Help/Advice: PC Power Up/Down Loop BIOS and Windows.

[GlobusDiablo]

...I'd say deffo borked update.....

Sounds probable to me too. Try reinstalling Windows from scratch. I had to format and reinstall my boys pc after a borked win10 attempt.

Are you able to format and reinstall, or does it crash before you get the chance?

[TorTorden]

Whoa.....

Just re read original post........

Looks like you turned off the PC during a windows update......

Not good.......

I have known 2 people to do that because it was taking so long and both ended up with a borked system......

Both had to re-install..............

Cheers Kharma. I did switch it off at the supply because there was no message or blue screen just switching on and off and fans firing up. I was worried something was shorting, especially as I sold my 16 track recorder to get a 970.

I'll try and do that 'stop restart' thing in the BIOS then reinstall Win 8.1. I know it's a chore but better than busted hardware.

Cheers, this is helpful.

EDIT: But why would the PC fire up when I switched it on at the back (PSU) and not with the ON/OFF case button? I didn't think you could start the PC just by using the power supply.

I never interrupt updates or installations but hearing the fans going on and off and seeing it shut down and start up with no on screen prompts sent out alarm bells as I've never seen that happen before both when installing 7 and 8.1. I've always seen screen messages with info about what stage of the installation was happening.

I am not to certain but I think it has a piece of software bit caught in these fancy new bioses saying "we are updating os so boot up and get to work", similar to a wake on lan impulse or something.

You should also get the option to disable the auto reboot on bsod from the f8 menu. That being if you even get that during the update from 8 to 10.

Although there might be a possibility it would sort itself out if just left to run, or it could just realise its gotten corrupt and reverts back to 8 on its own.
This could take hours so just re-installing win 8 would probably be quite a bit faster but that would usualy mean you loose whatever is on the c: partition.

[Walter]

Because I'm new to self build PC (built a year ago, running fine recently added ASUS STRIX 970, ran fine), I was worried about something shorting and damaging the components and/or Motherboard, so I switched off the power on the PSU rocker switch.

Why were you worried about a short? What had you done that would lead you to think one likely?

[Avago-Earo]

Because I'm new to self build PC (built a year ago, running fine recently added ASUS STRIX 970, ran fine), I was worried about something shorting and damaging the components and/or Motherboard, so I switched off the power on the PSU rocker switch.

Why were you worried about a short? What had you done that would lead you to think one likely?

There was no on screen prompts, no blue screens just shutting down and powering up. not restarting; shutting down.

The next day I switched on the PSU and the PC started. I can't think how software can make it so my PC starts up when I switch the power supply on but not the on/off button on the case so I concluded it must be wiring or an unwanted contact. I thought maybe as the side panel was not secured after I installed a new GPU that something may have got in. Far fetched, I know but I couldn't see it pointing at software. Can a PC start up from the PSU alone?

[Digga]

Cheap PSU?
Flat BIOS battery

Those 2 things come to mind.

If its software, try get win8 to apply more updates prior to win10 upgrade

[Avago-Earo]

Just need to eliminate this first:

What about the PC starting up from switching on the power supply at the back WITHOUT pressing the On/Off case button (not Reset) on the front? Should that be possible?

[Zadkiel]

When I switched the PSU back on the next day the PC booted straight up without my having to turn it on

Sometimes it happens at the Boot stage and other times Win 8.1 loads up then shuts down after a few minutes(It says 'Shutting Down' and not 'Restarting',

Sounds like the problem is with the power or reset switch, as both of those behaviors are triggered from the same thing: your computer registering the power button being pressed.

My advice would be to prove this by disconnecting (from the motherboard header connection to the front panel) the power and reset buttons and then turning on power to the PC. if it no longer automatically boots then that proves the problem. Then you can try connecting them one at a time to isolate which button is at fault.

[Jeffers2112]

Hah.....

My Mum was supervisor in a punch tape dept of the gas board......

I remember seeing Winchester discs in action......

I have in my room now more computing power than the gas board (North Thames) had in it's "Computer room"......

But as you I digress........

I'd say deffo borked update.....

A little off the original topic but I would like to remark on this post....

All modern disks are effectively "Winchester" technology, as these were the first fully enclosed head/disk assemblies. Prior to this there were removable disk packs, they could be interchanged on a disk drive, with the read/write heads being activated by the disk drive as part of the loading process.
I used to work on these back in the '80's and they could be a pain if a disk pack developed a fault. The usual scenario was that the computer operators loaded up a disk, and got an error trying to access that data. They then generally thought "there's something wrong with this drive, let's try that disk on another one". They then proceeded to swap the disk to another drive where (surprise surprise!) they also got an error. In reality the disk was the faulty item, often with a problem with the disk surface that would trash one of the read/write heads as it loaded up. So us engineers would come in next morning with multiple drives down (the record was four) due to the operators swapping round a faulty disk.
When winchester technology drives came along this issue disappeared as the disk and it's read/write heads were all part of the same enclosure. The downside of this was that if they developed a fault you had to replace the whole thing, whereas in the past we could replace individual read/write heads and such to repair the drive.
Just as a comparison to modern drive capacities the early drives using removable disk packs that I was working on had a capacity on 100 megabytes (yep - 100,000,000 bytes) and we thought that was a lot of storage at the time. The previous generation before I started working on them were just 10 Mb.
As for computing power, that has increased by incredible amounts. Most personal computers today are more powerful than the room full of cabinets that made up an '80's mainframe.... I worked in the industry for over thirty years, and saw some amazing changes along the way.

Apologies to overseas forum members but I'll add one other snippet. A few months ago we visited the National Museum of Computing at Bletchly Park in England. Lots of interesting stuff but it did make me feel a little old when I went round the mainframe section and I was looking at the exhibits and thinking "I used to work on those....."

[Loriath]

Just need to eliminate this first:

What about the PC starting up from switching on the power supply at the back WITHOUT pressing the On/Off case button (not Reset) on the front? Should that be possible?

Yes. If there is a power fault, this could happen.

In my BIOS, there is a setting that I can set to tell it if it should start up again after power failure. So If my machine is on, and the power goes out, when the power goes back on, what does the PC do? Well if I have it set it will come on, stay off, or stay in the same state it was when the power went out. (If it was off when the power went out, stay off, if it was on, stay on)

So this is possible. As to why it happened, I am unsure. If your system is BIOS based, or UEFI based, it all depends. I would not worry to much about the fact that you used the hardware switch and it came on, as this all depends on how the system is configured/designed/built by the factory.

[TorTorden]

Its pretty simple, unless you have taken a knife to the innards of your comp or routed the wires to the power switch through the blades of a fan.
A borked win 10 upgrade seem the most likely (I had it regress twice during beta)
Basically you have a choice between a very unlikely series of events, or a common problem.
9.9 times out of ten its the common problem.

As for starting from the psu power switch, the new fancy noises/Uefi whatever's does that now.
I really don't like it but they do.

As for screens not displaying anything I find it quite likely it crashes in a place where just doesn't display anything (also very common) and your comp is otherwise to fast to display the post screens due to how handshaking and what not happens on every single minor adjustment to signal type, often the first thing I see on my comp when I boot is a fully logged in desktop.

My suggestion remain the same as always, grab your windows disk/usb drive. Boot from it.
If you want you can leave it running on the first setup screen for a while to see if it randomly reboots again but I would find that very unlikely.