Mistake # 1 - Letting Geek Squad touch touch it. Mistake # 2 - Adding Norton. But hey, we all live and learn. Great video!!

i had an issue with my rig and watching your video's helped me fix it for free. keep up the great content greg

Wonder if the issue was just caused by the I/O connectors being slightly loose or something like that, and it got fixed when you reseated them. That's the most likely explanation, especially considering how cramped that area looked. Anyway, great job as always!

Considering anodized aluminum does not have very good conductivity touching that connector to the backplate might not have actually completed a circuit. Touching to bare metal like the silver PCIE border piece might have completed the circuit and also having it grounded before pushing the power button might have resulted differently depending on the sequence of the boot tests. If you did get it to complete the circuit on the backplate it might have happened after the system had already passed that test in the sequence which it would have passed.

"Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling it?" goes hand in hand with "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

Not the Norton Vírus!

14:37 you can really see the back of the card sagging severely, perhaps the pcie lane connection between card and socket is being tweaked by the sag?

This is the most useful series in any tech channel. We are really bored of product reviews.

Greg lying on the floor contemplating life is my new favorite segment.

Don't be sorry for the ending. This is actually a very valuable lesson to anyone out there: check connections, reseat components, before sending your PC in for what could be costly (and unnecessary) diagnostics and repair.

I've been flipping PCs in my local area for about a decade now and still learn something new every day. Personally, on PCs where I can't find a visible issue, I will take it apart anyway. I had a similar issue with an X58 build years ago where it would refuse to power on or suddenly power off, but when I took the side panel off and played with the cables it would power on with no problem. This was my personal rig and it went on for the year that I ran that platform. I case-swapped it after about a year to get it ready to sell and found the issue. It was a standoff that was out of place shorting out the motherboard. I didn't have the issue when I took the side panel off because the heatsink wasn't pressing up against the side panel causing the standoff to make contact shorting out the board. Loose screws or out-of-place standoffs can cause this issue of shorting out the motherboard even if it doesn't do it when you're looking for the issue. In my case, I didn't see the problem because with the side panel off the standoff wasn't making contact to short out my motherboard. This viewer's heatsink looks pretty tall and may be pressing against the side panel causing a loose screw or standoff in the wrong place to be coming in contact with something on the back of the motherboard.

Those people at Geeksquad who oversaw his computer, need re-education for what they did to this client's PC. They did absolutely nothing, except install bloatware that made the computer even worse, then charged $500. And if this is a problem throughout the company, things need to change. Pronto.

It’s like a car with an intermittent issue. Unless you’re willing to dedicate days to testing and living with it, you just do what you can and sometimes they either resolves themselves or finally break enough to finally fix.

As a technician with three decades experience across multiple technologies I've come to believe in the magic of breaking and re-making connections. PFM is the technical term.

I don't like the sag on those gpu's. So possibly an issue with the pcie slot. Both the test cards are lighter than the customers gpu I suspect.

I've found so many times that just unplugging connectors and reconnecting fixes problems so many times... I've never been able to explain it but it does happen so often I've decided that it must be to do with discharging static and then leaving it alone. Weird but wonderful!

Best of the best when it comes to the pc building community. I appreciate the informative, entertaining, to the point, drama free channel. First time pc builder here as 40 year old dad , and now recent gamer if you can believe it. Thanks for the great videos

06:22 maybe a contributing factor: it seems the power LED is wired up backwards. The red wire goes to led (-) in the wire adapter.

This series is always on my recommended when I open KZfaq and I’m here for it, love this videos

Great video! Always a good reminder to check connections. I've had to completely rebuild a system because of some funky issues like this. Hard to know where the fix was, but going over the system carefully and double checking connections helped.

FoF is my fav series on yt, gotta love it!

Most likely the video card was not seated completely and needed to be reseated. I have had that problem with big cards like that. Moving the case around can cause it to get dislodged. It did look like it was loose moving around, not screwed in all the way.

Thanks for the video, very interesting. I think you were onto the cause of problem at the end when you spoke about a possible short with IO cables. Those ITX cases are fantastic to look at but a pain to build and often you find yourself folding, cramming wires and cables into any spare space in the case which can sometimes mean headers become loose or wires end up getting pushed against another component causing a short.

I have a Torrent compact. Similar case. The power button was sticky on mine.

Fun story. Built a PC for a friend. Upgraded same thing a bit later and friend settled for a used 6800XT (I ordered one for each of us from Ebay, mine was the Power Color Red Devil and his, the ASUS TUF Gaming OC. Only reason it landed like that was the ASUS came in first. Other interesting piece of info, both our Motherboards are identical: Asus x570 Tuf Gaming plus Wifi. Initially no issues, but over time and with newer games, his PC started behaving oddly. Start a game (HElldivers/Avatar/Robocop/Cyberpunk) and it will run for a bit, no temp issues other than his GPU hotspot was warmer than mine while doing the same things with the fan profiles identical, never overheated, but then the screen would go black and the PC would hang (determined later it was rebooting but no display would appear until a full power cycle was done). Traded him GPU's since my Red Devil was working flawlessly. Now his Red Devil is working flawlessly and "my" Asus did all the same things. Turns out a GPU Bios Update, then a full purge (DDU) of the Radeon drivers fixed the issue very well. Always remember that other components have BIOS too....

16:13 I can imagine an improper connection causes inconsistent behavior. The trope of smacking/kicking something and it working again does have a plausible explanation behind it, maybe the tight spacing of the IO connectors meant something wasn’t connected all the way. Jostling the system in a car might’ve even contributed to the inconsistent behavior to Geek Squad and back

The strange ones are always very fun to watch. Love thinking along during the process.

Sometimes poor connections can cause issues. You did a great job testing the components and the system. Maybe it's just the salt in the air. Also appreciate you explaining how you are able to fix local computers at no cost to the customer.

Hi I'm new to your channel and I enjoy learning more about pc's I'm just starting to get into pc gaming and about to do my first build keep up the awesome work

Likely the GPU was loose in the PCI-e slot causing some pins to perhaps be where they shouldn't so it trips the PSU. Happened on my test bench too till i saw the GPU bracket was stopping the card from seating.

Greg, you're the first person I've seen talking about the KryoSheet mentioning that they're electrically conductive (doesn't mean others aren't, but it's the first time I've seen it). That was the most useful bit of product information I've heard about it - I have 3 systems I was looking to put the sheet on, but without knowing it was electrically conductive, I would have just slapped them on. Now that I know, I can take the proper precautions when applying. Thanks for the info!

Cool that I watched a Fix or Flop while I was ACTUALLY “in or around the Orlando Florida area” I’m on holiday in Cape Canaveral, landed in Orlando. Great video as always!

I used to work for the white, black, and orange team way back in the early 2000s, back then we were mainly a bunch of computer nerds that wanted cheap stuff from BBY. As time went on and BBY wanted to just make more money it was run these standard tools that look for virus, spyware, etc and sell them these extras (norton/trend, spyware software), and then send them on the way. Bigger issue? Well then just have them buy a new PC, the PC is almost 3 years old anyway and we have these great financing offers. Make sure to sell them the service plan, and these add-ons. Greg if you ever have a junk case, pull the power switch from it and keep it around, this is easier than trying to fit a conductive screwdriver into the case and jump it manually.

I have the fractal torrent, the big one not the ITX. There was a recall on those case it could make a short on the fan controller.

that is the most utilitarian build i've seen in a long time

Greg's awkward entery into the shot...love it as it's good for a giggle.

Even though this one was a head scratcher, It's still informative. Thanks for doing these videos. This series has helped me with my own troubleshooting skills. In fact, it even saved me after I sold an old system of mine and realized it was something as simple as the CMOS battery. I wouldn't have even thought to check that without your videos consistently pointing it out. Its just so obvious lol. Computers are complex and all sorts of weird/complex things can happen. The more troubleshooting steps we see and the more unique problems that crop up, the better we can all be. "Thanks for Learning/Teaching" lol

My best guess is it was the front panel connector with the extensions. Once you started jumping the pins it rectified the issue. Its possible that either it was connected wrong and then you fixed it upon re assembly. Or one of the many single pin connectors wasn't seated well. Thats my best guess as to the unknown solution. Love watching these and seeing the solutions and also trying to think of the solution before its revealed. Great video Greg!

At least you are not boring. Good educational video for pc.

Simply reseating the psu or front panel cables literally could have been the solution, i agree. The first step to any troubleshooting is always reseating things. Second is to breadboard the components (to isolate shorting issues like you described).

Hey Greg. I love this series.

Loved the editor's commentary! 😂😂

In the Thermal Grizzly ad, was the voice over Steve from Gamers Nexus? Sure sounded like him.

User complained of intermittent issue that went away when reseating parts. You reseated parts and it started working again. To me that would indicate something, probably the GPU, is moving. I'd have looked into an anti sag bracket or something like that.

Maybe the painted backplate was insulating the short and it was hitting a screw or a pin or something before?

Ah Greg….i can tell you what it was. The front panel connector grounding to itself. Each of those pins is hot and ground. If in that patch that spare connector was touching its grounding pin to the pins in the power or reset button then it would display the symptoms described.

Love your videos thanks for making them

Great series!

I've had customers get similar problems. I remember that one time it was a fault in the switch of the power button on the case. It would some times remain in closed mode after you let go of it. The result was that the computer would turn on then off again a few seconds later. On another machine the reset button would work in the opposite way it was intended to. That means it was normally closed, opening the connection when you pressed it. That resulted in the motherboard never entering post as the reset was continually engaged. Both are things that can happen. The switches used for power and reset are cheap and not the highest quality in the world. Another similar problem was a customer who had installed an extra distance for the motherboard. That is there was a screw distance on the motherboard plate that didn't fit a mounting hole in the motherboard. It was placed directly under the memory slots, and depending on how hard you had pressed the motherboard when installing the memory it either caused a pin on the memory bus to connect to ground or not. This caused a lot of work. The customer received two replacement motherboards and yet the problem remained. These were server motherboards costing well over $1000 so we really wanted it to work. I had to drive to the customer and have a look in person. This took about six to eight hours each way, and it took me replacing the motherboard twice before I figured out to count the distances. There turned out to be 13 distances in the chassis, but only 12 screw holes in the motherboard. As the distances were riveted in place it took a drill to remove it. Then the machine worked fine. But the most common problem has to be the PSU. Just swap the PSU and see if the computer will still have the same problem. This tend to solve the problem way to often. It can also expose a bad motherboard in a quite nasty way. I had industrial PSU's that lacked just about all protection circuits. Most telling was that they had no over current protection. This could burn leads that were shorting, smoke PCB traces that were shorted, or remarkably often explode capacitors that malfunctioned. In the last case the motherboard would usually work once the capacitator were destroyed. It wasn't repaired, but it worked. If the machine was under warranty the motherboard would still need to be replaced, but if it wasn't it was up to the customer to either take the chance of using the "adjusted" motherboard, replace the capacitator or pay for a new mobo. I had a test motherboard where I had blown a capacitator and then replaced it. Never sold that to a customer but used it to test processors, memories and graphics cards. Those industrial PSU's are great. I once test drove an eight processor machine using a 460W PSU. The redundant PSU's in that machine was a four module redundant PSU where each module could supply 1100W. So that 460W PSU was a bit overwhelmed. Still the machine passed POST. We ordered these from Taiwan and the owner of the company was still actually working on PSU designs. They had a lot of specialized PSU's, including versions intended for medical equipment. Now those were rather expensive. The thing is they matched a lot of performance requirements and the components were not going to outgas when they got warm. I think they had some volume requirements also, but never looked to much on that segment of products..

I do wonder with front IO connectors....they have remained pretty much the same for so many years really would have thought we would have got something else by now

That is a sweet looking rig.

Along with resetting the bios on systems I've looked at that don't work and blowing out the dust. I unseat and re-seat everything. If it can be unplugged or removed and re-installed it is. This has actually solved the issue over 1/3 of the time.

Love it brotha

I think you are right in that it sounds like it was a random short somewhere. Also, don't apologize. This is good content. Lets people see what real life troubleshooting looks like regardless of the ultimate outcome. Personally speaking, that is what I am here for. There is more entertainment and information in the journey, not the destination.

I had a similar problem where it turns out that the simple fix was to check if everything was seated in all the way in. That means giving everything a little push, not too hard though, because of how fragile PC parts are, and that fixed my problem, and I'm kicking myself for not checking that sooner. My problem makes sense because at the time I was moving my PC around a lot, and another thing you can check is if your power supply is broken or if your GPU is getting enough juice.

When you showed the extension for the power reset etc. it looks like the reset male pins were just out in the open. If it was touching the case, it would be the same as holding the reset button down when you were starting it.

Quite the odd situation, but the pc is up and running. The owner is probably happy that its now working. Looking forward to the next video

Using zip ties instead of rubber bands is a quick fix for CPU HSF's that are missing brackets or have weak brackets. Those rubber bands don't look like they are going to last much longer. Nice fix overall.

I'm loving that rubberband hack ngl

I wouldn't be to disappointed Greg, sometimes reseating components is all that really needed to be done so there is a lesson there. I've ran into that before and practically beat my head against the wall trying to replicate the problem, but at the end of the day you just have to take the win and hope it stays that way.

Awsome another great vid, made my day!

Have done the same thing a few times. Take apart something that was not working and put it back together and presto, it works again.

I agree with your assessment. Probably a snagged cable or short. The powering on and subsequent, " oh shit!" Shut down suggests that.

Reseating components appears to be the fix on this one 😁 Take the win! 👍💪

Mancave is looking great !

I'd say it was the front I/O connector. I couldn't see it so it originally so maybe it was crammed underneath the graphics card and was touching something. Don't know what Greg saw before and as he was pulling out the graphics card, but I think the issue most likely resolved after the card was removed and the connector was originally moved and then removed. Great video!

16:00 Greg, what if the front panel plug wasn’t seated correctly or not all the way in? Maybe that’s what you did, that’s pretty much the only thing you did to get the system up and working again. Great Vid

Front panel connector "power LED" extension was wired backwards...at 6:21 you can see the red wire from the extension is connected to the Power LED - connector. I'm pretty sure the power and hdd LED's have to have the correct polarity...but the power switch and reset switch don't have a polarity.

I would consider cooler mounting pressure, or perhaps bent cpu pin or pins. Just bumping the cooler or jostling the case may change the mounting pressure enough to change things. Just a thought. Enjoy learning with you Greg!

I have a computer that stopped posting one day. I would hit the power button, fans would spin up to 100%, and that would be it. Since it had been replaced by another computer, it got put in the back of the closet. Every year or two, i'd plug it in and see if it worked. Nope. One day I decided to try and fix it. I reseated the video card and voila. It worked! No idea what i did. Fires up every time now.

Great video, you do a great job.

I am an IT tech and its funny you showed this because I have issues a couple times were a laptop wouldn't load. The fix I accidently found was removing the RAM card and putting the same one back in. Don't know why that works, have really found a positive answer why it worked it just worked. I have done it twice and it worked both times. Crazy how some stuff fixes by just unplugging and plugging back in.

It was probably a pinched cable, the samething happened to me one time when I was upgrading my mom's SFF Dell optiple. The DVD drive flips out and if your not careful when you flip it down it will pinch the a fan cable, I was going crazy trying to figure out what was wrong and once I noticed the cable and moved it out of the way everything was fine again.

I'm proud to tell you that I reset my Cmos today and that fixed my issue

You can always get a benefit from removing and reseating electrical stuff at times especially when the initial fault was intermittent.

Damn i'd never thought i'd hear Tavaresh mentioned on this channel, dude is a legend

This episode is the best ever hahaha

KZfaq put an ad right when you first tapped the hdd led to the GPU. As much as I dislike ads, gotta give them props for that one, lol.

I'm thinking you were still on to something with the HDD activity cable. It's possible those the cable pin were making contact with an UNPAINTED surface somewhere on the case or video card. You demonstrated touching the pins to a painted service. In the end, the user is getting an operating system back and that is all which matters. Good troubleshooting.

@GregSalazar The only other test I might have done is power off the PSU, discharge everything via the case power on switch and leave for a while and try powering on again. You probably did that though and change the CMOS battery 😁. Other than completely dismantling and looking for shorting parts or extra mainboard standoffs then that was a wierd one 🙂🖖

Hi Greg. I had an almost identical issue with an older custom build, as in randomly shutting down. Sometimes, it would boot into Windows, and other times, it would shut down just as Windows was loading. I couldn't figure out at the time what was causing it. Bios showed everything was fine, and i didn't have many spare components to try out. A couple of months later, after building a new system, i decided to give it another try before i disposed of it. Bingo,,, the bios showed that there was a problem with the 3volt rail. I checked the 24- pin connector with a volt meter, and everything tested fine. Under close inspection, i found that some of the terminals had splayed out ever so slightly. More than likely age related. I carefully pinched them together with some tweezers, reconnected the plug, and the issue was solved. Granted that i now only use the old system occasionally. However, it is now 14 years old, and still working fine.

Greg is a saint! I would have taken one look at that state of the graphics card and cpu cooler and said I’m not touching this mess!

The power led polarity appears to be swapped on the extention at 6:20 in. Perhaps this was the cause of the intermittent issue.🤔

Nice episode. You did your best, that's what matters.

14:50 could be the hdd front panel pins were touching the gpu or mobo, also, that is a lot of gpu sag, more heat and vibrations might be bending it too far? also also, that is a tight bend on the gpu power cables and i would give them a good jostling when running to see if there is maybe an internal break. seen it more than once

Sometimes stuff happens, even good stuff 🤣 Still enjoyed watching this one!

one thing i have notice when working on other peoples pc is i always check the motherboard screws as i have found some are in the wrong place and short it out starts power cycling and works sometimes and even has little bend in the board

I love this series. I miss PCDC though.

have you checked the CPU pins? sometimes a bent CPU/motherboard pin causes these sorts of issues...

The pins from the HDD header were probably shorting something on the board which is probably why it shut off immediately protecting itself.

I've had some problems with the same pattern, once it was the USB front connectors that didnt allow my PC to boot jsut like this one, the other was the cooler mount pressure that was too high and the memory slots werent being recognized causing the PC to kept on loop trying to boot, and the last one was a strange one with the windows drivers that wouldn't allow me to boot with the GPU, and to fix it i booted on CPU alone and reinstalled drivers for the GPU and it worked again. Eletronics are just like magic sometimes

I would run the power supply test in OCCT for a few hours just to make sure it's fully stable and that the issue does not pop up when the computer is on full load or after it comes from full load I have seen some broken processors in the past where they would work fine until you fully load them and then they start to show issues afterwards.

I think it's the front panel connectors to blame here. Maybe it's loose or something. Good thing you pulled it out and reconnected again.

I wonder if it could be an issue with a solder joint on the PCI connecter on the motherboard?? If this was mine I would very closely inspect that connecters solder joints for a loose pin where it is attached to the motherboard. I wonder if carrying it around, maybe set it in the back of your car and bring it back in would result in another failure to POST?? These new giant GPUs can put a lot of strain on a PCI connecter, if it left the factory with a marginal solder joint a giant 3080 could have dealt the death blow?? Or not, just something to consider.

I think it was just caused by the some cabling connection. Removing and reseating items sometimes works. (Still nice quick fix on your end) Love your videos

My take on this from you removing the gpu and putting in another machine might have curred some kind of pcie i/o problem with the original board bios. I think this macine pretty newish and i no some times board revision and such could cause erratic behavior. Im an old 20+ retired pc tech/shop owner and enjoying learning of the new hardware out there great channel love it keep it up fellow floridian!!!!

In addition to this, where outlet or socket the machine is plugged into could be a potential problem. When this pc gets shipped back to the owner I'd have them test their outlets and make sure they are working properly.

Did you see the POWER LED - went to the red wire on the IO extension?

a short sounds likely because the psu refused to turn on sometimes after the system briefly started then shut down. that sounds like the psu protecting itself, and switching off at the psu reset the trip switch. if the cable in question ran close to fan blades and got vibrated, it might intermittently make contact and short sometimes and even trip the psu self protection; and contact a painted surface other times and not short at all.

Have the same issue on my GF pc, had it before and took all out of the case and try it on and worked so i put all back inside, now after a few months it happens again so i need to check again what is wrong, it's just so frustating not know how to fix it. GL Greg!!!