BleepingComputer.com: Computer boots over and over.

My computer overheated a week ago and stopped working completely, so I bought new parts for it. It was time for an upgrade anyway. The computer booted into the mobo BIOS and I clicked "Save changes & Reset" and the computer powered down and now it tries and fails to boot up until I turn off the power switch in the back.

The new parts were:

Ultra LSP750 750-Watt Power Supply

CPU COOLER CM| RR-B10-212P-G1 RT

CPU INTEL|CORE I5 2500K 3.3G 6M R

MB ASUS|P8P67 (REV 3.0) P67 LGA1155

4gb DDR3 Corsair RAM

Could the old HDD, a 500gb something or other, be the issue? My friend has almost the same setup with a 600w power supply and he has no issues. I'm at my wits end and I'd like to find out what's actually wrong with it now. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

On a side note, what does the red switch on the back of the power supply do? Just curious, I haven't touched it.

If this red switch is the one that I'm thinking it should have two setting, one for 230V, and one for 110V. This is so the voltage can be changed to the appropriate voltage of the country you live in. Do you have it set to the correct voltage?

What happens when you start the computer?

One possible problem could be with Windows. When you take a hdd with a Windows OS installed on it that you have been using on one computer and then install it as a master in another computer you are asking for major problems. The excerpt below is from a Intel article which describes in detail what happens. The article also mentions a reference to an article by Microsoft, it can be seen here .

"Moving a hard drive with Windows* 2000 or Windows XP* already installed to a new motherboard without reinstalling the operating system is not recommended.

If a hard drive is moved to a new computer, the registry entries and drivers for the mass storage controller hardware on the new motherboard are not installed in Windows for the new computer you may not be able to start Windows. This is documented in Microsoft's knowledge base article. This is true even if you move the hard drive to a motherboard with the same chipset, as different hardware revisions can cause this issue as well.

Additionally, moving a hard drive to a new motherboard may not exhibit any errors until you install new IDE drivers. This is because each chipset uses a different Plug-n-Play (PNP) ID to identify it. If you move your motherboard, your registry will have multiple PNP IDs (for the old hardware as well as the new hardware). If there are multiple entries in the registry, Windows cannot determine which hardware to initialize and therefore fails with a STOP error."

This post has been edited by dc3: 22 April 2011 - 12:12 AM

I am bringing my old HDD with Windows still installed into the new setup. It won't boot enough for me to open my disk drive and put a disk in. Any ideas on how to work that out? Also, if I buy a new HDD and put it in with the old HDD disconnected, should it boot at that point? So I can install Windows onto the new HDD and then connect the old HDD to get to my files?

As far as the Voltage, I haven't messed with it. What should it be at in the US?

The voltage for the US is 110V.

Is the hdd installed?

The old one is plugged in.

Also, thanks for attempting to help.

This post has been edited by edgtrv: 21 April 2011 - 11:32 PM

I'm guessing that you have gone back over all of your connections?

What operating system are you using?

Do you have the installation CD for this operating system?

If you can't get the optical drive to open in the short time after it begins to turn on you can open it manually. There is a very small hole on the front of the drive below the tray. If you insert something like a paper clip straight into the hole you can press against the release mechanism and open the tray. You will have to feel your way through this.

Yes, checked all connections. Was Vista 64, almost positive. No, the OS was a download from Windows a few years back. And I don't have access to the email anymore, as it was through college. I can't open the drive even trying to get a clip into the hole.

Look in the BIOS and see if the boot order includes the ability to boot from a USB device. Let us know what you find.

It doesn't POST, so I can't get into the BIOS.

double check the cpu and heatsinc connection ,did you add some heat compound to the cpu before installing the heatsinc


also try removing bios battery for a few minutes ,reinstall ,reboot and in the bios set the default setting /save and exit ,

This post has been edited by caperjac: 23 April 2011 - 12:46 PM

Its not the OS, at least not yet. There are no power shorts or it wouldnt even start up, so I'm thinking that its something with the hardware that's causing it to do this, something like what Caperjac just said, if your heatsink isn't fitted on properly and there's a bad seal the CPU will heat up extremely quickly and your hardware will reboot/shut down to prevent burning it out. It could be you don't have enough power, which I doubt.

Do you have a video card or are you using CPU? Also I remember something about certain CPU's of the core iX series needing BIOS upgrades on the motherboard depending on which BIOS revision it has, I would (if you are able) look around on the manufacturer's sites for any information as well.


Now that I think more about it, I believe my brother had a similar issue, and what happened was that his PCIE power cables weren't marked in anyway, and he had them mixed up with a cable that had no business being plugged into a video card, which I believe was the CPU power connector, and had the PCIE power connector plugged into the CPU power socket. His computer didn't even start half the time though, and the rest went nowhere.

Also, you can try flashing the BIOS, by taking out the CMOS battery, unplugging the computer, hit the power button a few times to release any latent energies, and wait a minute or two, then plug it all back in. Maybe it will get to a point where you can enter the BIOS like you did the first time.

This post has been edited by 3therea1: 23 April 2011 - 12:47 PM

I know the heatsink is on right. Checked it numerous times. And I am using a gfx card and the PCIE cable is marked, so I know it's right. The thing that confuses me is that, why did it boot into the BIOS, save and then fail to POST afterwards?

edgtrv, on 24 April 2011 - 01:42 AM, said:

and that is a good question ,did you try removing the battery as suggested ,it will go back to default settings and it may boot to the bios again and this time don't just save and exit ,check around make sure setting are correct to your hardware

I removed the battery and unplugged the power for about 30 minutes and it still tries to POST and fails over and over.

i would try removing it all from the computer tower and assembling it on the counter top [outside the box]to makesure its not shorting out on the case , using a screwdrive to jump the power pins on the mothereboard