Friend Fried My PC?

[gainteck]

Hi, I'm new here. I actually went here to ask assistance with my issue.

In the past month my windows 10 would randomly freeze on desktop doing nothing and I could only move the mouse. I would have to force shutdown and I would see hundreds of storahci event 129 in event viewer. I thought it was the disc so I bought an SSD. Called my friend over to help me install it and fresh win 10.

Same problems again, also the system took incredibly long to install. After the system was installed it would immediately freeze randomly on desktop (mouse too) followed by storahci. When we hard reset, the motherboard would not see the windows SSD, saying "INSERT SYSTEM DISK" (the first boot device was set to SDD, NOT anything else). We reset it again and it booted. We then shut it off in order to connect all the remaining TBs of HDDs. When booted windows would instantly freeze again. We pushed reset again and the motherboard went into an endless reboot with no POST. After all that we hard shutdown and cut the power.

My friend started holding the power and reset buttons at the same time some 10 seconds and then told me to turn ON the power switch WHILE he was holding down the POWER and RESET BUTTONS. "Ok hit it!". I hit it and then BLASTOFF! The new expensive graphics card BLASTED it's FAN like 200%!!! It sounded like Aventador revving and dust was spitting half a meter sideways out of the fan! And ALL THE CASE FANS that were connected to the motherboard were spinning wildly! It restarted again and did the SAME! And my friend was STARING AT ALL THAT LIKE AN IDIOT IN SHOCK! UNTIL I CUT THE POWER AND WONDERED TO MYSELF: "WTF ARE YOU DOING!!!???"

He left and I'm left wondering ARE ALL MY COMPONENTS FRIED??? He later connected his power supply and it was the same CRAZY SPINNING of all fans and no picture.

I was always monitoring my TEMPS since I built the PC.

FULL LOAD RECORDS in Celsius:
CPU ~ 55,56,50,40,etc,etc
GPU ~ 70
MOBO ~ 50
SYS HDD 32
HDD1 26
HDD2 25
HDD3 25

ALL DRIVERS UP TO DATE.


What now? I already bought a new expensive motherboard. I HOPE it's only a motherboard issue.

YOUR THOUGHTS?

EDIT: This topic is still active. I will post back once my motherboard arrives tomorrow I hope.

 

[Solaris17]

No, I don’t think so. I think your system has serious issues though. In any order the first things I would be doing were.

New Sata cables
Swap board
Swap ram

 

[the54thvoid]

Re-install OS?

 

[c2DDragon]

Hi !
Can we have your system specs ? Every details of the components please.
It could be a lack of power from the power supply unit for the black screens and freezes. Like, if you need 500W and you put a bronze or a noname 500W PSU it can lead to problems at some points.
Temps are good but 56°C at full load for the CPU I guess it was not in Prime95

Re-install OS?

He said they did it :

...I bought an SSD. Called my friend over to help me install it and fresh win 10.

 

[the54thvoid]

Hi !
Can we have your system specs ? Every details of the components please.
It could be a lack of power from the power supply unit for the black screens and freezes. Like, if you need 500W and you put a bronze or a noname 500W PSU it can lead to problems at some points.
Temps are good but 56°C at full load for the CPU I guess it was not in Prime95


He said they did it :

Yeah but I'm thinking that terrible hard reset and power off may have compromised the OS. Then again, could be many things- need system specs as @Solaris17 asked for.

 

[Bill_Bright]

My friend started holding the power and reset buttons at the same time some 10 seconds and then told me to turn ON the power switch WHILE he was holding down the POWER and RESET BUTTONS.

Never EVER heard of doing this but knowing how the switches work, I don't see how this procedure would do anything but make your fingers tired. On a PC (notebooks are different) those switches lead to "momentary" circuits meaning once the press ("closing" of the switch) registers with the circuit, the switch is ignored until the button is released AND pressed again. So while that procedure could not have done anything to fix the system, it could not have caused any harm either.

As far as what to do next, since EVERYTHING inside the computer depends on good, clean, stable power, I always want to ensure everything is getting good, clean, stable power. So if me, I would swap in a known good power supply. This process also ensures you have double-checked your cabling and connections to make sure all have been made and are tight.

Do you get any beeps? Sadly, most cases don't come with system speakers anymore. And only some motherboards integrate a little piezoelectric "button" speaker on the boards. That is too bad because beep codes can be very valuable when troubleshooting. So with all our builds, if a system speaker does not come with the case or motherboard, I always add a System Speaker. Note that price is for 20!

I would disconnect all drives and reboot. Your system should begin the boot process and get all the way through POST (power on self test), giving you one short beep to indicate a successful POST. It should then stop when it cannot find a boot drive. If you don't get that far, you might unplug the PSU from the wall, touch bare metal of the case, then pull the CMOS battery for about 15 seconds. Insert it again, connect ONLY the boot drive, plug the PSU in and boot directly into the BIOS setup menu. Check/reset date and time, make sure your boot drive is first, and "Save and Exit" and hopefully have a normal boot.

Re-install OS?

Re-installing the OS should always be a last resort option as it often does not fix the problem, sets you back months or years in security updates, and destroys all your personal data and installed apps. If the re-install is done via a recent backup or image, you often reintroduce the problem all over again. Even if it fixes the problem, you don't learn anything to prevent recurrence.

But to this suggestion, considering the errors occur before any boot drive is found, it would not be an OS issue anyway.

 

[c2DDragon]

Yeah but I'm thinking that terrible hard reset and power off may have compromised the OS. Then again, could be many things- need system specs as @Solaris17 asked for.

It could have destroyed the boot yes but we don't know if OP manages to get at least to the bios or if it's still no picture =)

beep codes can be very valuable when troubleshooting.

"Expensive" MB have leds that show you an error code, maybe his MB got the feature too.

 

[eidairaman1]

Sounds like PSU, SSD, Ram, Mobo.

Time to build from scratch.

 

[Bones]

From what's described the board itself has a problem, all of what was said before the switch holding were symptoms of it.
Could also have been just a bad SATA cable too, I've ran into that before.

As for the holding of switches that would not affect the problems you've had before, although the likelyhood is extremely slim could be something BIOS related got scrambled, indicated by the fans wanting to go full-tilt now.
Only real way to know is to follow Bill's instructions, disconnect all the drive cables and see if it will POST normally, then go from there.

I'll also ask, how old is the CMOS battery in the system? A weak battery can make one do some crazy stuff, if the voltage of it has dropped below 2.9v's it needs to be replaced. Just know anytime you remove the battery it will reset the BIOS to default settings so anything you may have changed will have to be done again.

 

[NdMk2o1o]

First thing first, something is stopping your computer from posting, remove the cmos battery for 10 minutes and then put it back in and turn it on, if that doesn't help and the only thing you have changed is the drive, try a different sata port and cable, failing that, remove everything you don't need and start the pc with only 1 stick of ram, try changing ram sticks if it still persists. After that your probably looking at faulty motherboard, psu or maybe even cpu though that would be the last thing I'd think it was. That's when you need to test your components in another computer if you can to determine which one it is, though do the above steps first.

 

[Bill_Bright]

"Expensive" MB have leds that show you an error code, maybe his MB got the feature too.

Good point. Though not all "expensive" boards have these, it is worth checking.

CMOS circuits are designed to be reset easy. And CMOS devices by their very nature dump stored data within a couple clock cycle of losing the "holding voltage" on their pins. 10 minutes is unnecessary. 15 seconds is plenty. If designers want it to be harder, they would have used EEPROMs or some other device besides CMOS devices.

 

[Bones]

Most boards will clear that way but there are a few that's more stubborn about it, typically for those a hard reset (CMOS battery out overnight) does it.

 

[Bill_Bright]

Sorry, but not true - not if "ATX" compliant which virtually every board from all the major players are. The exceptions would ONLY be those "proprietary" boards Dell, HP, Acer etc. use in some of their "factory made" computers.

Again, "instant" dumping of the data is a specific characteristic of CMOS devices - has been for decades long before IBM ever even thought of building the IBM PC. Once the holding voltage is removed from the CMOS memory device, there is no voltage there to keep the data alive.

Many assume CMOS is a computer term. It is not - as anyone who has had any formal training in electronics would know.

And there are no voltage storage devices (like capacitors) in that circuit that might keep the data alive either. So no "bleeding off" time is needed.

If a motherboard CMOS device needs more than a couple seconds to dump its data once the PSU has been unplugged from the wall (or the master power switch on the back of the PSU - if it has one - has been set to off) there is definitely a serious fault in the motherboard.

Again - if "user changes" to the BIOS defaults (which is what the CMOS memory device stores) was meant to be hard or take a long time to reset, the motherboard engineers and designers would not have selected CMOS devices to store that data. It just would not make good technical or cost sense.

 

[gainteck]

Thanks to everyone for your help. I read all that everyone said but I'm kinda too tired to quote right now so I will just answer as much as I can.

When my friend tried his psu I already disconnected all storage HDDs and only left the SSD connected. There was no POST, no beep. Case lights up, fans light up and spin, then instant restart before the POST screen even appears - so maybe 1 second and then it restarts. I have not touched my PC since last week... My new motherboard will supposedly arrive tomorow. I am having constant problems with the postal service. I'm afraid I can't afford a new power supply any time soon.

Specs:

Core i7-3930K
GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1070 AORUS 8gb
GIGABYTE GA-X79S-UP5-WIFI
G.Skill 16 GB DDR3 1600MHz Ripjaws X
SSD Kingston HyperX Fury 240GB
3x HDD WD Red 3.5" 1 TB
PSU Cooler Master B700
Case Full-Tower Sama Ark

New motherboard (already bought)
ASUS Rampage IV Formula

I'm very worried about all my data on my WDs... they are new.

 

[Bill_Bright]

And did you normally here a single beep before these problems? If not, your system may not have a system speaker.

If your friend's PSU did the same thing, you probably don't need a new PSU.

At this point, since you already ordered a new motherboard, we should wait and see what happens with it.

As for the data on your drives, if sounds like you don't have any current backups.

So to be safe, you should pull those drives and install them as secondary drives to another computer (or attach them to another computer) and copy off your files you don't want lost.

 

[c2DDragon]

I did enter your rig in http://www.coolermaster.com/power-supply-calculator/ and it's about 442W at load 100% TDP, 492W recommended so with 700W @ 85% efficiency you are good.

Check if your PCI-e 6+2 Pin connector is well plugged to the 1070 ? Did you try another connector ? I remember somebody who didn't plug it to the maximum and the computer had booting issues.

Also check every connector from the PSU to your MB, if it's all well plugged and still fails, try with another graphic card to see.

 

[the54thvoid]

Thanks to everyone for your help. I read all that everyone said but I'm kinda too tired to quote right now so I will just answer as much as I can.

When my friend tried his psu I already disconnected all storage HDDs and only left the SSD connected. There was no POST, no beep. Case lights up, fans light up and spin, then instant restart before the POST screen even appears - so maybe 1 second and then it restarts. I have not touched my PC since last week... My new motherboard will supposedly arrive tomorow. I am having constant problems with the postal service. I'm afraid I can't afford a new power supply any time soon.

Specs:

Core i7-3930K
GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1070 AORUS 8gb
GIGABYTE GA-X79S-UP5-WIFI
G.Skill 16 GB DDR3 1600MHz Ripjaws X
SSD Kingston HyperX Fury 240GB
3x HDD WD Red 3.5" 1 TB
PSU Cooler Master B700
Case Full-Tower Sama Ark

New motherboard (already bought)
ASUS Rampage IV Formula

I'm very worried about all my data on my WDs... they are new.

Can you take a clear picture of the motherboard as you have it all connected? So we can see for sure all connectors are in place.

 

[Bones]

Sorry Bill but you're wrong on this one - I know they are designed to clear as you said BUT there are a few that's just stubborn about it and it's not based on any particular model or design, it's more of an individual board thing and yes, I have a couple that's stubborn like that to get cleared. Popping the battery out with the PSU switched off and drained of power fails to clear them as you say, I have to leave them like that overnight to get a good clearing of CMOS.

Just because something is designed in a certain way doesn't mean it will always behave as intended.

 

[gainteck]

Yes I always heard a single beep before these problems. Unfortunately right now all the cables and components are disconnected. And I'm just waiting for the motherboard to arrive, then I will call my friend again to help me assemble everything.

 

[Bill_Bright]

Yes I always heard a single beep before these problems.

Well, that's good and bad. Good because now we know your motherboard is equipped with an integrated speaker. Bad because your system is not getting past POST. Let's hope the new motherboard fixes it.

And BTW, remember that cases are designed to support 1000s of different motherboards. That means they almost always have more standoff mounting holes than motherboards have mounting holes. A common mistake by newbies and pros alike is to insert an extra standoff in the case that ends up shorting out the board. So (especially if a different board) triple check to make sure you only have a standoff in the case where there is a corresponding motherboard mounting hole.

***

Sorry Bones, but no I'm not. Check the link in my sig to see if I might know a little about how electronics works.

As I said, if yours took more than a few seconds, there was a fault somewhere.

Just because something is designed in a certain way doesn't mean it will always behave as intended.

LOL Right! And when something does not behave as designed (or in this case, as the ATX Form Factor standard calls for), then there is a faulty component somewhere.

Again, this is not just a computer thing - but straight up electronics. Check the manuals for the your motherboards. Most will say to remove the battery for 1 minute or move the jumper for 5 or 10 seconds. None will ever say hours or over night. If yours does, please provide a brand and model number, or a link the manual.

and drained of power fails

And drained power? He he! How did you try to drain the power? Please don't tell us you "drain the power" by pressing and holding the power button! That might have worked 20 years ago with AT Form Factor PSUs, but not with ATX PSUs.

As I noted, there are no capacitors or other voltage storage devices in the CMOS circuit, other than the CMOS battery. And, of course, all the big filter caps in all ATX power supplies quickly dissipate any stored voltages, allowing them to decay to a negligible and safe potential automatically when mains power is removed - again, unless there is a faulty component.

 

[Bones]

Laugh all you want Bill, just because you've had training with electronics doesn't make me wrong or you right each and everytime.

With respect:
You're not dumb by any means, no way I could ever accuse you of such because that would be wrong on my part BUT you don't know everything yourself even if you'd had the training so you can stop waving that flag around already.

Be condesending if you want, I believe it's a true thing and said so because I believe it and even know others that will back me on it - Plus with the very fact I've directly dealt with it too.

You know electronics, I know things about electricity too, mainly from working with equipment with voltages ranging from 12v all the way up to 600V / 3 phase stuff such as what's found in power and breaker boxes, you know.... The stuff that will fry you in an instant if you get it wrong like a high amperage switch gear will if you don't use it in the right way.

BTW we had 2 of those, 1.6K and 2.0K respectively.
Stay on the mat, wear the gloves and hope it doesn't decide to arc through.

Oh yeah.... It's remove the battery, place the CMOS jumper on the pins in the "Clear" position, either switch off the PSU or just unplug it from the wall and yes, do press and hold the power button until all lights, LEDs and whatever else goes out, then leave it for about 10 minutes.
Come back, set it all up to run and..... The previous settings are still there and active too.
Can you really explain it because I've dealt with it many times before and BTW it's a DFI board, an Ultra D that does it.

One more thing, further discussion of it between ourselves needs to be done via PM if need be.
BTW I'm not mad about it or anything, it just better we'd do it that way and let the thread run it's course.

 

[Bill_Bright]

Just because someone disagrees with you, or they have more training, that does not mean they are being condescending. I am not saying you didn't see what you saw. But I am saying, as you alluded too, when something does not behave as designed then there is a faulty component somewhere.

And FTR, removing the CMOS battery and moving the jumper does the same thing - it removes the holding voltage from the CMOS module. There are no storage caps on motherboards. As for that DFI, with that incomplete model number, getting a specific manual is not possible. But the couple I did find mentioned seconds, not minutes, not hours.

And while moving this to PMs may be best, I see no reason to continue when you won't accept when things don't behave as designed, then something must be wrong.

So have a good day. I'm getting ready to watch the Saints win the Super Bowl. Oh, never mind.

 

[gainteck]

Guys, postal problems again, my board is supposed to arrive today. I have a question: will it boot the formerly installed windows on the ssd? Should I boot the board first and check bios settings?

 

[Jetster]

Do a POST test first making sure all the hardware works. Then I would do a memory test. Then try the disk with the previous install. I would eventually do a clean install though
Good luck

Then fix your old board. new bios chip

 

[phill]

If you have a spare drive (SSD or HD, doesn't matter) install an OS on the spare drive, remove all of the drives from your system so if anything does go wrong, you limit the risk of loosing any data going or getting corrupted

Basic tests are the best tests, see if it posts with just basics installed. If you don't get a post, change the ram, change the GPU etc anything basic (but one thing at a time) as it'll help narrow down the options of what is or isn't working. If you find it easier, take the board out of the case and put on a bit of wood/box whatever, then it eliminates anything in the case, right back to basics

Jester is right in the direction