The curious case of an unusual boot problem

counterlock

I've just finished building my new desktop two weeks ago and its been running like a dream - until tonight.

The fuse box in our house is quite old and can sometimes cause fuses to blow. Tonight one fuse went, putting the power out in our utility room. I was copying some (unimportant) large files to a USB stick at the time so just held the power button down to shutdown ASAP (stupid, I know) to replace the faulty fuse. I unplugged the desktop, turned off the mains power and replaced the fuse.

After returning to the computer, it wouldn't boot back up. I could see that there was power getting to the mobo and GPU from outside the case but nothing was happening when pressing the power button. I took the side panel off to find that the flbk led was flashing. I then got round to chasing
the problem.

1. I switched off and on the PSU rocker switch, no effect.
1. I did a static discharge, no effect.
2. I removed, tested, then reseated the ram, no effect.
3. I disconnected and reconnected both PSU cables to the mainboard and CPU, no effect.

Finally, I switched the PSU off and, with the power button held in, turned the switch on the PSU back on. At this point it booted up and went into the BIOS. Everything looked fine, CPU, RAM and HDD all perfect, all the fan speeds were ok, so I turned off the desktop again to see if I could replicate it. Sure enough, the same problem was back again.

So this is where it gets really strange :pac:, I booted up using the method above, past the BIOS and into windows. It skips my user login screen (password protected with multiple user accounts), straight to my desktop with all the windows I had open previously including the file copying window. After shutting down correctly, the light is still blinking but it will now boot up fine.

I know the issue shouldn't come back as long as I shut down properly, but what I would like to know is;
Why is the flbk light flashing if the BIOS does not need to be flashed?
What would prevent it from booting after the hard reset?

Sorry for the long post but this has me bamboozled. The hardware is;
ASUS-P8Z77-V LE
i7-3770 3.4GHz quad core
Corsair DDR3/1866 2x8GB
Corsair PSU GS600

twinsen

I have the similar issue actually for a long time.
I can switch on pc only if I'll disconnect power cable for about 10 seconds. If I don't do that, fans start spinning, but nothing loads up.

Its bit annoying , so I just put computer to sleep, instead of shutting down.

counterlock

twinsen wrote: »

I have the similar issue actually for a long time.
I can switch on pc only if I'll disconnect power cable for about 10 seconds. If I don't do that, fans start spinning, but nothing loads up.

Its bit annoying , so I just put computer to sleep, instead of shutting down.

Is it the same motherboard as mine that you have? There's some other stuff online about it but it seems to be related to the memory LED

twinsen

I am on asrock z68 I am afraid.

counterlock

twinsen wrote: »

I am on asrock z68 I am afraid.

I've asked the mod to move this to the main Computers and Technology forum to see if we can get some ideas in there.

srsly78

You put the pc into hibernate/sleep it seems. That explains how it booted straight into your desktop.

I think the "long press" action on power button is configurable.

counterlock

srsly78 wrote: »

You put the pc into hibernate/sleep it seems. That explains how it booted straight into your desktop.

I think the "long press" action on power button is configurable.

That would explain it alright, and not something I had considered as I had removed the ram.

I'll get onto Asus and see what they say anyway about the problem.