Boot failures and USB problems

Jiia · 28 Oct 2013

I've been having these weird anomalies with my computer lately. The symptoms are numerous and I have no idea what might be causing them, so I'll just list them here:

1. Computer occasionally freezes on boot. Sometimes it gets stuck on the POST screen. Sometimes it displays the POST and then just goes black and won't boot. The only way to fix it is to switch off the PSU for a few seconds and then try booting it again. Happens about once every two weeks.

2. Display occasionally delayed when waking up from sleep. Sometimes when I wake the computer from sleep it takes 1-2 minutes before I get signal on my screen. This happens about once a moth.

3. USB keyboard turning off. This started happening a week ago. I turned on the computer and suddenly the keyboard was non-functional. The keyboard's lights were on but even the backlight switch didn't work. This problem has been occurring multiple times a day, and sometimes the keyboard turns off during normal usage. I have to switch its USB port to get it working again.

I don't have any spare parts so I don't know how to start troubleshooting the problem. The only thing I've upgraded lately was my PSU, but I had some of these problems before upgrading. I've tried updating the BIOS and replacing the BIOS battery to no avail. My only guess is that the MoBo is failing on me.

Anyone have any ideas?

Mellon Head · 28 Oct 2013

Two possibilities come to mind:

1. Your motherboard is failing.

2. Your power supply doesn't have enough Wattage to support your system. I don't know what the power requirements of your graphics card are, (impressive card, btw), but maybe the load from it and the number of drives that you have might be more than the PSU can take (along with all of the other parts of your computer). You may also have a dud PSU.

A quick test might be to substitute your graphics card with a low end one temporarily. Do you have a friend that might have a cheap older card you could borrow? If you can borrow one, try it for a day or two and see if the situation improves.

Just a thought, but it would help rule out the PSU.