Startup oddity

Purchased the bare bones system and installed one DVD drive and one blank hard drive Installed Windows 7 with no problems and system appears to run stable.

The problem is I can "Restart" the PC from Windows with no problems but if I "Shut Down" then I cannot restart the PC for at least 10mins, usually longer. The case lights up, the fans run and I can hear power getting to the hard drive but the PC will not even reach the POST screen. I have tried a different hard drive (also a different make), removing a memory module, swapping the memory modules, used different SATA leads and different ports, resetting the BIOS but nothing cured the problem.

Having to wait between start ups is not very helpful when trying to assemble a PC. My first thought is maybe the PSU is not supplying enough power for the hard drive but I don't know why it would work for a "Restart" and a cold boot after a wait but not straight away?

Any help? Thank you

 

Welcome to Major Geeks.

It would help to know what make and model of motherboard your system has.

When you say you have to wait 10 mins, you mean that if you shut it down completely and then wait 10mins it boots up fine? Or if you start it right after a complete shutdown it takes 10 mins to boot?

A few things to check:

In the BIOS - make sure that your hard drive is first in your boot order. Also check any power settings you think may have a bearing on the boot issue.

In Windows, check your Power options - disable any sleep or hibernation functions and see if that affects the issue.

In the case, if your hard drive and optical drives are of the older IDE type make sure the drives are each on different channel.

All I can think of off the top of my head . . . if you can provide more info on your system the people here will be better able to diagnose your issue.

 

A few more details.

What I find is I have to leave the PC off for at least 10 mins (usually more) before powering up and having a successful boot. Must admit I have not tried just leaving it when its "hung" to see if it will complete eventually.

I have tried it with 3 different hard drives all as single drives and the only one in the chain so there are no other boot options.

I've tried disabling all power options in BIOS and using the defaults.

All sleep and power saving options in Windows are disabled but not sure how they would effect a cold boot anyway?

All drives are SATA

Motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-Z77-HD3 with 8Gb RAM and a Intel Core i7-3770 CPU. Not overclocked

 

I had a similar problem 3 years ago. My PSU was bad.

 

Seems that maybe the cause

Borrowed another supply, doesn't fit the case so its balanced on boxes, but with the PC in a minimum configuration it repeatedly had successful boots. Plugged the original back in lights on but nothing else.

Will now load it up with the other drives to see how it copes

 

Sounds like Just Playin got you squared away.

You'd be surprised. I once had an MSI board that when booted would go into a Hibernation/Suspend mode immediately after the BIOS cleared . . . and then would refuse to "wake up". Seemed for all the world it just wasn't booting all the way. Disabling such settings in Windows fixed the problem . . . at least it never happened again after that. Never had it happen with any other board, but hey, it was off the top of my head.