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[Azkanan]

Long story short there was an electrician from some company doing renovations in my house. He said he'd only be turning the power off in the bathroom etc etc and the rest would be alright.

15 minutes in. Power cut, my pc is on, then off, naturally. I let him know, he switched the power back on and I left the PC off as I went off to work for the day/night.

Come to use my pc in the morning and it's powering up. No beep. No monitor coming on. No keyboard or mouse power.

I've tried everything, unplugging the mobo and powering on, holding power buttons and every combination of powering up and down. I've unplugged EVERYTHING (except the PSU) and tried powering up piece by piece, and every start up is the same (obviously except when the mobi unplugged).

Fans are running, hard disk spins, extra fans are working, LEDs are on, video card fans spin... Just no pc beep or actual boot. What's broken, and what do I demand this company pay out for?

[Thief^]

Really you need to test it part by part (including the PSU, CPU and motherboard). If the company is willing to pay, you should take it to a computer shop and have them test the parts.

My guess would be that there was a power spike and it's taken out either part of the power supply or the motherboard's CPU power converters. Are there any scorch marks in the circuitry near the CPU socket? If not it's more likely the PSU. Do you know what make/model the power-supply is?

[funkydwarf]

You sound like you know what you are doing. Maybe clear the cmos. II have had success with computers like that by doing that. Weird power mist corrupt some settings or something.

If that doesn't work, pwr supply.  How old is it? If its 2 years or older I would bet some money it is the problem.

[nenjin]

Try flipping the master power switch on the back of the PSU from on to off. Give it a minute then flip it back to the on position and see if the computer will start then.

[Azkanan]

So I unplugged the RAM with everything else in. no beeps.

I've got no bios, no keyboard to press safe mode, nothing at all. It's a vegetable. I'd be quite happy to settle with a format at this point... but it looks like I'm failing on the POST massively. Not that I'm too sure what that means, but I'm guessing it's the safeguard to make sure the hardware is working before BIOS, right?

Anyway, I'm not too savvy and not too sure what the CMOS is. My Motherboard is a ASUS something.

The PC is a custom build, probably a few years old now, at least before 2013 but not by far... the issue has to be the motherboard, right?

Also, backstory, Windows 10. I've had no end of troubles with it since I got it, slow starts, task bar not working, start menu not working, clock is all over the place, internet decides not to work in the apps of windows 10, but everything else is fine - so another possibility is that windows 10 has installed something and FUBAR'd my PC.

[nenjin]

POST is the Power On Self Test. That's where it checks all the hardware to ensure it's operating before it tries to boot the system.

To reset the CMOS, you're going to need a diagram of your motherboard. You take the side of the case off, find the jumper that relates to the CMOS, and move the little plastic bit from one jumper configuration to another. When you boot it with the jumper in that setting, it effectively resets the memory on the mobo (and all your BIOS settings.) Then you power it down, change the jumper back to the original position and boot again. It's worth a try.

If the Power supply was blown, you wouldn't even get power to the system. The fans wouldn't turn on, nothing.

If the Hard drive was fragged, the system would still POST.

If the processor was fragged, you'd still get beeps.

If the memory was fried, you'd still get beeps.

So it is still sounding a little like a motherboard issue. Extreme voltage changes can fry it, although simply losing power unexpectedly isn't something I'd normally expect. Was it on a surge protector or just plugged straight into the wall?

I doubt this has anything to do with Windows 10, but who knows, I'm not that up to date with it. But the operating system and the BIOS are generally two separate entities. If it's not making it to POST, it's not even trying to load the OS yet.

[Azkanan]

POST is the Power On Self Test. That's where it checks all the hardware to ensure it's operating before it tries to boot the system.

To reset the CMOS, you're going to need a diagram of your motherboard. You take the side of the case off, find the jumper that relates to the CMOS, and move the little plastic bit from one jumper configuration to another. When you boot it with the jumper in that setting, it effectively resets the memory on the mobo (and all your BIOS settings.) Then you power it down, change the jumper back to the original position and boot again. It's worth a try.

If the Power supply was blown, you wouldn't even get power to the system. The fans wouldn't turn on, nothing.

If the Hard drive was fragged, the system would still POST.

If the processor was fragged, you'd still get beeps.

If the memory was fried, you'd still get beeps.

So it is still sounding a little like a motherboard issue. Extreme voltage changes can fry it, although simply losing power unexpectedly isn't something I'd normally expect. Was it on a surge protector or just plugged straight into the wall?

I doubt this has anything to do with Windows 10, but who knows, I'm not that up to date with it. But the operating system and the BIOS are generally two separate entities. If it's not making it to POST, it's not even trying to load the OS yet.

I wish I'd read this before taking to the repair shop. He better not try and overcharge me for resetting the CMOS.

[Thief^]

Most motherboards have a checksum on the CMOS (BIOS settings), and will restore defaults if it doesn't work. To be honest, your pc is failing before that point. Clearing the CMOS (BIOS settings) won't make it work.

nenjin's right that if the power supply was completely broken it wouldn't turn on at all, but it could be damaged. It would still respond to a power on, and non-sensitive devices like fans would still work, but if it couldn't maintain voltage the protection circuitry in the motherboard would likely stop it operating at all. The other possibility is one of the other voltage outputs of the PSU, as fans are 12V you could be missing your 5V, 3.3V or even one of the negative voltages. Just the same, the motherboard wouldn't be able to turn on if it needed one of those and it wasn't available or way out of spec.

Lastly, rather than Windows 10 being your problem, it's possible your Windows 10 issues were just a symptom of the same problem that's resulted in your PC not booting. Hardware problems manifest in all sorts of weird ways.

[Azkanan]

All fixed. Repairman did it for £85 including parts. It was the PSU gone. He also did a bang up job of tidying it and some other minor issues in it... worth it, considering I took it in on Saturday, got it back on Monday. Favourited! Thanks for the advice boys n girls.

[Thief^]

Glad to hear it!