A hardware mystery!!

Daniel~

Daniel~

Chief BBS Administrator
Staff member
Hello most helpful friends!

I'm having a disagreement with my hardware.
I want it to start my computer.My computer wants to start to start a boot it gets to various points in the boot and dies.

I have two buttons on my Motherboard. One is available on the out side of the back panel. you press it, until it turns blue and starts blinking blue, then it tries to kick start the boot....then mostly fails and i try again and again until I get a boot.

the second button is next to the Ram, it is suppose to rest ram.

By blindly pressing these two buttons in various sequences and hitting the strart button in different orders I can finally boot. Once booted it runs perfectly.

This is a 20 minutes to an hour process and by the time it does boot I have learned nothing.The nothing I learned doesn't seem to work twice in the same way.

If I put it in suspend it sometimes wakes up by keyboard and sometimes it don't and I start over. just shutting it down works more often, but not always.

Any help in understanding what is going on would be greatly appreciated. I'm at a loss.
 
Rather than hand you a bunch of complicated directions I decide to cut and paste from my forums signature.":O}

Mint 19.1 64bit Tess
Asus Sabertooth Z77 motherboard
Intel 2600K (Unlocked)
16 gigs GBXM G.Skill Ripjaws 17000CL9Q
Vertex 4 2.5 SATA III 256GB SSD hard drive
EVGA Nvidia Geforce GTX 670 FTW
Koolance 1000 water cooled
 
According to the manual for your motherboard, the switch on the outside is the Bios Flashback button. Its purpose is to allow you to download a BIOS to a FAT16/FAT32 formatted USB stick, stuff that into the bottom USB port of the stack with the ethernet port, and then press the Bios Flashback button for 3 seconds until the LED flashes, and it will do the deed. If the LED flashes for five seconds then lights steady, it wasn't able to perform the flash. This seems like what you are reporting. In this case, that isn't surprising, since you've not got a USB drive installed with a valid BIOS flash file.

Regardless, its purpose is NOT to help you boot the system, but rather to flash a new BIOS. We're going to assume you don't need a new BIOS flash, because the machine does EVENTUALLY boot. In other words, there's no reason to mess with this switch.

The other switch, on the motherboard itself, is the MemOK! switch. Its purpose is to allow the motherboard to automatically train the memory timings if you get yourself into a position where the memory timings won't let you boot. According to the manual, it can potentially take some time for this to complete.

To determine if memory timings are the problem, you need to observe the DRAM LED located near the MemOK! switch (should right below and slightly left of the MemOK! switch). If this LED comes on and STAYS on during boot, then you have a problem with memory. To see if the problem is in fact the memory timings, you can press and hold the MemOK! switch until the DRAM LED starts blinking.

Once it starts blinking, sit back and have a bowl of noodles, 'cause this might take a while. No indication is given of how long this can potentially take, but the manual says that EACH test takes 30 seconds, and it will test MULTIPLE settings. No idea how many settings, but 5 minutes doesn't sound unreasonable.

If the DRAM LED stops blinking and instead remains lit continuously, then the utility wasn't able to find a set of timings that works. At that point, you may have a memory problem. Reseat the DIMMs and try again?

If the DRAM LED doesn't come on continuously during boot, then you need to check the CPU, BOOT DEVICE, and VGA LEDs. I've attached a screenshot showing the locations of the LEDs. If any of these come on and STAY on, then you've got a problem with the associated component.

Screenshot from 2021-12-19 21-26-51.png
 
Need I say, "I'll get back to you!
Many thanks, I should be able to figure this out from here.
You know that Me George is not wrong,
You da man!!
 
I think I' m Ok now.
I think that what happened is that I rebooted it during a mem.(small red button by the RAM.) check before it was done, If it takes more than 2 minutes I try something else, made a bit of a mess

Firefox has been messing about with suspend mode for the 4 or 5 releases, it doesn't want to wake up.When I remove Firefox it suspends as it should.

Guess I'll just be turning it off until the next release by Firefox or Mint.

Many thanks Big Guy, you at least got me off the wrong track with the buttons.

I'll see how she does over the next few days.

All red lights perform as expected, so no bad hardware..yes!
 
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It's to laugh!
I seem to have gotten the no start thing handled.
but you won't believe, this a real first for me!

Once I boot and start to enjoy myself...
In the middle of my enjoying myself
This pops up.
Screenshot from 2021-12-21 10-57-46.png


Unwilling to wait for my decision, it chooses for me and shuts me down.
If I'm really quick I can cancel other wise I'm shut down.
More out of complete mystification than anything resembling knowledge I told it to load optimized default and then reset up my bios. So far so good, no pop up and punch me

But I wanted to here from my hardware gurus.
Anyone want to take a shot as to what happened?
 
I've no idea. There might be something in your logs, but it would take some digging, and I'm not certain I want to invest that kind of time. 3:)

I was going to suggest re-doing your BIOS settings anyway, so the fact that you've gone ahead and done that is probably for the best.
 
As the thrill is gone and the fans have all moved on I've decided today to "mostly" unclocked running my 3.2 chip at 3.8 instead of 4.8

They always said that time would slow me down, but it's no fun being way out in front when every one else has gone home


the general atmosphere is such that my CPU now thinks it can just say no when ever it doesn't feel like performing.

I know! I'm going to take away half its ram!!!
 
Gizmo said:
I've no idea. There might be something in your logs, but it would take some digging, and I'm not certain I want to invest that kind of time. 3:)

I was going to suggest re-doing your BIOS settings anyway, so the fact that you've gone ahead and done that is probably for the best.
Click to expand...
You've always done enough or more than enough.
Do you really think I've forgotten our Fedora days? LOL
 
My internet just puked and died.
While looking into it I checked it's plug. It's plug was the second to loosen just enough. Want to guess what the first plug to loosen was?

You could of just told me to check if it was plunged in.
I must admit I expected a bit more from a hardware Guru.

But you do try so you can keep all the money I've paid you over the years.
I have found that hand holding, (even with an all crippled up and mangled hand.) is important.

"It can't be bought
it can't be sold
yet is worth more
than all their gold
just a hand to hold."

Thanks big guy!
 
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