What’s the wattage of your PSU? You sure all its cables are connected properly? Ie the little one northwest of the CPU, and the GPU is properly powered? If you have onboard graphics, or an older lower power GPU, maybe remove the GPU and see if its any better.
Does Best Buy still have a decent return policy? I haven’t shopped there in years.
You could buy a PSU from them, try it, and if it works, great. If not, return it. You may need to pay a restocking fee, but that’s better than being stuck with it. Just tell them you bought the wrong thing, and then buy some memory.
If you have a bootable Linux USB stick you may try that, if you can get to the BIOS. That would bypass the internal storage, in case it’s a drive or SATA interfaces.
I did this several years ago, and unless it’s changed, they just take back the power supply. You can even tell them “I’m not even sure it’s the PSU, can I return this if it doesn’t fix my issue” and they’ll take it back no fuss. Of course, things may have changed since then, but most major chains just take returns no questions asked, and that’s that. You don’t need to offer up an explanation, even. In fact, when my wife worked at Target, they were told to take anything back even if it came from another freaking store.
That’s genuinely good to know.
A multi hour start up repair + vaguely defined restore got Windows booting again, but obviously this situation is super unworkable. A bunch of installed software like Chrome wouldn’t start until I reinstalled it, but other things like Firefox worked just fine.
Probably gonna try swapping out some ram sticks despite the clear Memtest, and maybe go snag a new PSU at Best Buy when I’m back from Gen Con, then I’ll move to a new SSD next, even though SMART still looks clean. CPU/mobo after that, then maybe GPU around, lol, Xmas, worst case. Ugh. I hate computers.
Thanks y’all!!!
Could be ram mobo cpu or case ! Good luck
Hey now! No need to be computerist.
I saw you mentioned considering a Windows reinstall. Did you ever give that a try?
An actual drive wipe reinstall or a windows overwrite that will still have issues reinstall? :)
I mean a full wipe + fresh install. I realize the symptoms seem to point more to a hardware issue, but it’s still something I’d try (perhaps even earlier on, around the time I begin to pull my hair out).
My next question would be, “How are we transferring his important data before the wipe?”
Ah, maybe I missed that external storage and/or another internal drive are not currently on the table. (Edit: just in case, I mean either copy important data to an external drive and then wipe/reinstall, or install a fresh Windows on another drive and then pull the data off the old drive from the new Windows.)
There actually was a full windows reinstall at some point, which was annoying and I keep finding things I never wound up reinstalling, hah. No dice.
It’s started rebooting at pretty random times unrelated to any specific behavior, so the issue is degrading quickly. Sadly don’t have the time or budget to work on this pre GenCon, but I intend to grab a new PSU when I get back later this month.