brandonkick
Well-Known Member
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Since this gets asked SO MANY TIMES, or so many people fail to do the most basic (and necessary) diagnosis, I figured I would start this write up and we can hopefully start to avoid things like this.
*ALWAYS MAKE SURE YOU ARE GROUNDED BEFORE OPENING THE CASE*
*Electro Static Discharge can kill your (or your customers) very expensive hardware. Either frequently touch something metal or buy a wrist strap*
*If your going to use an air compressor to clean out the computer, make sure it's ESD safe and that it has a line drier as you can be spraying moisture onto the computer components*
*When working with hard drives, always make a sector by sector clone of the data FIRST before attempting any file recoveries. Any attempted recovery work should be done from the clone and NOT from the original drive*
When diagnosing a hardware issue:
The Golden Questions:
Is the computer (or printer, or whatever the case may be) plugged in?
Is the computer (or printer, or whatever the case may be) turned on?
Are all the cables properly hooked up?
Always start with the bare minimum hardware necessary to troubleshoot the issue. The bare minimum hardware is as follows:
Motherboard
Power Supply
Processor
Memory
Graphics Card (unless the system has integrated graphics capabilities)
You need nothing else for the system to boot into the BIOS. So if your getting beep codes, or the screen isn't displaying anything or if your having any other problem then start here and see if your problem still exists after you've reduced the hardware to the bare minimum.
If you still have problems at this point (system won't boot to the bios screen, beeping, system starts but shuts back off almost instantly) then I would suggest looking over the motherboard for swelling or leaking capacitors. Capacitors can still be bad without swelling or leaking, but sometimes they do swell and you can spot them visually.
If you do not see any bad caps, you can try swapping in other memory sticks that are known to be working. If the known working memory sticks aren't working, try just one stick in the lowest numbered available slot. Try all of the available slots with just one stick of ram, one at a time.
You can also try to remove all of the memory sticks and boot the machine. You should get "memory beeps". If you weren't getting any beeps before, and the machine wasn't booting, but you are getting beeps now then that means the motherboard is likely good. If you weren't getting beeps before removing the memory, and aren't after removing it then you may have a bad board. Special exception to the cases where there is no system speaker or it is disabled.
You can also check the power supply with a digital voltage meter. You can check power supplies out of the case by shorting the green wire with any black wire. The yellow wire should be 12V, the red wire is 5 volts and the orange wire should be 3.3 volts. Please understand that this reading is taken from the power supply while it is not "under a load". Basically it's not working very hard if the computer is booted and all of the components aren't hooked up. It may be easier at this point to just swap in another power supply if you have a good one handy. Your call.
If the problem hasn't replicated it self so far, check for issues caused by add in cards, hard drives or optical drives by connecting them one at a time and booting the system. When you get to a point where the original problem reoccurs, then the culprit is almost guaranteed to be the last piece of hardware you added in.
Often times removing, cleaning (with alcohol) and reseating the memory sticks will resolve some posting/booting issues where you see nothing on the screen.
Thermal issues can also crop up as a result of:
Dust/Crud building within the system, fans and heat sinks.
Fans that have failed.
Thermal paste that has dried out and lost it's effectiveness.
For these reasons you should regularly clean the inside of your computer to keep it free from dust and debris and make sure that all fans are running. If your machine is a few years old, you may want to remove the processor and apply new thermal compound.
Pay close attention to the way the CPU is oriented when you take it out, it has to go back exactly the same way. Clean the old hard thermal paste off of the CPU and heatsink with isoproply alcohol and a cotton swab/q-tip. Avoid getting thermal paste anywhere on the underside of the CPU or motherboard as it is conductive and can short your hardware. Be sure not to over apply the thermal compound. A small drop somewhere between a grain of rice and a pea will be sufficient. Place the drop in the center of the cpu and the pressure/heat from the heatsink will spread it. Placing too much thermal compound effectively makes it an insulation rather then a mechanism for improving heat transfer.
Thermal issues can cause components to go bad, the system to shut down or freeze and throttle performance back to a level where the system can cool back down.
When troubleshooting hard drives:
Always ensure that the drive jumper is set correctly and that it is in the correct position on the cable. In some instances cable select doesn't work, and you must set it to master or slave. Never rule out the possibility that a cable or channel has gone bad. (Jumper settings, cable position and IDE channels being bad only apply to IDE drives)
If you hear a clicking, grinding or ticking sound, then your drive has started to fail mechanically. If the drive works at all, assess the drives value with the drives owner. Allow them to make the decision on whether or not they want to use a professional data recovery service or if they are willing to let you try the recovery. First make a good sector by sector clone immediately. A good software for such a task would be CloneZilla.
SMART tests can be very useful in diagnosing a drive. But do not take a passed SMART test as a guarantee that a drive is good. Drives can pass a SMART test and still be bad. When in doubt substitute for a good, known working hard drive.
Be very logical and exhaustive in nature when diagnosing computer hardware problems. Be very detailed and make sure to keep good notes on what you've done or checked so far. Often times you can go back to these notes and read what you've already done. You may find you've skipped a step or may be able to make some conclusions based upon what you'e already done.
This is a work in progress, but it will at the very least save me from typing this out all of the time when offering advice to those with hardware issues.
*ALWAYS MAKE SURE YOU ARE GROUNDED BEFORE OPENING THE CASE*
*Electro Static Discharge can kill your (or your customers) very expensive hardware. Either frequently touch something metal or buy a wrist strap*
*If your going to use an air compressor to clean out the computer, make sure it's ESD safe and that it has a line drier as you can be spraying moisture onto the computer components*
*When working with hard drives, always make a sector by sector clone of the data FIRST before attempting any file recoveries. Any attempted recovery work should be done from the clone and NOT from the original drive*
When diagnosing a hardware issue:
The Golden Questions:
Is the computer (or printer, or whatever the case may be) plugged in?
Is the computer (or printer, or whatever the case may be) turned on?
Are all the cables properly hooked up?
Always start with the bare minimum hardware necessary to troubleshoot the issue. The bare minimum hardware is as follows:
Motherboard
Power Supply
Processor
Memory
Graphics Card (unless the system has integrated graphics capabilities)
You need nothing else for the system to boot into the BIOS. So if your getting beep codes, or the screen isn't displaying anything or if your having any other problem then start here and see if your problem still exists after you've reduced the hardware to the bare minimum.
If you still have problems at this point (system won't boot to the bios screen, beeping, system starts but shuts back off almost instantly) then I would suggest looking over the motherboard for swelling or leaking capacitors. Capacitors can still be bad without swelling or leaking, but sometimes they do swell and you can spot them visually.
If you do not see any bad caps, you can try swapping in other memory sticks that are known to be working. If the known working memory sticks aren't working, try just one stick in the lowest numbered available slot. Try all of the available slots with just one stick of ram, one at a time.
You can also try to remove all of the memory sticks and boot the machine. You should get "memory beeps". If you weren't getting any beeps before, and the machine wasn't booting, but you are getting beeps now then that means the motherboard is likely good. If you weren't getting beeps before removing the memory, and aren't after removing it then you may have a bad board. Special exception to the cases where there is no system speaker or it is disabled.
You can also check the power supply with a digital voltage meter. You can check power supplies out of the case by shorting the green wire with any black wire. The yellow wire should be 12V, the red wire is 5 volts and the orange wire should be 3.3 volts. Please understand that this reading is taken from the power supply while it is not "under a load". Basically it's not working very hard if the computer is booted and all of the components aren't hooked up. It may be easier at this point to just swap in another power supply if you have a good one handy. Your call.
If the problem hasn't replicated it self so far, check for issues caused by add in cards, hard drives or optical drives by connecting them one at a time and booting the system. When you get to a point where the original problem reoccurs, then the culprit is almost guaranteed to be the last piece of hardware you added in.
Often times removing, cleaning (with alcohol) and reseating the memory sticks will resolve some posting/booting issues where you see nothing on the screen.
Thermal issues can also crop up as a result of:
Dust/Crud building within the system, fans and heat sinks.
Fans that have failed.
Thermal paste that has dried out and lost it's effectiveness.
For these reasons you should regularly clean the inside of your computer to keep it free from dust and debris and make sure that all fans are running. If your machine is a few years old, you may want to remove the processor and apply new thermal compound.
Pay close attention to the way the CPU is oriented when you take it out, it has to go back exactly the same way. Clean the old hard thermal paste off of the CPU and heatsink with isoproply alcohol and a cotton swab/q-tip. Avoid getting thermal paste anywhere on the underside of the CPU or motherboard as it is conductive and can short your hardware. Be sure not to over apply the thermal compound. A small drop somewhere between a grain of rice and a pea will be sufficient. Place the drop in the center of the cpu and the pressure/heat from the heatsink will spread it. Placing too much thermal compound effectively makes it an insulation rather then a mechanism for improving heat transfer.
Thermal issues can cause components to go bad, the system to shut down or freeze and throttle performance back to a level where the system can cool back down.
When troubleshooting hard drives:
Always ensure that the drive jumper is set correctly and that it is in the correct position on the cable. In some instances cable select doesn't work, and you must set it to master or slave. Never rule out the possibility that a cable or channel has gone bad. (Jumper settings, cable position and IDE channels being bad only apply to IDE drives)
If you hear a clicking, grinding or ticking sound, then your drive has started to fail mechanically. If the drive works at all, assess the drives value with the drives owner. Allow them to make the decision on whether or not they want to use a professional data recovery service or if they are willing to let you try the recovery. First make a good sector by sector clone immediately. A good software for such a task would be CloneZilla.
SMART tests can be very useful in diagnosing a drive. But do not take a passed SMART test as a guarantee that a drive is good. Drives can pass a SMART test and still be bad. When in doubt substitute for a good, known working hard drive.
Be very logical and exhaustive in nature when diagnosing computer hardware problems. Be very detailed and make sure to keep good notes on what you've done or checked so far. Often times you can go back to these notes and read what you've already done. You may find you've skipped a step or may be able to make some conclusions based upon what you'e already done.
This is a work in progress, but it will at the very least save me from typing this out all of the time when offering advice to those with hardware issues.
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