Boomslang Raids

Step 1: Hoist knee pads

Step 2: Snap on sweatbands

Step 3: ???

Step 4: PROFIT

My computer may be dead. We will see when I get home. If I'm not there tonight that's why.

Sorry to hear, Khani. If you need to bounce any tech questions my way, I'm happy to try and help. Good luck!

It's doing the same as it did last time. It's got a single beep when I turn it on, which is either BIOS corruption or motherboard failure. I did windows updates last night then went to bed with a migraine and woke up to find my computer unable to start. The last time this happened, the computer installed windows updates overnight and rebooted itself and I found it beeping and unresponsive in the morning. I let it sit being off all day while I was at work, I blew out any dust that was inside when I got home, and it powered up just fine. Maybe it will magically start when I get home, maybe it won't. I've got a laptop to try as a backup just in case. Even if my desktop won't turn on again, I've ordered a replacement which should arrive later this month. I hate having to have another bill, but I don't do anything else besides work and game at home so a computer is needed.

Aww I feel for you Khani! Im keeping my fingers crossed for your computer to make a miraculous come back!

FWIW, my most recent boot problem turned out to be a janky USB external hard drive. Half the time it would hang at the BIOS splash screen with much beeping, the other half it would limp its way into Windows after a lengthy delay, but none of my input devices would work. The error codes on my motherboard 2-char display didn't help at all. I ended up unplugging everything from the back of the machine, plugging them back in one-at-a-time and rebooting in between, before I isolated the offending peripheral. That drive had been showing other signs of failure, but I had been ignoring it. Why it manifested as that combination of symptoms though, preventing me from booting proper, I'll never know. Coincidentally, this all occurred after a Window update I had been putting off forced a reboot.

If it's failing at POST, BIOS, or at any point before it tries to boot Windows itself, it's a hardware failure (expensive problem). Could be anything from bad peripheral (like my situation), component failure or bad connection (RAM, motherboard, etc.), or something thermal/environmental. I usually keep a spare bootable drive available (either an original Windows CD/DVD and boot from disc or a USB thumb drive with Ubuntu or similar loaded) to quickly determine whether I'm dealing with a hardware or Windows problem. If you can boot into the spare drive, your hardware is probably OK. You'll just have to fix Windows (cheap problem), which is its own set of troubleshooting (time problem).