Hello all, I’m new here and this is my first post made out of frustration from attempting to ask about this on PCMR. Yes, that was stupid. No, I probably won’t be posting anything on there again.
Now on to the topic of discussion. Earlier today I vacuumed the rug that is in front of a desk on which my old gaming rig/new work PC lives. The vacuum was plugged into a socket that is on the opposite side of the desk from where the PC is plugged in, but most likely on the same circuit. Normally it is plugged into a socket in the adjacent room as I usually do that room first, but I can’t recall if the PC was running when I vacuumed the rug several times previously. At no time did anything come in contact with the computer case or anything plugged into it and neither myself nor the vacuum got any closer than at least two feet away. Vacuum is a cheap upright that markets itself as some pseudo-dyson knock-off, though nowhere near as impressive.
Before I started I had some lofi StudyGirl playing on the PC and after I finished I noticed the system was hard-locked. Doing a soft reset failed, but after a hard boot I went into BIOS and did a quick save&exit after glancing over the settings. However the system failed to POST several times with the same POST code (5d). I reset CMOS using the button and the system was able to POST. After I changed the BIOS settings back to the usual, all seems normal as well.
At this point in the story you need to understand that this motherboard has a peculiar fault where it will always cold boot with BIOS settings that are a mixture of default (memory), CPU OC, and an incorrect CPU multiplier that causes system instability. Warm boots load the correct saved BIOS settings every time. I have replaced the CMOS battery several times with zero change. The motherboard in question is an Asrock 970 Extreme4 running an FX-8120 in a HAF X case from 2012. The PSU is plugged into an Amazon Basics 4000 joule surge protector that is plugged into a three-pronged outlet.
At this point I am not really entertaining the idea that this was somehow caused by static electricity and would rather hear about other theories. If you must insist that this is most definitely ESD, please also explain how static can be discharged into a closed case onto an isolated motherboard that is hooked up to a properly grounded PSU. Yes, there are open ports such as USB that are connected to the motherboard, but I fail to see how that could cause BIOS settings to become corrupt. However, if you can somehow convince Mehdi from ElectroBoom to call me an idiot over this then I will automatically concede without question.
As far as actual plausible causes, the only two that I can possibly think of is either signal noise through the outlet circuit or magnetic interference caused by the shitty vacuum motor. The latter seems much more likely than the former. And no, I will not be attempting to recreate the issue simply for your curiosity or entertainment. Although I am also curious if anyone else has ever experienced a similar issue.
P.S. - Thanks for having me and hopefully I can settle in here and learn about a lot of new things that might help me with a new small business endeavor focusing on salvaging old/broken computers and other e-waste!
Static electricity is a hell of a drug. Probably too old to have a dual BIOS or EZ flash back system. You used to be able to just pull the chip and ship it off but comically/sadly your board will be too new for that and too old for the flash back stuff. Nice rock and a hard place.
Possibly off topic but my lord man Amazon basics? throw that in the trash before it burns your house down.
5d is bad GPU. Either bad GPU or something interfering with the GPU like ESD (electro static discharge).
Start by unplugging everything. Storage, GPU, CPU power and ATX power. Check your PSU can properly start up by jumping the green wire to the closest black wire. If the fan on the PSU starts she’s likely okay. Then gradually reseat everything. Start with the GPU of course but if you keep getting bad boot ups try one stick of ram at a time and leave the storage disconnected until the end (bad HDD’s can and will cause bios POST issues).
I hope its not your graphics card cause this is probably the worst time to ever need a replacement GPU.
Another thing is when you’re doing this while you’re grounded touch your PCIe leads, RAM leads etc. Allow anything with an exposed lead to discharge through you so when you re-add / re-seat things they will be “sane.”
Just as a side note I have a friend whose machine wasn’t ON her carpet but had a board under it. She dragged it across her carpet one day to clean up and nuked her hard drive. Fun stuff…Winter + dry parts of the world == death.
I once nuked a packardbell Pentium 4 board by plugging in a fucking USB capable camcorder that could act as a webcam into the front USB ports. Foul image quality on the thing if it was recording but once you got the input into VLC and tweaked the crap out of the Device / Tuner properties you could dial in an amazeballs image for a 2006 ish digital camcorder. I miss JustinTV and I miss my old TV tuner setup, playing SNES and PS1 games badly for anyone that wanted to hang out was fun.
To be clear, as stated in my original post, the computer is now fully functioning after clearing CMOS and changing back the BIOS settings to what they were before the issue. I did not need to unplug anything or do anything else to resolve the problem and so to me it would appear to be an issue isolated to BIOS settings.
Also, despite what the POST code may say, the system booted up fully to windows BEFORE I reset CMOS with a fully functioning GPU. As I said in my post, the motherboard has a weird quirk where it will start on a cold boot with a weird mixture of default BIOS settings and in this instance it would start off a cold boot but give a ‘5d’ POST code when attempting a warm boot with the saved BIOS settings. It wasn’t until I reset CMOS and changed the settings back to what I usually use before it would POST with the saved BIOS settings.
I am once again going to stand firm that this is not an ESD issue. There is just no possible physical avenue for a static discharge that could have made it’s way to the motherboard. There were no ports or anything connected to any ports that came close to either myself or the vacuum and ESD is not able teleport itself through a solid metal computer tower. You are absolutely allowed to write me off as confidently incorrect but I feel like I am beating a dead horse here responding to comments that were already addressed in my original post. Thank you for you responses either way.
Well since you’re so sure there was no need to mention the vacuum. I love people that post “HELP I Don’t know what’s going on” then refute every response with they know what’s going on and everyone is wrong but them…
It was fun. You’d watch someone like yourself banging away at some drums then watch someone else puttering around in their backyard then stream yourself doing whatever you wanted and most people were just nice, fun, often interesting souls. Twitch now… not even worth the time it takes to type the URL.
E-Wasted ESD is not the triboelectric effect. The triboelectric effect is an element of ESD but ESD not limited to the mechanical / contact component of the triboelectrically effect. Thats just me being an ass and getting 2 cents out of my EE degree. Happy to hear you’ve got your stuff working as normal.
Please understand my frustration with this issue and that I am having to repeat myself with things I have already stated in my original post. I feel like people are not fully reading what I have wrote and jumping to conclusions. I also understand that this is probably an issue with the way I write but I spend a lot of time writing things out in a specific manner that is meant to be taken very literally without any “reading between the lines”.
There was no contact with either myself nor the vacuum. Neither myself nor the vacuum got close enough to discharge into anything. The computer tower sits on top of my desk on top of plastic wheels. There are no loose wires plugged into ports. If ESD is the culprit, it was not transferred to the motherboard physically.
However, I was not aware that ESD could possibly be transmitted by non-physical means and that is exactly why I posted here and what I hope to learn about. If I offended anyone, then I apologize, but please offer any knowledge you might have so I can attempt to figure out the reason for this BIOS corruption.
My guess is there was a spike in electricity similar to a thunderstorm or brown out. I have noticed when I vaccum, my lights will flicker for a moment after turning on the vaccum.
These might be some good articles to read
According to this article,
The electricity flowing through your home is not constant. Electrical currents can ebb and flow, dipping above and below what’s ideal. Both too much and too little power can cause problems.
When power completely shuts off, it’s known as a blackout. These tend to occur due to issues beyond your control (e.g., power station disruptions, damaged electrical lines, etc.), but sometimes they can be self-inflicted (e.g., by shorting or overloading circuits).
A similar issue called a brownout is when your electrical voltage experiences a temporary drop without fully blacking out.
A power surge will overload and fry the electronics within your PC. While an outage doesn’t do a great deal of damage to a power supply or motherboard, the subsequent surge will. This will result in a computer that won’t turn on after a power outage occurs.
On the other side of the spectrum, there’s the power surge. This is when an appliance receives more electricity than intended for at least three nanoseconds.
I’d have to guess it’s a power surge. I run a pure sinewave ups battery backup, so it gives me more protection than a surge protector
How saturated are the plugs? If you have multiple high wattage devices, at some point it will fail
I already regret mentioning the brand of surge protector, but there is only a monitor and a PSU plugged into the strip. I agree that a power spike could have caused instability and a hard-lockup, but my question would then have to be whether power surges have been known to corrupt BIOS settings and only BIOS settings.
It doesn’t have to be a physical connection. You can induce ESD by just dicking around with your mains voltage anywhere in your home. A vacuum is basically a DC motor, a DC motor with a giant high current AC to DC component, AC / Alternating current goes 220 / 110 (depending on what part of the world you are in) in the positive AND negative. The zero point, the actual zero volt state of your electrical circuit can be overloaded by goofy ass high energy devices like a vacuum and it will play havoc on DC systems like a computer.
A friend of mine just spent a week having his new fridge knock out his power line LAN setup every time the compressor comes on, we fixed it by going a PCI-E WIFI adapter but hey its just the kind of crap that can happen. Its not the same as your situation but it goes to my point, phantom voltages/power and it pulling 0v low or pushing it high can do goofy things to electronics that are sensitive to it. Computers are sensitive to this stuff because everything is relative to 0 volts / ground.
If you think I’m being an ass don’t be afraid to say. I’ll leave you to your thread if you want.
To be fair, I’m only refuting responses that ignore what I wrote in my original post. I will happily admit to being wrong if you can provide me with scientific evidence to support your claims. Thank you for your time either way.
I don’t think you’re being an ass and I appreciate your comment as it is helping to accomplish what I set out for, which is learning. I also don’t think I am narcissistic enough to be able to hang out in a thread just with myself.
I have suspected from the beginning that the shitty DC motor in this vacuum might be the cause and I will avoid it in the future, but my goal here is to figure out WHY it happened because the aspiring intellectual in me just isn’t satisfied with “because electricity, duh”.
Even though technology has made it so that modern electrical components are very hard to kill with ESD, from what I’ve observed in the wild software issues can occur much easier. This is my first experience with an ESD related problem either way so I’m attempting to pinpoint what it is so I can better educate myself on the topic.
Theres a really good chance its just whoever put the vacuum together, or your PC power supply when with the YuanHungLow parts so its way out of spec and just not behaving as it should.
If you are interested in electronics check out a YouTuber called EEVblog. Froggy sounding Australian guy who inspired me to get my useless EE degree. He runs a forum thats basically where most real hardware nerds (that is guys and gals who solder for a living) hang out, my dumb ass manged to get some PCB design work out of his forum. IDK maybe you’ll have find someone there who can explain the minutia of what actually happened and how to prevent it. Sorry to send you elsewhere if you wanted the answer here.
Motherboards, cpus, and electronics have very sensitive voltage/current ranges. Power surges have varying effects on components. I don’t really have a deeper explanation, as it’s out of field of expertise. Here’s a semirelated video
Don’t be, pointing someone in the right direction can be just as helpful and I’m not afraid of doing homework either.
You do bring up a good point though, I would never expect this issue to occur with my new gaming rig that has never been transported cross-country several times and doesn’t have a janky old thermaltake powersupply with a motherboard that already has known faults. I feel this is more of a perfect storm with specific elements that led to the end result rather than a common occurrence. Also shitty vacuum motors.
