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I have been having some issues lately with my PC.

Mainly, 2 things have been occurring:

  1. My computer will turn on (i.e. the LEDs turn on and I hear the fan running), however, other components (Monitors, keyboard, mouse, headset) do not turn on with it. I have to do a hard power off and turn it back on until everything else comes on with it. Sometimes it takes multiple attempts.

    2. When I do get it powered on correctly, it will state that I have no internet connection. I made sure the cable was connected properly and even tried a second Ethernet cable. I also made sure my other devices connect, and they all do. I go and right click and do the "Troubleshoot Problems" and it will reset the ethernet port and it fix it immediately.

Is there anything else I can test to confirm that it is indeed my motherboard?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

Motherboard: MSI Z77A-G41

UPDATE: Updated the BIOS and the Ethernet issue (#2) seems to be fixed. Now only the startup issue remains.

UPDATE 2: Removed GPU and tested and the startup issue still occurs. Thank you for the suggestion, allquixotic.

UPDATE 3: Ran Intel Diagnostic tool, not sure if this helps or shows anything

Diagnostic tool results

2 Answers 2

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If your monitor, keyboard and mouse all don't turn on (no lights, etc.) when you power on your computer, it's not an operating system issue, so we can mostly rule out software.

Here's what it could possibly be, in principle:

  • Failing CPU
  • Failing motherboard (some small $5 component of it or maybe the PCH - impossible to say without physical access and proper testing equipment)
  • Failing RAM
  • Failing PSU
  • Failing GPU

If it's RAM, you'd notice system instability (getting BSODs and stuff). So, it's probably not that.

If it were the PSU, the system probably wouldn't continue to function normally once booted up and once you fix the Ethernet problem.

I'd bet money on it being the CPU, GPU, or motherboard. If you have a discrete graphics card, try plugging your video output cable into the motherboard to use processor graphics and see if that makes it more stable. Or if you're using integrated graphics, try using a discrete GPU.

Other than that, not sure what else to suggest. In these situations it really helps to have spare parts to swap out to isolate the problem, but if you have none, you may have to speculatively buy parts to see if it's this or that.

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  • Thanks for the response. I removed my GPU and plugged directly into the motherboard and the issue still occurs. So I guess that rules out the GPU. I updated my BIOS and it fixed the Ethernet issue, still having issues powering up. Would doing a CPU stress test possibly help see if it is the CPU?
    – ddrossi93
    Jan 8, 2018 at 22:17
  • ran Intel Diagnostic tool and it passed everything. Not sure if that rules out the CPU or not.
    – ddrossi93
    Jan 8, 2018 at 22:37
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After an annoying couple weeks and a bunch of testing, I finally fixed the issue and wanted to post what I did, just in case someone else has a similar issue and needs help.

So a few things happened that led me to figure this out.

  1. I have an external hard drive that I plugged in while I had the computer working. I shut down my computer and went to turn in back on the next day (with the external hard drive still plugged in) and it told me that an operating system could not be found. From this I realized that it was trying to boot an OS from the external.

  2. After realizing that, I went to my boot priority in the BIOS. No where in the priority was my SSD that has my OS on it. Instead it had "UEFI Boot Device" or something similar along with a bunch of other devices that never have a hard drive on them. Not sure why it would work some of the time after a few hard shut downs, but it would every once in a while.

  3. After realizing this, I disabled every other priority and only added my SSD with the OS on it.

After doing this, I have not had any issues starting up properly. I don't know why this just started happening, I never went in and changed anything, perhaps an update did something, but I don't think.

Either way this is how I got everything working properly again.

Thanks to everyone who commented with suggestions!

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