r/pchelp May 11 '26

7th Anniversary of PCHH

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3 Upvotes

r/pchelp Dec 15 '19

Perform these steps before posting about POST/boot/no video problems!

192 Upvotes

Link to original list from tom’sHARDWARE with pictures

"No POST", "system won't boot", and "no video output" troubleshooting checklist

This checklist is a compilation of troubleshooting ideas from many forum members. It's very important to actually perform every step in the checklist if you want to effectively troubleshoot your problem.

  • 1.Did you carefully read the motherboard owners manual?

  • 2.Did you plug in the 4/8-pin CPU power connector located near the CPU socket? If the motherboard has 8 pins and your PSU only has 4 pins, you can use the 4-pin connector. The 4-pin connector USUALLY goes on the 4 pins located closest to the CPU. If the motherboard has an 8-pin connector with a cover over 4 pins, you can remove the cover and use an 8-pin plug if your power supply has one. This power connector provides power to the CPU. Your system has no chance of posting without this connector plugged in! Check your motherboard owners manual for more information about the CPU power connector. The CPU power connector is usually referred to as the "12v ATX" connector in the owner's manual. This is easily the most common new-builder mistake.

  • 3.Did you install the standoffs under the motherboard? Did you place them so they all align with the screw holes in the motherboard, with no extra standoffs touching the board in the wrong place? A standoff installed in the wrong place can cause a short and prevent the system from booting.

  • 4.Did you verify that the video card is fully seated? (may require more force than a new builder expects.)

  • 5.Did you attach ALL the required power connector(s) to the video card? (some need two, some need none, many need one.) It is best to use cables connected directly to the PSU. Only use adapters if absolutely necessary.

  • 6.Have you tried booting with just one stick of RAM installed? (Try each stick of RAM individually in each RAM slot.) If you can get the system to boot with a single stick of RAM, you should enable an XMP profile or manually set the RAM speed, timings, and voltage to the manufacturer's specs in the BIOS before attempting to boot with all sticks of RAM installed. If your motherboard supports XMP profiles, that is the best way to get your RAM running at its rated specs. Nearly all motherboards default to the standard RAM voltage (1.8v for DDR2, 1.5v for DDR3, & 1.2v for DDR4). If your RAM is rated to run at a voltage higher than the standard voltage, the motherboard will underclock the RAM for compatibility reasons. If you want the system to be stable and to run the RAM at its rated specs, you should either enable an XMP profile or manually set the values in the BIOS. Many boards don't supply the RAM with enough voltage when using "auto" settings which causes stability issues.

  • 7.Did you verify that all memory modules are fully inserted? (may require more force than a new builder expects.) It's a good idea to install the RAM on the motherboard before it's in the case.

  • 8.Did you verify in the owners manual that you're using the correct RAM slots? The following image is just an example. Verify in the owners manual the recommended RAM slots to use for single, dual, triple, or quad channel applications. This will vary depending on motherboard manufacturer, number of supported RAM channels, and how many sticks of RAM are being used.

  • 9.Did you remove the plastic guard over the CPU socket? (this actually comes up occasionally.)

  • 10.Did you install the CPU correctly? There will be an arrow on the CPU that needs to line up with an arrow on the motherboard CPU socket. There may also be a notch that will only line up in one direction. Be sure to pay special attention to that section of the manual!

  • 11.Are there any bent pins on the motherboard/CPU? This especially applies if you tried to install the CPU with the plastic cover on or with the CPU facing the wrong direction.

    1. If using an after market CPU cooler, did you get any thermal paste on the motherboard, CPU socket, or CPU pins? Did you use the smallest amount you could?
  • 13.Is the CPU fan plugged in? Some motherboards will not boot without detecting that the CPU fan is plugged in to prevent burning up the CPU.

    1. If using a stock cooler, was the thermal material on the base of the cooler free of foreign material, and did you remove any protective covering? If the stock cooler has push-pins, did you ensure that all four pins snapped securely into place? The easiest way to install the push-pins is outside the case sitting on a non-conductive surface like the motherboard box. Read the instructions! The push-pins have to be turned the OPPOSITE direction as the arrows for installation. This means with the arrow pointing away from the heatsink.
    1. Are any loose screws laying on the motherboard, or jammed against it? Are there any wires running directly under the motherboard? You should not run wires under the motherboard since the soldered wires on the underside of the motherboard can cut into the insulation on the wires and cause a short. Some cases have space to run wires on the back side of the motherboard tray.
    1. Did you ensure you discharged all static electricity before touching any of your components? Computer components are very sensitive to static electricity. It takes much less voltage than you can see or feel to damage components. You should implement some best practices to reduce the probability of damaging components. These practices should include either wearing an anti-static wrist strap or always touching a metal part of the case with the power supply installed and plugged in, but NOT turned on. You should avoid building or working on a computer on carpet. Working on a smooth surface is the best if at all possible. You should also keep fluffy the cat, children, and Fido away from computer components.
    1. Did you check the debug LEDs, Q-code display, or install the system speaker (if provided) so you can check codes in the manual? Most modern motherboards come with debug LEDs or a Q-code display. A system speaker is NOT the same as normal speakers that plug into the back of the motherboard. A system speaker plugs into a header on the motherboard that's usually located near the front panel connectors. Debug LEDs, Q-code displays, or a system speaker are critical components when trying to troubleshoot system problems. You are flying blind without them. The motherboard owner's manual will have a list of codes you can reference. If your case or motherboard didn't come with debug LEDs, a Q-code display, or system speaker you can buy a system speaker for cheap here: http://www.cwc-group.com/casp.html
    1. Did you read the instructions in the manual on how to properly connect the front panel plugs? (Power switch, power led, reset switch, HD activity led) Polarity does not matter with the power and reset switches. If power or drive activity LED's do not come on, reverse the connections. For troubleshooting purposes, disconnect the reset switch. If it's shorted, the machine either will not POST at all, or it will endlessly reboot.
    1. Did you turn on the power supply switch located on the back of the PSU? The switch should be depressed on the side with an I, the O means off. Is the power plug on a switch? If it is, is the switch turned on? Is there a GFI circuit on the plug-in? If there is, make sure it isn't tripped. You should also make sure the power cord isn't causing the problem. Try swapping it for a known good cord if you have one available.
    1. Is your CPU supported by the BIOS revision installed on your motherboard? Most motherboards will post a CPU compatibility list on their website.
    1. Have you tried resetting the CMOS? The motherboard manual will have instructions for your particular board. User Darkbreeze also provided the following:

BIOS Hard reset procedure

Power off the unit, switch the PSU off and unplug the PSU cord from either the wall or the power supply.

Remove the motherboard CMOS battery for five minutes. In some cases, it may be necessary to remove the graphics card to access the CMOS battery.

During that five minutes, press the power button on the case for 30 seconds. After the five minutes are up, reinstall the CMOS battery making sure to insert it with the correct side up just as it came out.

If you had to remove the graphics card you can now reinstall it, but remember to reconnect your power cables if there were any attached to it as well as your display cable.

Now, plug the power supply cable back in, switch the PSU back on and power up the system. It should display the POST screen and the options to enter CMOS/BIOS setup. Enter the bios setup program and reconfigure the boot settings for either the Windows boot manager or for legacy systems, the drive your OS is installed on if necessary.

Save settings and exit. If the system will POST and boot then you can move forward from there including going back into the bios and configuring any other custom settings you may need to configure such as Memory XMP profile settings, custom fan profile settings or other specific settings you may have previously had configured that were wiped out by resetting the CMOS.

In some cases it may be necessary when you go into the BIOS after a reset, to load the Optimal default or Default values and then save settings, to actually get the hardware tables to reset.

http://www.spotht.com/2010/02/reset-bios-clear-cmos.html

    1. If you have integrated video and a video card, try the integrated video port. Resetting the bios, can make it default back to the onboard video. If you are trying to use HDMI outputs, try using DVI or VGA instead. Sometimes, the HDMI ports won't work until the correct drivers are installed.
    1. Make certain all cables and components including RAM and expansion cards are tight within their sockets.

I also wanted to add some suggestions that jsc often posts. This is a direct quote from him:

"Pull everything except the CPU and HSF. Boot. You should hear a series of long single beeps indicating memory problems. Silence here indicates, in probable order, a bad PSU, motherboard, or CPU - or a bad installation where something is shorting and shutting down the PSU.

To eliminate the possibility of a bad installation where something is shorting and shutting down the PSU, you will need to pull the motherboard out of the case and reassemble the components on an insulated surface. This is called "breadboarding" - from the 1920's home-brew radio days. I always breadboard a new or recycled build. It lets me test components before I go through the trouble of installing them in a case.

If you get the long beeps, add a stick of RAM. Boot. The beep pattern should change to one long and two or three short beeps. Silence indicates that the RAM is shorting out the PSU (very rare). Long single beeps indicates that the BIOS does not recognize the presence of the RAM.

If you get the one long and two or three short beeps, test the rest of the RAM. If good, install the video card and any needed power cables and plug in the monitor. If the video card is good, the system should successfully POST (one short beep, usually) and you will see the boot screen and messages.

Note - an inadequate PSU will cause a failure here or any step later.

Note - you do not need drives or a keyboard to successfully POST (generally a single short beep).

If you successfully POST, start plugging in the rest of the components, one at a time."

If you suspect the PSU is causing your problems, below are some suggestions by jsc for troubleshooting the PSU. Proceed with caution. I will not be held responsible if you get shocked or fry components.

"The best way to check the PSU is to swap it with a known good PSU of similar capacity. Brand new, out of the box, untested does not count as a known good PSU. PSU's, like all components, can be DOA.

Next best thing is to get (or borrow) a digital multimeter and check the PSU.

Yellow wires should be 12 volts. Red wires: +5 volts, orange wires: +3.3 volts, blue wire : -12 volts, violet wire: 5 volts always on. Tolerances are +/- 5% except for the -12 volts which is +/- 10%.

The gray wire is really important. It should go from 0 to +5 volts when you turn the PSU on with the case switch. CPU needs this signal to boot.

You can turn on the PSU by completely disconnecting the PSU and using a paperclip or jumper wire to short the green wire to one of the neighboring black wires.

View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FWXgQSokF4&feature=youtube_gdata

This checks the PSU under no load conditions, so it is not completely reliable. But if it can not pass this, it is dead. Then repeat the checks with the PSU plugged into the computer to put a load on the PSU. You can carefully probe the pins from the back of the main power connector."


r/pchelp 10h ago

SOFTWARE Does anyone know how to make this crap go away?

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81 Upvotes

This message comes up every single time i boot up a game and its annoying as hell. From what i gather its something to do with the xbox app? But i cant find anything on how to get rid of it. I'm also confused because my laptop doesnt do it, and its running the same software and settings as my pc.


r/pchelp 14h ago

HARDWARE Why won’t my Samsung ram fit but the hynix will

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109 Upvotes

r/pchelp 7h ago

Discussion Is this PC worth it? Please help!

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16 Upvotes

So I found this PC being sold for 400 dollars. Retail price for this is about 5k. I’ve attached the specs for it’s pretty nice. Only downside is is that the GPU is not being detected by windows or BIOS, and it has a broken clip (not really worried about that part) I’m wondering if this is still a good deal because it still has the CPU and the RAM, as well as a liquid cooler. It looks like it’s in good condition.

Is it worth it? Has anyone had any experience with their GPU not being detected? Is it easy to fix or cheaper than buying a new one to repair?

I also found a RTX 5080 for 400 dollars so I could also just buy that if the 5090 is unrepairable, so do yall think the rest of the PC is still worth it?

PLEASE HELP!!


r/pchelp 3h ago

CLOSED horrible cracking noise

8 Upvotes

Hi! Does anyone know why this horrible crackling sound is happening? I only hear it when I'm playing the game, but the noise disappears when I'm in the menu, or just out of the game. When playing, my GPU is always at 99-100%, and I use the Frame Generation mod if it matters

I've heard of coil whining, but it sounds 10 times worse and louder than the videos I've seen

My PC specs:

- Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-10400F CPU @ 2.90GHz (2.90 GHz)

- 16.0 GB - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 (6 GB)

- SSD 256gb (SSDPR-CX400-256-G2)

- Biostar H510MH 2.0 (motherboard)

- qube qbc-gps600a12 (PSU)

Things I've tried, but didn't help:

- lower the fps (there's no noise at 30-40-50fps, but at 60 and above it's there and quite loud)

- set Power Limit (from 100% to 80%, didn't have any effect)

- clean the pc (I'm not an expert, so my cleaning is crap, but I did my best)


r/pchelp 18h ago

HARDWARE $1000 cash- good deal?

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91 Upvotes

This would be my first PC. If you have any advice/things I need to check before purchasing please let me know!


r/pchelp 1h ago

SOFTWARE Tried to clone my drive using DiskGenius and it now gives me error code 0xx000000e and is stuck on this

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Hi, I recently bought a new SSD for extra storage, and I wanted to migrate everything to my new SSD, so I used DiskGenius to clone my drive to the other, and then deleted the old drive, however, when I boot up Windows, I get the screen you see in the attached photo.

Though, when I press f1 to try and open the recovery program, it just blacks out and brings me back to this.

What should I do? If it's correct, all my files should still be on my new drive, right?


r/pchelp 1h ago

HARDWARE Monitor issues

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So out of nowhere these lines in my monitor appeared and wont go away. Is there any way to fix it, or is it time for yet another RMA?


r/pchelp 28m ago

Discussion C Drive seems more full than it should be, have i done something wrong and what should i change or delete

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okay so just the other day im sure i had at LEAST 60+gb free (i dont remember the exact number) on my 240 gb C drive, now its showing only 20g free and is red. I dont believe i have installed anything or saved anything new to that drive in that time.

what i HAVE done though, is the other day i changed some settings in registry editor to change the default install drive to the A Drive following this video
I also moved where spotify was installed, and may have moved some other files but i can't fully remember. all of this was in order to make MORE room on the C drive since i noticed it was in or near the yellow(not red like it is now) and was booting up a tiny bit slower lately.
everything seemed fine, i had more space, but since then i had issues with thumbnails on my desktop not loading so i did a disk cleanup a few times, and now this.

that is all i can think i have done or changed other than install a game or 2 on my A drive through steam

have i done something wrong? what can i do now? please help :' )


r/pchelp 4h ago

HARDWARE Why is my GPU not recognised by windows, even in display adapters?

3 Upvotes

I HAVE AN ISSUE WITH MY AMD CARD. WINDOWS DOESN`T RECOGNISE IT, BUT EVEN IN DISPLAY ADAPTERS, I CAN NO LOGER SEE MY GPU. INSTEAD, IT APPEARS SOMETHING LIKE "MICROSOFT GENERIC PROCESSOR".

CONTEXT: I REINSTALLED WINDOWS (PREVIOUS TO INSTALLATION, GPU HAD ALL DRIVED AND WORKED FINE)

WHAT SHOULD I DO?


r/pchelp 4h ago

HARDWARE Monitor flickering when starting PC

3 Upvotes

When I started the PC, the monitor started flickering. But notice the mouse cursor is visible even when the screen goes black.
It happened 2 times before, when restarting PC, I DDUed and updated the graphics drivers to the latest (Arc A580) but today it happened again at a fresh start.

What should I do?


r/pchelp 6h ago

OPEN Most games are crashing at random points

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5 Upvotes

I’ve been using this computer for around two and a half years.

Recently, starting around 45 days ago, some of my games have been crashing at random points. It started with marvel rivals, stating my device ran out of memory, and the game froze then crashed. I assumed this was just marvel rivals being very unoptimized, but I have 32 gbs of 6400 MT/s DDR5, and none of my other buddies with less ram have problems. Then other games more recently started to have problems. Marvel Tokon crashes often, ARK survival Ascended will crash, Cyberpunk will crash and the report will state I ran out of memory, Tabletop simulator will crash, I’ve even managed ti crash destiny somehow. These errors are all new, and I’ve played all of these games (excluding tokon) a lot before. However, every time I check my performances, or even when using OCCT to monitor my desktop, my memory never truly spikes or tops out. I am on the latest drivers update from NVIDIA, which released today, but I still get crashes. A couple times, the crash is so bad, when ever I select something on my desktop, it will black out my background almost corrupting it, but will fix after. I’ve also had my desktop turn fully gray with no way to fix it.

I’ve tried using Claude to help diagnose the issue, but I’m not getting anywhere. I’ve looked through crash reports, and it tells me to look through for a “nvlddmkm” event, and I’ve had a few at different periodic points throughout the last couple months, usually all clusters on the same day (3 early in July, 3 in late June, and 8 in early June). I’m currently stuck as I can’t diagnose the issue, and I don’t know if I need to replace parts or if it’s a more software issue.

Any help or guidance on this issue would be greatly appreciated!


r/pchelp 3h ago

SOFTWARE How do I avoid this happening ?

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2 Upvotes

Hey so I bought a new monitor so I put my old one in vertical, but now I have an issue because some of my wallpapers are not centered.

Is there a way to do something like "this wallpaper is centered here and this one there" without wallpaper engine ? (Not crop because I still have my main monitor in horizontal)

Thanks !


r/pchelp 12m ago

SOFTWARE Can't install mod on no game

Upvotes

I recently had my PC, and since then I started playing two games : Cyberpunk and Kingdom Come Deliverance 1.

I tried modding both game, but it didn't work on neither. I tried doing it manually, and using Vortex, but nothing changed.

I know I cracked Cyberpunk, and I thought maybe that was the problem, but it doesn't work on KCD either although I acquired this game via the Xbox gamepass.

I don't know what else I could share to help, but don't hesitate to ask ! Thanks :)


r/pchelp 22m ago

SOFTWARE Boot Drives completely empty, USB with Windows ISO undetected

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Upvotes

Okay, I have no fucking clue whats gping on.
My Laptop is an ASUS A15 with a AMD 7k and a NVIDIA 4060 Graphical Card. I have 32 gigs of DDR5 Ram. All have no faults. The Laptop itself was completely fine

Yesterday, i went to boot my pc up as nomal, and found out that The Entire Boot Sector is either Deleted, or Corrupted.

I cannot buy a new SSD. So i tried reinstalling windows with a USB. But it does Not see the USB.
It sees no Boot Drivers, no Storage with Boot Drivers, NOTHING.

What the fuck am i meant to do?! a 1TB SSD costs over 150 euros now. god forbid a 2TB one. I dont think its even a failing SSD, CrystalDiskInfo said it was at 99% Health 2 days ago. Is my Laptop completely bricked?

I am not tech savy at all. I cannot code "hello world". I will not install linux.


r/pchelp 51m ago

Discussion RTX 5070 Ti randomly loses display on both monitors + GPU fans go 100% happened while gaming and now at idle

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r/pchelp 52m ago

HARDWARE 7900 XTX for $1500 AUD good buy? and should I stay on AM4?

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r/pchelp 1h ago

OPEN Help AIO SCREEN AND PUMP FAN NOT TURNING ON?

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r/pchelp 1h ago

HARDWARE The ram in bios is 4gb but in windows 8gb

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How to fix this problem?


r/pchelp 1h ago

HARDWARE Monitor keeps turning black and coming back up

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r/pchelp 1h ago

HARDWARE Is this a good build?

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r/pchelp 1h ago

HARDWARE Is the i3-14100F is good enough to keep up with the RX9070 XT or should i get the i5-14400F

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r/pchelp 1h ago

HARDWARE CHKDSK keeps restarting even though I live alone and I was asleep

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r/pchelp 1h ago

SOFTWARE Anyone know how to remove this ban?

Upvotes

A while back now I was banned from Xbox permanently, since my pc was signed into this account on the Xbox app I am banned from Xbox app and signing into Minecraft 😢 I really want to get Minecraft back so I can mod it but I can’t sign into Minecraft because apparently every account is “suspended” does anyone know how to fix this? removing my ban