Black screen on first power on but always works after 2nd try?

T

Techx

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Dec 30, 2002
Messages
4,380
Hey all,

So I have an older rig:

Gigabyte P35-DS3R
2.4 Intel Dual Core
4GB Ram
Corsair 450 PSU

And over the past year I've had an issue where when I first power on, the drives and fans spin up and it sounds like its on but my display is all black, no posting. Then I hold the power button to shut down and boot up again and it will work fine after that. This same thing has been happening more and more frequently over the past year or more and now it seems like it's every time I power it on it happens. Based on this info does anyone know what could be causing it or how to determine the cause? I'm guessing it could be either PSU or Mobo related but I don't have any spares to swap out to test with.

Thanks!
 
How long have you tried waiting before holding the power button? My computer does something similar from a cold boot except that it does actually start up after a few seconds.

Since you don't have anything to test with, the only thing you can really try is a BIOS update and/or CMOS clear.
 
I've waited anywhere from 5 seconds to several minutes as sometimes i may hit the power button then come back to my pc in a few mins hopeing its booted up only to find the black screen. I'll check the latest bios, thanks
 
Yah, if you have an old BIOS, an update should fix this issue. Also, do you have your CPU and/or GPU OC'd?
 
A bios flash is a good place to start. If it doesn't help, then I'd open up the case and look for any bulging capacitors on your motherboard. Bad caps sometimes manifest themselves with problems on cold boots, but work fine on a restart. If they look fine, then I'd move on and just run a hardware diag later with something like PC Check to make sure.

Is your monitor displaying a black screen, or is it just not powering on/receiving a signal? If it's just not powering on, then it could be your graphics card or your monitor it's self. Swap in another video card if one is available to see if the problem persists (I'm pretty sure that MB doesn't have on-board, but if I'm wrong you can try that also). If that does nothing, try another monitor if one is available to you (or try hooking your monitor up to another computer/laptop and see if it does the same thing). I've dealt with monitors that had a similar behavior to what you are describing, so it's a possible culprit.

It's also possible that it's the PSU causing the issue, but I'd put my money on MB/GPU/Monitor based on what you describe.
 
Well, most, if not all, the caps on that mobo should be solid, since it's a DS3R, so no bulging. Though, a visual inspection should be quick.

Edit: just looked at mine; yup, all solid. ;)
 
I'd bet it's the gpu. I used to have this problem with a BFG 6800GT agp card.

Something in the video bios went bad and the system wouldn't clear POST on the first power on but ran totally fine upon the 2nd boot.

At first I thought it was the usual subjects like the the PSU,the RAM or the Mobo but once I replaced the card with a 7800gs I never had the issue again but the card installed in my friends system produced the exact same issue on his system.

My 7800gs is in my main system to this day and it never game me any other boot issues and the old 6800GT ran games fine but always had that boot issue in my friends system until he finally bought a new machine.
 
thanks for the feedback.. actually it turned out that some of the legs on my intel stock hsf weren't pushed down all the way, not sure how that happened but after securing them i have not had this problem any more.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top