Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
DP Xeon (?) is pretty niche for a gaming rig -- it's more of a 'rule of cool' hobby project since about 2015, although I'm still pretty down with it myself. (not for gaming tho)
I think if you can get the BIOS to open (F12, [Del] or some other brand-dependant key on POST) there will be an option showing you whether the board's built-in RAID is enabled -- I don't know your husband, but if he is like me he would not have done this, and slapping the drive in an enclosure will be sufficient. This is all that most 'repair companies' would be up for anyways, and I think USB cages are like $10 on Amazon nowadays? My recommendation is to just do that yourself, unless you see some RAID settings in the BIOS or another system has trouble with the drive -- in which case you might be stuck troubleshooting the hardware a bit. PSU would not be my first guess -- presumably the system was working previously, so I wouldn't think sizing would be an issue?
I have tried to catch it in a boot to get to the bios, so far no luck. I found an external enclosure and the drive didn't mount/wasn't recognized. I'll find another and then check a different drive, too.
I think the system was working previously, but it's a guess. He'd been feeling a bit under the weather before things got bad, so it had possibly been late November since he touched the computer. He asked me to turn it off once he went into the hospital, which was late December, and then it was late January/early February when I first tried to get a backup of it and at that point it didn't boot successfully. The UPS it was on also died sometime during this time period, which is probably also influencing my desire to blame the power supply. Even though all other electronics in the house are fine so I don't think we got hit with a power surge, which even if we did, the UPS should have absorbed it. I'll run through the things I can do, then see if there's a repair company that can do something other than what I've done. And based on the input I've gotten here, I'll consider that good enough.
Polling for the BIOS key should be the very first thing that the system does after POST pretty much, though -- if it's boot-looping at various points in the process, this should be possible.
What's the specific motherboard? As I said, DP systems are quite niche in desktop/gaming use these days but there are niche communities associated that may be able to help -- the boards are server-oriented and can be quirky.
If it truly won't enter the BIOS menu that's a pretty big clue in itself -- standard procedure would be to unplug absolutely everything from the board but one stick of RAM, a keyboard and mouse, enter the BIOS using onboard VGA (if present) and proceed from there.
Thanks for these tips. It turns out it was the power supply. I got a replacement (someone on ebay lost their motherboard & was parting out their old bits, serendipity!), popped it in the case, and am mid-backup now.
I had taken it down a minimalist system and it was still exhibiting the behavior & I was going to swap out memory if the psu didn't fix the issue. I really appreciate the additional trouble shooting steps. They let me do things while I was waiting for the power supply to come, and it helped to think I might make progress. Maybe I'll bury the old power supply in the back yard since his computer apparently got broken heart syndrome.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link