PC stopped working while in use, causing the monitor and hardware to lose signal.
PC stopped working while in use, causing the monitor and hardware to lose signal.
Hello, long time lurker but finally had my own issue and hope to get some advice. I’ll explain the problem first then give some other details.
I was gaming for about 30 minutes yesterday when my screen went black. Monitor no signal, light on the mouse and keyboard went out. Monitor itself works fine - it will hook up to other computers as normal. But will not give signal on my PC. The mouse I can get a light on if I shimmy it in the USB slot a bunch but that’s not how it was before this.
The CPU and VC fans etc run fine, the PC physically appears to boot but no signals externally.
Another peculiar symptom is now I can turn the computer on with its normal button, but the same button won’t turn it off - even if held down - and I need to use the PSU switch. Again this is new problem that didn’t exist before yesterday.
I have tried reassembling the PC, re-cabling parts to PSU, testing monitor and HDMI cable (both fine on other devices), booting with 1 stick of ram (tried all combo of sticks on all sockets), confirmed it’s not a monitor/kb+m issue. I tried to reset the cmos because this seemed a likely culprit but this did not work - however I can’t guarantee having done this correctly as I never had before, I will likely try this again. I also tried to replace its battery with an old one I had lying around but no luck there either.
Not being the most expert builder, I fear I tinkered too much yesterday and want to get proper advice today before proceeding again, lest I mess up my parts.
My suspicions: internal hardware issue, probably either motherboard or CMOS, but could also be dust damage somewhere - I found a little bit inside when I opened up, nothing too extreme. But I don’t know what I don’t know and the particular symptoms seem enough that someone may have come across them before and know what this relates to.
I built this PC maybe 5 years ago and did an upgrade about 10 months ago, with a new PSU, mobo and video card but leaving the old ram and CPU.
PSU: Gigabyte 750w
Mobo: asus a320m-k
VC: Nvidia rtx 3070
CPU: AMD 5700g (I believe)
Ram: 16gb 2 sticks
First 3 pieces are “new”, latter 3 are old.
Can provide pictures of interior on request
Thank you for your time
Hey there,
Are you sure you've tried this setting?
You can see it here: https://imgur.com/MKifyg1
If you selected to turn off the power button, be aware that in case of a crash, this might not function. Then you'll only have the option to shut it down manually.
Thank you for your response. I haven’t adjusted any power settings, yet I’m not overly concerned about the power button since I can shut down the PC through the PSU. The new power switch issue is something I noticed as an interesting sign that might be familiar to someone with experience. The main concern is that I don’t receive any hardware signals and can’t display anything on the monitor, which prevents me from performing any repairs that need the PC running. If the screen were to appear, I wouldn’t be too troubled.
Sorry, I didn’t note it in the original post, but during my rebuild troubleshooting I attempted this - removed the GPU, connected the monitor via the ig slot and nothing worked, the monitor still doesn’t receive a signal. This suggests a possible issue with the motherboard or CMOS rather than the graphics card. There’s only one HDMI port on the board, which could be faulty independently, or the integrated graphics might be the problem, though I haven’t tried that before and it seems unlikely.
Check the reliability logs and event viewer for any error messages around the time the screen went dark. Possible issues might be recorded there as well.
Thanks for the advice. I’ll definitely give it another shot once my output signals stabilize. This wouldn’t be possible if I connected the monitor to a laptop and reviewed its events there, would it? But if I wasn’t precise, I can’t check that now. My main concern is that the screen remains black and doesn’t respond or connect to the PC. I assume any solution will need to address the hardware side right away. I don’t have another tower or a device to swap components with for testing at the Windows level. BIOS display or safe mode aren’t accessible at the moment. If I connect the monitor via HDMI, it briefly lights green before showing no signal.
These are crashes. Check the RAM using memtest86+ and perform four passes. If there are any errors, your RAM might be faulty.
How did this happen? Did you short out two pins? Were you shown a different screen than usual? If not, the CMOS reset didn't work.
I’m not receiving any screen display, just fans and PC lights turning on. No video card screen or BIOS visibility. I took out the battery for a short while and used a small flathead screwdriver to touch the nearest pins. There was a click or an LED reset, but it involved 6 pins instead of 2 and didn’t help afterward. I’m unsure if that was the right approach or where the reset tab on my motherboard is. I tried to match a video as closely as possible, but my motherboard didn’t match the one shown. Since I’ve never cleared CMOS before, it seems unlikely it fixed anything. Checking the RAM is a good next step—it might be an issue with the original PC parts. I’m wondering if there’s a way to test the RAM without a different PC tower. Having a spare tower would make it easier, but I’d rather avoid going to a shop if possible. I’ll consider running a memtest now.
So, the 2 pins are marked 'CLRTC'. They will be on the edge of the mobo typically in the middle Here's how:
https://www.asus.com/support/faq/1040820/
- We can then rule that out.
Hopefully the CMOS clear will at least get you posting, and then you can use a thumb drive bootable with memtest86+ and go from there.