anyways, back to the HP, because it never happens when I just power the machine down and up again -- only happens infrequently when it gets disconnected from the power outlet -- I always suspected some weakness in either the PSU or in the motherboard itself on its video card slot.

What I do to get it to boot up again, is to open it up, take the GPU, and clean both the GPU slot and the GPU pins with some alcohol embedded cloth. After I leave it for a few minutes to dry up (ethanol doesn't really conduct electricity, but you didn't learn that from me), i just put the GPU back in and it works.

Hope this is also the problem you are having and it can be solved this way. Otherwise you may need to isolate the problem elsewhere, like checking the computers against a different PSU.

[MutantJohn]

I've also heard that you can clean a computer with alcohol as well. It's a good choice because it also evaporates incredibly quickly.

That being said, it sucks your computers won't work.

For the first, it might just be your PSU or mobo and for the second one, I also second what Mario suggested.

When I built my computer, I had my PSU installed upside so the fan was blowing directly into my GPU and I think it made my computer not really work. It'd turn on but not do anything so I took it to Geek Squad and they pointed out that my PSU was upside down. I flipped it and lo and behold my machine works. Even to this day.

[gemera]

Do you have disk activity on the 2nd one? If so it's probably just that the monitor isn't properly connected or the connector is duff.

[cyberfish]

I've also heard that you can clean a computer with alcohol as well. It's a good choice because it also evaporates incredibly quickly.

That being said, it sucks your computers won't work.

For the first, it might just be your PSU or mobo and for the second one, I also second what Mario suggested.

When I built my computer, I had my PSU installed upside so the fan was blowing directly into my GPU and I think it made my computer not really work. It'd turn on but not do anything so I took it to Geek Squad and they pointed out that my PSU was upside down. I flipped it and lo and behold my machine works. Even to this day.

That sounds like the problem was somewhere else. Probably a lose connection somewhere that happened to be fixed when you replugged things in.

PSUs don't care which way they are mounted. They are solid state devices. The only exception is if you are driving it really really hard, and it overheats if airflow is not good enough. That can't be the case if you can't even start your computer.

[Fossaw]

I'm still trying to get these two machines back up and running. The second machine behaves, or rather, behaved, like a disk issue. I've got a new SSD, but something surprised me when I opened it up. It has come with a driver cd/dvd. As it will be the only "disk" in the machine, and at this point, is totally blank, how does one get the machine up to install a driver? I don't recall having to install a driver in the other machine, it, quite sensibly, just worked.

[Elysia]

You do not need to install a driver to install W7 on an SSD. XP requires drivers for AHCI support. Not sure about Vista. But you can load a driver in the installation.

[Fossaw]

Ah, good. It is Windows 8.1 by the way. Thanks.

[Elysia]

What kind of OS version is that? Never heard of it!
Jokes aside, it should work fine on 8.1 too.

[GReaper]

(ethanol doesn't really conduct electricity, but you didn't learn that from me)

You know, I don't like being a smart-ass, but that statement somewhat bothered me. And it did because it overlooks that neither water conducts electricity. It's the ions that are dissolved in a liquid that make it conductive. So, even if the ethanol you were using for cleaning was exactly 100% pure( which is next to impossible, and even 98% is very expensive ), the impurities like dust and such(who knows what lurks inside a PC ) that it would pick up would probably make it conductive.

Oh, I went on a tangent. The reason it bothers me is that although it's technically correct, it creates the wrong impression in those who don't know better.

That is all from me. Please, do continue with your discussion.

[Mario F.]

Well I DIDN'T know better and learned something new.

[MutantJohn]

Even though pure water is not inherently conductive, ethanol's evaporation would be far more thorough in far less time than water's which is another thing to consider.

[Aslaville]

Even though pure water is not inherently conductive, ethanol's evaporation would be far more thorough in far less time than water's which is another thing to consider.

Am cleaning my PC with *pure* water as we speak

As a side-note typing a smile on this forum comes off as a grin which might not bring out the intended impression.

[Alpo]

As a side-note typing a smile on this forum comes off as a grin which might not bring out the intended impression.

Just don't try ascii art lol, the scripts for submitting seem to trim all the white space out:

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^^ I swear that is a smiley face

[phantomotap]

As a side-note typing a smile on this forum comes off as a grin which might not bring out the intended impression.

O_o

Did you see the ones we had for two or three days a ways back?

The ':D' smiley legitimately looked as insane person about to thoroughly enjoy doing something awful.

Soma