Don’t forget to reboot

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This is the time for testing updates, so I must remind the folks who are my patching guinea pigs to watch out for weirdness. One of the things I alway
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Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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Toa Of Justice, lmacri, Cybertooth, Alex5723

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For those beta testers of a superstitious disposition, Friday the 13th was a Knights Templar historic doomsday and date that, since has been attributed to ‘fear and dread’.

Just as well it ain’t Windows 11 24H2 build 1307 then.. 🙂

If debian is good enough for NASA...

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Cybertooth, Alex5723

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“When in doubt, reboot!”

I’ve lost track of the number of times that this advice has taken care of misbehaving computers in my circles over the years.

 

Keep Running Windows 7 Safely for Years to Come  
Make Windows 10 look and work like Windows 7

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You are so right! Had a client that we’d have calls 3-4 times a week with issues that a reboot fixed. After we started weekly maintenance including rebooting the machines our calls dropped over 90%

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Cybertooth

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Late this afternoon my son and I finally exorcised the demons from his PC.  It’s a DIY we put together in a case he bought, spare parts I had, and a GPU from a Dell Alien PC of his that went belly up.

His PC had recently shut itself down a couple of times, then on Tuesday it would not boot up.  He opened it up and cleaned it out, but it still wouldn’t boot; just power up, then down repeatedly, start/stop/start/stop.  No beep codes.  He asked me to take a look, and I started checking connections.  The back of my hand brushed against the CPU cooling fan, and it moved slightly.  I gripped it, and it was loose at one of the four mounting points.

I had a spare fan, so I took that one off, cleaned off the dry, almost scorched thermal paste from the CPU, re-seated it with fresh thermal paste and put the spare fan on.  Still no boot, no beeps, but now a blinking enhanced power standby LED, and still the start/stop action on the fans.  It has 32GB RAM in four sticks, so I pulled all out, cleaned them, put one back in and powered up.  It booted, and gave us the beep codes for video error.

We re-installed the GPU, plugged in the monitor, powered up and it booted into Windows.  I added RAM sticks back, one at a time, got a successful boot every time, and we were back up to 32GB RAM and booting fine.  He had bought a 500GB Samsung SATA SSD a good while back, and it was still in the box, so we put that in.

Boot failure, back to the start/stop/start/stop, no codes.  Powered down, powered up, start/stop/start/stop, powered down, powered up, start/stop/start/stop, powered down, powered up, start/stop/start/stop.  At least 5, maybe 6 times, then got an error message on a black screen, hinting about a hardware change.  Y to boot into BIOS, X to reboot.  We chose Y, got into BIOS/UEFI, then F10 and reboot.

After all the power down/power up cycles, just going into and out of BIOS/UEFI was enough for it to finally get a full read on the new SSD firmware, and it booted into Windows.

So yes, don’t forget to reboot, and sometimes, it may take several power cycles to get all the demons talking nicely to each other and turn back into a smooth running Windows 10 Pro PC.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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Rob Kay, Toa Of Justice, TechTango

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That sounds like a power supply not quite able to supply the demand from the system at startup, or just on its way out.

cheers, Paul

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Paul T wrote:

That sounds like a power supply not quite able to supply the demand from the system at startup, or just on its way out.

I left out quite a few details (I knew it would be overly long even edited) and among those left out was, very early in the process I tested the PSU (I have a PSU tester) and all was good.  Testing the PSU is one of my first steps in troubleshooting a no-start PC.

The culprit (in my experience, as I’ve repaired this type of problem many times) is thermal cycling, which leads to just enough corrosion in the various contact points for signal degradation.  Lack of beep codes is one of the symptoms of this particular culprit.

The new SSD created its own issue, which led to the number of power cycles required to get its firmware identified by the BIOS/UEFI.  Once I had an error message about hardware, entering BIOS/UEFI and then exiting performs a complete POST, a check of all hardware in/on the motherboard.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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Rob Kay, Toa Of Justice, Cybertooth, TechTango

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bbearren wrote:

Late this afternoon my son and I finally exorcised the demons from his PC.

b:

Thank you the the clear diagnostic detail you provided.  I appreciate the time you invested writing it.

Desktop Asus TUF X299 Mark 1, CPU: Intel Core i7-7820X Skylake-X 8-Core 3.6 GHz, RAM: 32GB, GPU: Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti 4GB. Display: Four 27" 1080p screens 2 over 2 quad.

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bbearren, DaisyMay

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bbearren wrote:

The culprit (in my experience, as I’ve repaired this type of problem many times) is thermal cycling, which leads to just enough corrosion in the various contact points for signal degradation. Lack of beep codes is one of the symptoms of this particular culprit.

@bbearren, your two posts about reviving your son’s PC caught my eye, as I have a computer that won’t POST. (I’ve already switched out the PSU and it didn’t help.) Do you know of a good, comprehensive guide (but not written for professionals) for troubleshooting a PC that’s in this state?

I don’t mean to hijack the thread, I’m just looking for good reference material. If the subject develops further, it can go in its own thread.

 

Keep Running Windows 7 Safely for Years to Come  
Make Windows 10 look and work like Windows 7

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Why don’t you start a thread here, telling us what you’ve tried? No doubt you will get plenty of suggestions.

cheers, Paul

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Cybertooth

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‘Tis the season to be jolly, but I might just take you up on the suggestion once we get past it.

 

Keep Running Windows 7 Safely for Years to Come  
Make Windows 10 look and work like Windows 7

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Cybertooth wrote:

Do you know of a good, comprehensive guide (but not written for professionals) for troubleshooting a PC that’s in this state?

I don’t know of a guide, although I’m sure there are plenty, I don’t know if they are any good or not.  My troubleshooting routine has just sorta trickled out of my experience with DIY, and as a hobbyist tech for family, friends and locals in my small town.  I might be able to put my steps into a guide of sorts.

You’ve eliminated the PSU, probably #2 on my list.  With my son’s PC, I already had a manual and the tech specs for the motherboard, and that’s something one needs in order to translate any trouble codes/beeps/LED flashes.

bbearren wrote:

It booted, and gave us the beep codes for video error.

I first try to vacuum out any dust, etc. then unplug all externals, all USB anything, remove any PCI and PCIe cards (including GPU), disconnect all drives (both cables) and see if I can get any action with nothing more than CPU, cooling fan and RAM, not even a monitor, mouse or keyboard.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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Cybertooth, Toa Of Justice

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Thanks for the summary. Along with the part in your earlier post about cleaning the RAM sticks (I’d never thought of that!), this should be good enough for a start.

 

Keep Running Windows 7 Safely for Years to Come  
Make Windows 10 look and work like Windows 7

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Cybertooth wrote:

… about cleaning the RAM sticks

Once I get the PC to POST, I use 91% alcohol and cotton balls/Q-tips for cleaning everything I can get to.  Then I proceed with adding peripherals back, one at a time, to see if it continues to POST successfully.

In a situation like my son’s PC, thorough cleaning was the only thing truly necessary; loose/bad/slightly corroded connections kept it from beginning the POST.  I’ve run into that same situation a number of times.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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TechTango, Rob Kay, Cybertooth

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Hopefully this is “on topic.” When installing PT updates I often find that a “Restart” message comes up before all of the months updates have been installed. I do not do the restart at that time. I let the machine sit until all updates have been installed and then I do the restart. It can take a while and the machine sits there as though no progress is occurring, but eventually the full update completes and then I reboot.

Now, that said, over the past several months I’ve had a problem where the UI seems to freeze during a download. It will get to, say, 22% on one update and not move. Eventually I get tired of waiting and reboot the machine and nav to the updates window. Then the UI may show the d/l progress up to, say, 88% along with other progress like an update had installed, another is now installing, etc..

Over the past several months the above has ocurred more often than not. I hate rebooting while updates are in progress because I have no idea what the ramifications are–I’m thinking not the best. Typically, when done, I run dism.exe /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth and then sfc /scannow. Most of the time sfc finds problems and fixes them.

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When the first notification comes up, instead of ignoring it, open Settings App to Windows Update. There you will see all the updates and their progress. When all the visible updates report “Pending restart,” that’s the time to restart the computer. Not when one is finished and the others are still progressing in one stage or the other.

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bbearren

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Rob Kay wrote:

Eventually I get tired of waiting and reboot the machine

It isn’t necessary to stop using your PC while updates are being downloaded.  You can minimize that window and continue using your PC normally.  Updating is a background process, and doesn’t interfere with using the PC.

I don’t manually update my NAS or my laptop, I wait for the push from Microsoft.  Both are set to restart after active hours.  They get updated without issue.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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