Do I need a new motherboard, a new power supply, new drives, or an exorcism?



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Dong Kollector Jax
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I'm posting this in case anyone (1) feels like reading it and (2) is unusually proficient with computers. I'm not 100% sure (2) is the case...

*smirk*

...Just 99% sure.

As for (1), I'll just copy and paste this to a tech support site if needed. However, I trust you people more than the randos out there. If you have the expertise and want to read this little story, I'd be very thankful.

Very thankful. THIS IS AMERICCCA

As of about a month ago, I sometimes stayed on my desktop PC during electrical storms. For the most part, things went totally well. Occasionally, there would be some sort of power surge that forced my PC to restart, but other than that, there were no repercussions. I also had the bad habit of leaving my PC on all night sometimes because Sleep Mode had a chance of straight-up shutting down the PC without suspending my work, so I said "fuck it."

Here's what I remember about the night when it all changed. I was sleeping on the carpet floor of my apartment, but stirred as the room lit up with lightning. I decided it was best to save all my shit and put my PC into Sleep Mode, so I did so, lied back down, and woke up some time later as the thunder boomed even louder.

Suddenly, my PC kicked on without my permission when I wasn't in arm's reach of any wires, peripherals or connected parts. "Oh fuck," I thought, but I think I just turned it off and went back to sleep.

In a matter of days, things got more bizarre. I walked back into my room and saw my PC randomly restarting without my permission. (There were no Windows Update notifications I saw at all earlier that day.) It continued to work fine for a while, then I got Windows 10's casually-worded pastel-blue screen of death a couple of times. At one point, the screen was black for like a whole hour while the hard drive light kept flashing; I assumed it had locked up and cut it off in a rage. Then, eventually, the BIOS failed to detect my hard drive.

I was frustrated and distraught and tried restarting several times to no avail. Eventually, seemingly by accident, Windows 10 started loading again, and the PC worked. Cue another cyan screen of death, then another period of hard drive non-detection. Eventually, it seemed to detect the hard drive a few times, launching Windows Repair Utility (which always failed; don't have the logs). That quickly faded to another spiel of total non-detection that persisted for over a week.

While the hard drive seemed effectively dead, as far as my BIOS was concerned, starting the PC would sometimes cause the hard drive indicator at the top to light up several times as the hard drive clicked back and forth rapidly, then it would just give up. I researched the "click of death," and assumed this meant the drive was dead. Oh well.

"Okay," I thought, "I'll just run my PC from a flash drive, work to purchase a new SSD, then run my computer from that when it arrives."

(Over the course of that week, it seemed Ubuntu detected a 1 TB hard drive in File Manger precisely 1 time, but couldn't access it, probably because it was formatted for Windows. After a brief period, it was gone.)

After like 6 days of setbacks and multitudinous flash drive issues I won't get into, the SSD arrived today. Much like my old HDD, however, it doesn't seem to exist as far as my motherboard is concerned, even though everything else on the MB seems to run fine. Updating my BIOS to the latest version from 2012 did not change this.

This raises an interesting question: is the problem, in fact, that my motherboard has lost the ability to read hard drives from the SATA ports? Does that mean I need to repair/replace my MB, or could this be a power supply issue?

Long before this debacle, I had an issue where it seemed to take a random number of power-button presses to start my PC, ranging from 1-2 to about 10 (usually) to (occasionally) about 50. This didn't really bother me all that much, because I knew it would at least start, but I wonder if that issue is connected with this one.

Things I've already tried:

Reseating SATA and power cables.

Switching out SATA cables.

Switching out SATA ports.

Making sure each SATA port is set to AHCI and is enabled in BIOS.

Checking every boot list available in BIOS and making sure the HDs are not detected.

Resetting BIOS to defaults.

Updating BIOS.

OLD OPERATING SYSTEM: WINDOWS 10
OLD HARD DRIVE: SEAGATE BARRACUDA 7200.12 (1 TB)
NEW HARD DRIVE: KINGSTON SSDNOW 300 SOLID STATE DRIVE (120 GB)

MOTHERBOARD: ASUS SABERTOOTH 990FX
CPU: AMD FX-6100 SIX-CORE PROCESSOR X 6
GRAPHICS CARD: ATI XFX RADEON HD 6950
POWER SUPPLY: CORSAIR TX650 (650 watts)
RAM: Two big black bars that say "CORSAIR" on them.

There's the info, gentlemen. Have any leads?

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Kinda sounds like your motherboard is fucked.

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I'm going to go with component damage due to cheap / failing power supply

Go get the Ultimate Boot CD and run Memtest86+ on it to make sure it isn't your RAM. Also check your voltages in the BIOS, they should be within 5% of nominal

FUCK. YOU. VISSARIO.

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I'm an idiot. Turns out all I needed to do was unplug all the shit from the back of my computer so my motherboard would detect my hard drive.

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Quoted from Petrified Pete:
I'm an idiot. Turns out all I needed to do was unplug all the shit from the back of my computer so my motherboard would detect my hard drive.

What? Why would that work?

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I'm not sure, other than the idea that the BIOS gets "overwhelmed" by too many things being plugged in, so it doesn't detect the hard drive.

I read that solution online earlier (it was someone's anecdote about how they solved a similar HD problem), and kind of forgot about it thinking it was incredibly unlikely. Granted, I haven't tried plugging in my old HD yet, so that may be a seperate issue.

...Or I may have spent two weeks thinking I had a dead hard drive and $50 on a new hard drive just because I was unwilling to plug the shit in after I turned my computer on.

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Dude, if your PC has a certain number of I/O ports it should be able to handle all them being filled by devices. That makes no sense unless you bought a shitty pre-built from ibuypower or something.

I bet your mobo is damaged.

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Quoted from Petrified Pete:
I'm not sure, other than the idea that the BIOS gets "overwhelmed" by too many things being plugged in, so it doesn't detect the hard drive.

I read that solution online earlier (it was someone's anecdote about how they solved a similar HD problem), and kind of forgot about it thinking it was incredibly unlikely. Granted, I haven't tried plugging in my old HD yet, so that may be a seperate issue.

...Or I may have spent two weeks thinking I had a dead hard drive and $50 on a new hard drive just because I was unwilling to plug the shit in after I turned my computer on.

I'm 99% sure, after this post, that you need a new power supply. You don't have enough power to get all your peripherals up and running, dude.

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*checks watch*

that'll be $40

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What I mean is I needed to unplug (almost?) everything else, then boot once. Once it recognized the hard drive that one time, I was good to go and reconnected everything else. Not to say that doesn't indicate a power issue, though.

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I still think its a power issue.

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Quoted from Petrified Pete:
I'm an idiot. Turns out all I needed to do was unplug all the shit from the back of my computer so my motherboard would detect my hard drive.

so the only way this could affect things is if you have one of your USB devices set as a boot device. Go check that shit somewhere

It's probably detecting your disk everytime, but it won't boot because it finds something else higher up in the boot list

FUCK. YOU. VISSARIO.

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I would routinely check the BIOS, and the only devices that were in the boot order would be the USB boot disks I had inserted. If there were no USB flash drives in and there was nothing in the CD-ROM drive, it would just indicate there were no boot devices and ask me to insert one. Seemingly the only way to get the BIOS to notice my drive was to unplug additional shit.

However, I've concluded I needed to get a new power supply, thanks to everyone's help. I want to power some new stuff like a liquid cooler eventually, anyway.

Thank you very much to everyone who read or responded. You each get 1 major favor¹.

^{1=I retain veto power.}

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Yeah definitely power supply or motherboard is failing. Prepare to replace both! Hooray computers!

FUCK. YOU. VISSARIO.

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Quoted from ThePerfectCore:
Quoted from Petrified Pete:
I'm an idiot. Turns out all I needed to do was unplug all the shit from the back of my computer so my motherboard would detect my hard drive.
so the only way this could affect things is if you have one of your USB devices set as a boot device. Go check that shit somewhere

It's probably detecting your disk everytime, but it won't boot because it finds something else higher up in the boot list

What also would cause this would be his hard drives are not getting enough power to spin up and so aren't recognized by the BIOS.

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keep the ssd anyway it will change your life

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Quote:
Quoted from Timeless Art of Seduction:
Quoted from ThePerfectCore:
Quoted from Petrified Pete:
I'm an idiot. Turns out all I needed to do was unplug all the shit from the back of my computer so my motherboard would detect my hard drive.
so the only way this could affect things is if you have one of your USB devices set as a boot device. Go check that shit somewhere

It's probably detecting your disk everytime, but it won't boot because it finds something else higher up in the boot list

What also would cause this would be his hard drives are not getting enough power to spin up and so aren't recognized by the BIOS.

Yeah. Given the power button issue, too, it all seems to come together to point a finger at my PS.

I'm actually much happier with this than the prospect of losing the gigabytes of 3D model porn that were on my Barracuda.

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probably a good idea to plug into a high quality surge suppressor as well

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Quoted from Petrified Pete:
Quote:
Quoted from Timeless Art of Seduction:
Quoted from ThePerfectCore:
Quoted from Petrified Pete:
I'm an idiot. Turns out all I needed to do was unplug all the shit from the back of my computer so my motherboard would detect my hard drive.
so the only way this could affect things is if you have one of your USB devices set as a boot device. Go check that shit somewhere

It's probably detecting your disk everytime, but it won't boot because it finds something else higher up in the boot list

What also would cause this would be his hard drives are not getting enough power to spin up and so aren't recognized by the BIOS.

Yeah. Given the power button issue, too, it all seems to come together to point a finger at my PS.

I'm actually much happier with this than the prospect of losing the gigabytes of 3D model porn that were on my Barracuda.

torrent plz

FUCK. YOU. VISSARIO.

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If my old HDD works after I'm done downloading and installing all this shit on the new one, you got it. THIS IS AMERICCCA

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None for me thanks I only like 2d porn.

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I can't wait to feel Vette's hot Twi'lek tentacles flop over my sturdy Sith shoulders all that much faster, now that I have this spankin'-new SSD hooked up. While SWTOR is downloading, I'm off for a nap. Hopefully I'll wake up in something warm and sticky thinking about those deep navy-blue pussy lips wrapping around my crimson-read Sith Pureblood fuckstick. Night.

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I still think his mobo is damaged and is gonna fuckin fail on him soon.

Also am I wrong or would putting a PC in sleep mode do fuck-all to protect it from power surges?

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buy one of these while your at it and install on your main power grid

http://raycap.com/surge-protection/ac-protection/acdata-product-line/acx-series/

it's perplexing that techies and nerds will buy thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of electronic equipment and attach it all to a residential 7200:120VAC distribution line and yet will not spend a few hundred dollars on a UPS and quality MOVs to protect said equipment from transients.

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This reply was last edited on 09-13-15 09:44:38 AM by atlas sighed (at me).

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So you're saying we should all buy guns to protect our computers

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