I moved into a college dorm a few days ago and whenever I leave the room I have to take my student ID with me, without the ID in its place the room loses power. I had to learn the hard way that this was causing my PC not to post. I managed to make it post with the method of holding the power and reset button for 10 seconds. It will cycle a few times, sometimes it will beep, and then it will post and boot. This method has been working for me for the past few days but it feels wrong and it is annoying to have to do this every time I leave the room. Just to be sure I tested if this was causing the problem by simply turning off and on the power supply and yes the power going out definitely caused it. Prior to trying the method of turning it on I tried switching my GPU between sockets, taking all of the power cables out and putting them back in and resetting my CMOS. I suspect it could me that the CMOS battery is dying, but also interestingly this never happened to me before. I only encountered this problem when I moved into the dorm, I thought that something happened while transporting it, like a loose cable or something similar. If anyone has experienced this or something similar before, or thinks of something that could work please say.
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2Replace the CMOS battery, invest in a battery backup, and configure it to communicate with your PC so it will shutdown after a loss of power. Ask other people in the dorm what they do about the situation.– RamhoundCommented Mar 3, 2022 at 17:52
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Was the machine running or shut down at this point?– TetsujinCommented Mar 3, 2022 at 17:53
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@Tetsujin It was always shutdown. I tried changing what the windows shut down button does, because on default it goes to some like semi sleep state, but it didnt do anything.– VukašinCommented Mar 3, 2022 at 17:54
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@Ramhound I will try replacing the CMOS, the motherboard is 4 years old and I think it shouldn't have died this early but I played with it so much during the years it wouldn't suprise me. I can try asking some people around about it but I think it is a specific problem to me. It look a lot of troubleshooting to even realise how to make it post in the first place, I feel like if a less techy guy encountered this problem he would send his PC to a repair shop.– VukašinCommented Mar 3, 2022 at 17:57
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@Vukašin - 4 year battery life is about 3 more than I typically would expect since the battery wasn't new when the machine was brand new. As I suggested the battery backup unit (specifically UPS) might be of use.– RamhoundCommented Mar 3, 2022 at 18:40
1 Answer
Power going down brutally while the computer is running can cause, if unlucky, serious problems with your disk and the integrity of the operating system. It might even be that frequent such shutdowns have already caused some hardware damage, because what you're experiencing is abnormal.
I second the use of a battery-backed UPS, connected via USB with your computer, that comes with monitoring software that shuts down the computer in an orderly manner when the battery is almost exhausted.
A cheaper method would be to remember to turn off the computer when leaving the room. I assume that you have either disabled Hybrid Sleep or Fast Startup among the steps that you listed above, but you may re-enable that for a better user experience.
If all that doesn't help, some hardware work might be needed. Start with the CMOS battery, as in the comments, but going further will need more hardware expertise, perhaps a repair-shop.
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I always shut down my PC before leaving the room. The power doesn't go out randomly, only when I take my card out of its place, and as I said I do it only when leaving the room because I have to. That is why I started with disabling fast boot and similar settings, because I thought the PC is in some kind of sleep mode and when it completely loses power something breaks.– VukašinCommented Mar 3, 2022 at 21:11
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2 comments because of maximum characters. So here for example I will be going out in a couple of minutes. I will shutdown my PC normally, take the card out and leave the room, the power will go out as intended, and when I come back put the card back in and get the power back the only way for the PC to post is if I hold the power and reset button for 10 seconds, the PC will troubleshoot I guess and fix the problem but only for that boot.– VukašinCommented Mar 3, 2022 at 21:12
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A guess would be that the power down is not very orderly, with perhaps power surges, which is extremely unhealthy for the computer. A UPS will help in this case. Even just a surge protector might help.– harrymcCommented Mar 3, 2022 at 21:44