Troubleshoot Power and Disk Issues Flashcards
Lesson 3C
What happens when the pc doesn’t start?,
Usually there’s no psu that supples 12V to the motherboard/components and 5V/3.3V to processor and fans to run.
What is an indication and cause of no power?
*Indication is the LED light on front panel
*Possible causes: faulty psu, cables, connectors or fuses.
How to test if it’s the psu?
- Check that other equipment in the area is working
- Check the wall socket
- Try disconnecting extra devices, maybe psu underpowered.
- If you can ensure a safe working environment, test the PSU using a multimeter or power supply tester.
- Possible faulty motherboard, if psu not the problem
is a diagnostic sequence run by the firmware when a computer is turned on to check if the essential hardware components are working properly before booting up the operating system.
power-on self-test (POST)
it’s a set of programs embedded in a computer’s motherboard that starts up the device, Loads the operating system, Recognizes hardware components, and Enables hardware components to communicate with each other.
System Firmware (BIOS)
How to know if it is a POST issue?
- black screen, no beeps indicator, spinning sound
POST troubeshooting
- Check updates
*Check reset adaptor cards and connectors
*check adaptor cards or devices on motherboard
*Check PSU for right power to all components
*Firmware or faulty cpu
Post Indicator alerts
*1 short beep Normal POST—system is OK. Most modern PCs are configured to boot silently, however.
*2 short beeps POST error—error code shown on screen.
*No beep Power supply, motherboard problem, or faulty
onboard speaker.
*Continuous beep Problem with system memory modules or memory controller.
*Repeating short beeps Power supply fault or motherboard problem.
*1 long, 1 short beep Motherboard problem.
*1 long, 2 or 3 short beeps Video adapter error.
*3 long beeps Keyboard issue (check that a key is not depressed).
a small software program that’s a vital part of a computer’s storage device. It’s located on the first sector of a hard disk, separate from any partitions. The MBR’s main function is to start the operating system
Master Boot Record (MBR)
was introduced as part of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) initiative. provides a more flexible mechanism for partitioning disks than the older Master Boot Record (MBR) partitioning scheme that was common to PCs.
GUID Partition Table (GPT)
Troubleshooting Boot Sector
MBR or GPT partitioning scheme, damage to these
records results in boot errors such as “Boot device not found,” “OS not found,” or “Invalid drive specification.”
If there is a serious fault, a Windows system will display a______typically indicates that there is a system memory fault, a hardware device/driver fault, or corruption of operating system files.
blue screen of death (BSOD)
Troubleshoot Drive availability
*Unusual noise (HDD only) -A loud or grinding noise/clicking
sound.
*Constant LED activity-disk thrashing, can be a sign that there is not enough system RAM so that the disk is beingused continually for paging. sign of a faulty software process or that the system is infected with malware.
*Missing drives in OS—HDD, this is typically caused by bad sectors.
* make a data backup and replace the disk as soon as possible to minimize the risk of data loss.
most fixed disks have a self diagnostic alerting the operating system if a failure is detected.
Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology (SMART)
If performance is reduced from the vendor’s baseline measurements under test conditions, it is likely that the device
itself is faulty.
input/output operations per second (IOPS)
If there is file corruption on a hard disk and no backup, you can attempt to recover data from the device using
recovery utility
that files stored in these locations cannot be opened or simply disappear.
Data loss/corruption
Troubleshoot RAID Failure
RAID failure: failure of a device within the array and failure of the whole array or volume.
RAID controller
Software RAID
