Member Avatar for aOrion

Hey,

This is my first time posting and I really hope you guys can help.

I recently built myself a new pc after my old caught fire (long story). I put the best of everything in as I had saved a bit of money.
It all works fine and great but is a real pain in the ass to start up.

When I press the power button everything reacts with a nice beep and then it starts working like its gonna start up fine, cpu spinning etc. But the PC does not start up. My screen is on standby but can still hear everything spinning.

After a few presses of the reset button it comes to life and everything is great. I can now restart it if need be wit no problems.

This is not a life or death problem but is very annoying. Any help would be welcome.

My specs are -
Intel Core 2 Duo QX6700
Asus Striker Extreme Mother Board
2 x Geforce 8800 GTX
2 x 2gb Corsair PC6400 RAM
Running on Windows Vista Home Premium

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Dani AI

Generated

— building on the practical pointers from and , here is a concise, prioritized checklist and a few safe diagnostic tips to narrow down a startup-that-works-after-reset problem.

  1. Isolate minimum hardware. Remove everything nonessential (extra drives, cards, front‑panel USB hubs). Try a single memory module in the manufacturer‑recommended slot and a single graphics output device.
  2. Power supply check next. Swap in a known‑good PSU or use a PSU tester. Intermittent rail ramp or failing auxiliary rails commonly produce a first‑power failure that a reset can "mask."
  3. CMOS and BIOS. Clear CMOS to restore defaults, then attempt a cold boot. If the problem disappears, inspect BIOS settings related to fast/quick boot and device initialization. If it persists, consider updating the board firmware only after reading the vendor flash notes and following their exact procedure.
  4. Front‑panel and POST diagnostics. If the manual short trick suggested by @fren helps, also inspect the case power switch wiring and headers for wear/loose pins. Fit a speaker or POST debug card to capture early POST codes — they point to the failing initialization stage.
  5. Try boot variants. If the system has optional expansion like extra GPUs or RAID controllers, try booting without them. Intermittent device init can produce the described behavior.

Notes and cautions: do not flash BIOS unless you have a stable power source and the correct ROM. When testing the PSU or probing connectors, observe ESD precautions and avoid live-voltage work unless experienced. After a successful boot, check Windows’ hardware event logs and run burn‑in tests (memtest, GPU/CPU stress) to rule out marginal components. If stepwise isolation fails, capture the exact POST/beep pattern and consult the motherboard vendor — intermittent cold‑boot failure is often hardware/firmware, not OS.

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Member Avatar for TechTJ

Im not sure if this is the problem but u may want to make sure that all the connectors for the LCD is firmly connected to the mother board, Make sure your Grapgic card is intack. But this is weird and its a hardware problem so something is loose. Have you tryed a differnt monitor because ur monitor may have a short somewhere.
Let me know if this helps
TJ

Member Avatar for fren

In addition to the above post. Have you tried to start your computer with power switch cable disconnected from the motherboard? What I mean is momentarily short the two pin terminals (power switch) from the motherboard. Hope this helps...

Member Avatar for aOrion

Thanks for the tips guys. I will give it a go with another monitor. Then finger around in the inanrds.

Thanks again.

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