Computer crashes and no one can figure out why. You won't believe the fix!

[Music] this computer was shipped to me all the way from Louisiana the customer was very frustrated with the system took it to a local shop they told him he needed a new motherboard they wanted 700 and change he was like no thanks and paid 50 bucks for this useless piece of information and this is a system the customer built from watching one of my build videos maybe from 2015 and it worked fine up until a couple of months ago now if you're a computer technician this is the kind of real world scenario you can expect to deal with from a customer with regards to interpreting the customer's complaint to then verifying it in repairing the computer this is word-for-word what the customer says this problem may take 10 to 15 minutes before it starts but what'll happen is the computer will shut down and and once it does start to shutdown on its own it won't stay on very long after that it seems to happen after it warms up he says I have Norton 360 on the computer for protection and I got a message from Norton that said Norton to be installed for use on Firefox so I put it on the system and Firefox would not work after that I had always used Firefox to get on the internet but Firefox doesn't seem to work anymore I tried to uninstall Firefox so that I could reinstall it but was not able to do that I just used Microsoft Explorer I was able to get onto the internet with Explorer after getting on the Internet I was able to send you an email but the system started shutting down again after that I don't think the issue is with Firefox because it was shutting down when Firefox was working and it was shutting down using Internet Explorer I thought that the issue might be the graphics card so while testing I just ran the monitor from the built-in Intel chip but that did not make any difference I tried swapping the RAM modules out as you suggested that also did not work I've sent the motherboard back in for an RMA and it was replaced and reinstalled and that did not make any difference I am at a loss well let's see what's in here we got a stock heatsink here okay EVGA GeForce GTX 960 it's a gigabyte Gah 173 HP motherboard he's got all the back the RAM filled up he's got a Corsair RM 750 X a mechanical drive a solid-state drive an optical drive this really does mimic a build I did he's already pulled the graphics card out and was using onboard video and still has the exact same symptom it made no difference all right so he's tried a different power supply he's pulled each Ram module one by uh installed one module at time it still has the same problem had the motherboard replaced still has the same problem swap the power supply still has the same problem everything on the inside of the computer looks good it fedex ground did a good job handling this delicate equipment nothing's broken free there's no loose parts cables are on good check all the cables alright let me switch over to the capture card and we'll power this bad boy on so let's see I'll go right here alright so where it says no signal that's gonna be replaced with the computer screen you said it does take 10 to 15 minutes so let's get it started right now CPU fan is turning rear case fan is turning video card fans of turning all the screws appear to be in the right place on the motherboard everything looks to be mounted correctly well this is not a good sign but how long a windows is taking to boot so tell you what I want to do I don't want to ruin your Windows installation something's wonky with that so I'm gonna grab a spare harddrive and we're gonna do a clean install of Windows just to see if you have a software problem or a hardware problem that's always the first part of any diagnostic this just simply isn't gonna boot so I'm gonna just turn that off and I'm gonna put the Windows 10 install plug that into the USB port right here and then I've got an old ocz vertex for solid-state drive which is great for testing and here's what I'm gonna do I'm gonna disconnect your solid-state drive so there's no way I can accidentally erase anything on there and we're gonna plug in this one using the same cables and then your mechanical drive again just to make sure that we're not gonna potentially harm any files I'm just gonna disconnect the data cable off of that so there's just this will be the only drive hooked up and it's a nice little safety net so that I can move forward with confidence knowing I can change anything right now I can format it I can do whatever I want I'm free to experiment and then once I get it resolved and I can revisit ok ok and let's see if it's gonna boot not quite sure wait didn't give me the boot menu but it's it's booting into my Windows 10 which was a previous install which means it's gonna have to load a bunch of drivers I'd rather do a clean install but you know what this may be good enough let's take a look at the hard Hardware monitor let's take a look at these CPU tips and the temps overall so here on this flash drive we can copy that application over and we can monitor these temps and you know what let's throw prime95 on there as well just so I can stress it out and see for this is a heat related issue HW info well I think it just did it I think that's exactly what he was talking about it just reset itself you just saw it happen right there whole thing just shutdown on me now it's just turned back on again now this is a good sign this means that we're not having a softer related problem let me get this thing booted up real quick and see if I can get the temp reading well it may not even boot now it's interesting that it just shuts right down like that let's cut cut the power here and let's take a look yeah what what it looks like underneath this CPU you know the thermal compound looks okay on there you know visually see anything wrong with that this decent coverage maybe not the best coverage but should be good enough just for grins and giggles I'll go ahead and and clean this off and reapply a thermal compound because it's cheap and only takes a minute and and that's it okay that's something running let me go ahead and pull this Windows 10 installs since I'm not gonna use it at least not yet I can sit over there let's power it back on I don't think that's the problem but let's power back on and see what she does flip the switch back on let's go back to the capture screen power back on make sure that that fan is spinning okay in there yeah it spins good and it just restarted itself didn't it if I can get this thing to stay open long enough I can run the temperature software let's go to this PC we'll go to the this drug oh no it just can't get there fast enough it wouldn't matter I mean clearly clearly something serious is happening here so let me just shut this back off so I just connect power here boy I'll tell you what that did not feel good I want to reseat that how about this one I just double-check way he's got and I'll tell you something else I'm gonna do I'm gonna disconnect his fans and I'm gonna disconnect his front panel header because if he's got a stuck switch that will also create a similar symptom and I want to just grab an external switch for this and let's turn it on again see if that made any difference whatsoever I gotta use the switch up here okay just check it to see that you're paying attention we're gonna push this little 430 watt power supply as long as we're not doing anything too intense with the graphics it should be enough power to bring us to the desktop without any issue okay let's see what happens ooh 80 is a little warm little toasty let's see how hot we can make it prime95 here we go we're slamming all the cores at a hundred percent and we have not rebooted yet isn't that interesting and you should be able to see the fan spinning you know what's running and I'm going to pull this power switch off of here alright that's my test power switch and I'm gonna put his front well first I want to he's got the Q connector on here and I don't know that this is wired up correctly either so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna remove all of the front port wires off of this cute connector and we're gonna handle them one at a time I'm gonna start here with this power switch and I'm just gonna plug his power switch on all by itself and let's see if the system shuts itself off I'd be kind of curious about that we're gonna go back to both modes here so far everything's still working so now I'm gonna add the reset switch I'm gonna take the power switch off since it doesn't made any difference and I'm gonna plug in the reset switch and that's gonna go right there plugged in temps are looking good for prime95 run in full oh look what just happened got a bad reset switch problem solved I'm gonna plug all the front port umbilicals back on except for the reset switch okay it looks good let's go back over to the desktop let's start it again okay full-bore and what time is it right now it's 12 48 let's see if we can make it for 20 minutes without a reboot because we've never done that before I suspect we're gonna do just fine okay I think we're we're about at 20 minutes right everything looks good it's not rebooting anymore it's working like it should and let's close this down oops close that let's stop prime95 give that CPU a chance to cool down it cools down pretty quickly then let's shut the computer down so let's go back to the main camera you guys can see what I'm doing I'm gonna just leave everything alone I'm just gonna change one thing I'm gonna pull a power switch off and I'm gonna put the reset switch where the power switch was which is difficult without a flashlight okay so the reset switch is hooked up and I'm not touching anything let's see if the machine just magically turns itself on and so far it's not doing anything so far it's staying off way it should it's behaving as it should this thing could sit here for 15 or 20 minutes before this could happen so I'm gonna use the power switch I'm gonna use the reset switch to turn it on so I'm going to manually hit the reset it's not doing anything reset switch is not working the reset switch in the power switch are exactly alike the only thing that differentiates them is the label right the reset switch has a little circle on it and the power switch has like a little a different symbol but behind those symbols is the same type of switch they're exactly identical in every way shape and form except for the words that are put on them and those words dictate where they get plugged into but physically they're twins no I got nothing now I'm gonna put the power switch there instead you know I hit the power button fires right up so it's definitely definitely the reset switch in this on this case the the way we get to that is this front comes off of here and so this whole piece there's a couple of screws and these are your two switches that are hidden behind the front panel and you can see he's really worked those switches a lot to rub the paint right off of it another good reason to always just leave the computer on there's less wear and tear on the buttons so behind this is a circuit board so you can't just swap out the switch you'd have to resolder and everything so you call coursera they're gonna mail us a new whole front piece right here and that has all the cables and wires for the USB the audio and the power switch and LEDs it's all just one piece it's laps in in five minutes that's all there is to changing that out piece of cake it's not a $700 repair there's three screws that hold this in there's one here one here one here and this whole panel comes off and before I do that we just want to remove the front port IO right here which is connected to the front panel our front panel switches obviously and our USB 3.0 that's it let's go let's do this thing one now by the way I could just plug this in and test it before installing it but honestly the install is so easy why if it doesn't really make the job much harder to just change it out that's what I'm gonna do and that's why I get that screw there though I need that okay [Applause] that's our old what mmm I'll just put that right there so now I'm just running the cable right up through the top this USB 3 cables the thickest one and it's got the largest plug on it so it's the most difficult one to feed through so I just want to do that one first before all the other cables are in the way there it goes and I'm just gonna pull them all through one at a time here this is our front port audio okay there's our front port audio cable going right through just thread them in there but finally the power switch reset switch power led and hard drive LED just pull those through there we go you see it's really nothing to replacing this I'm just going to put that right there just keep it loose for right now and we'll put this screw just like so very good and then I can just take and rerun these cables I'm not really worried about the cable management at this point we just want to see if it's gonna work so let's put the USB 3 cable back on I'll put that one right there and our front port audio cable we can run that right down through here and let's see they're missing pin because on the bottom selectors way down here very dark and difficult to see even when I'm standing in front of it so I don't expect you guys to be able to see it any better than I can and then finally the switches for the hard drive LED power LED power switch and reset switch which were the reset switch was the cause of the problem I'll just go ahead and put the the bezel back on just to make it look pretty I mean one way or another it's got to go back on today anyway put the switch on hit the power button we're lighting up power light lights up everything looks good here I want to grab my little flash drive that's got prime95 on it we're gonna plug it into the USB port we're at a test that the USB port works yeah there's the USB port let me check the other USB on the front panel just to make sure that it works back to this PC yeah we're good let's start monitoring the temps on this so you can see the difference the hyper 212 Evo makes over the stock cooler because that's what we're about to do next everything seems to be running good system is not randomly rebooting anymore that's a good sign now we're going flat out a hundred percent on all the course which most end-users would never do this for more than a brief second or a few seconds but we're gonna run it full bore a hundred percent it's 2:30 it's exactly 2:30 in the afternoon we'll let this run until 2:45 and we'll see what our maximum temps are then we're gonna shut it down we're gonna replace the hyper 212 replace the stock fan that's in there with the hyper 212 evo right here and we'll do the same test again and compare temps ooh oh wow look at those temps so the throttling temp is gonna be a hundred degrees Celsius you should never see a hundred degrees the CPU will shut itself down well it'll shut cores down to keep itself within its operational range so I'll tell you what that's enough of a test I don't want to keep running it that hot so I'm gonna go ahead and stop this all good so now I'm gonna unplug and unplug safety first and we are going to install the hyper 212 Evo right now and you can see there's good thermal coverage there of the paste this eat sink is still pretty warm but look at how shallow this heatsink is it's very inadequate for that very disappointed that Intel did this I find on the i3 s in the i5 s these work fine but on the i7s a hyper 212 all the way and it wouldn't hurt you to have a hyper 212 on any cpu to be honest but not is necessary there we go that's better all right and then I'm just gonna set this in I'm gonna take the fan off right now because the fans gonna get in the way of us securing the screws power on okay fans turning fan is turning everything's moving in the right direction CPU fans are I'm sorry GPU fans are turning all right let's do the same test again so we're gonna bring up Hardware monitor this is a free utility you can download just google it take you right to the page there let's bring that up and then we'll load up the sensor part to bring up our temps which is right there just roll down a bit all right so here's our temps right in here and then I can bring up prime95 just set that there and once again we're gonna do the exact same test going with all the defaults just click okay we're at all the cores at a hundred percent and we'll just bring our chumps and we'll let that run for fifteen minutes so the time right now is three thirty exactly on the nose it's been 15 minutes they tell me all right let me take a look at these temps after 15 minutes maximum temps what am I seeing a max of 80 it looks like right there I see 80 81 yeah it's about 20 degrees Celsius cooler and it's just as quiet it's not any louder than it was looking at these four cores right here and that's a very cool temperature very very cool I'm actually very surprised 19 degrees Celsius on a core zero on an idol is fantastic that's really really good so let's see yeah these numbers right here first four cores and then right here the distance to Max is how much hotter would have to get how far away we are from hitting the throttle all right there you go so that's a real-world test right there of you know actual real-world cooling differences you don't have to spend a lot of money you don't have to buy high-end thermal compound you don't have to buy a fancy all-in-one cooler you know if you're overclocking and you're going to extremes then you need to go to extremes on your cooling but just for ordinary computer use a simple minor upgrade like that is relatively inexpensive not too difficult to do so there is so it's unfortunate for poor old bill there in Louisiana to have to spend upwards of 250 to 300 dollars on shipping right because it's basically 125 each way 135 each way but in the land you know this has been causing a problem for two months and the computers useless been useless to him and they wasted money at the local shop he wasted time with gigabyte and the expense of sending that back and the time he spent into replacing it he bought a power supply for a hundred bucks you saw how fast that diagnostic went and how much more accurate my diagnostic was then anybody bills to taking it to all the people he's spoken to I was sort of his last ditch it's all he's got and I'm not charging bill for the work I hope to make the money here on the video by sharing this process with you and Bill just will cover the shipping I don't ask for anything else all right I'll see y'all again very soon until then bye for now [Music]

Channel: CareyHolzman

Views: 818,831

Keywords: careyholzman, careyholzmanlive, careyholzmanrepair, electronicsrepair, electronicrepair, computerrepair, computerslowdown, slowcomputer, fastercomputer, fixslowbootup, DiagnoseDeadPC, DeadPCDiagnosisandRepair, RepairaDEADComputer, diagnosecomputerhardwareproblems, troubleshooting, troubleshootingpc, diagnosis, fixing, repair

Id: BD6RX2OsGrA

Length: 27min 25sec (1645 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 22 2019