I'm finally writing a post about the desktop PSU failure foreshadowed in the previous post.
Not writing it in the way I expected it to, because I am recovering from the worst cold I've ever heard. I don't think it's covid, though I haven't tested to confirm. My symptoms from multiple covid shots were headache and fever. My current symptoms are all pointing to a cold: extreme coughing, runny/congested nose, sore throat, and really bad phlegm. It's been nearly fucking TWO weeks and I'm still not fully recovered.
I've been dying at home and off from work sick for more days than I've been in the past few years combined. On the other hand, I have a jury duty summons I can hopefully get out of. Anyway, onto the failure because the situation infuriated me, and some of the consequences from the crash might be permanent.
The setup
Backtrack to about a year ago, when summer in northern California (think Sacramento area, not Bay Area) caused multiple power outages during the hottest months. Mostly July. Obligatory fuck PG&E comment. I especially remember one egregious week, there was an outage every other day. I was texting my manager "my power went out again" and waiting hours for outages to get fixed nonstop, and no work was getting done. These outages likely wreaked havoc on my desktop PSU, as power cuts can short circuits and create long term damage. That's why UPS units are recommended for hardcore desktop setups, to prevent PSU damage in case of power outages.
Fastforward to January, when my desktop started exhibiting strange behavior. There's a separate issue related to sleep mode that started before the cursed power outages: the computer would instantly boot back up as soon as I put it to sleep. To not have to deal with it, I started shutting down the computer at the end of every day. I knew something was wrong when one day the power button on the case stopped working. Press, press, press, no response. I hit the case a few times (though you shouldn't do this to fix a desktop issue) hoping maybe a stray cord or cable would get knocked back into place. Luckily, whatever I did worked, because the computer powered on again after a few knocks.
Issues like unresponsive power don't just magically solve themselves, and I can't knock the case around forever. I decided to open the case and clean out the dust. I haven't done it for years because my parents' place was carpet, and I'm lazy.
I clean out the fans as best as I could with a can of compressed air from Fry's without taking the parts off. I reattach all the wires and cables to make sure none of them were loose or overly taut. Nothing seemed wrong. I decided to power on the desktop with the case open in case any parts had issues and displayed LED error lights.
The screen gets stuck at the Starting Windows screen with the logo, and after 20 minutes it's clearly stuck so I decide to forcefully reboot.
All hell broke loose at this point, and I still don't know what the issue might be. The monitor stays black, and something, perhaps the hard drive, is groaning in agony. The error LEDs on the motherboard took turns blinking in the back.
Shame the hard drive groaning is hard to hear. At the end, when the click sounds and everything blinks off, that's when the computer reboots. It loops the rebooting for about 5 minutes before the click happens one last time and the PSU gives out forever.
I didn't actually believe the PSU had died for real, so I fiddle around with the cables and power switch some more. It still didn't work after leaving it off overnight, so now I'm convinced it's well and truly dead. Now the obvious reaction besides "fuck fuck fuck" is "where am I going to get a good PSU for a reasonable price on extremely short notice?"
And "did I fuck up my desktop by cleaning it??"
Unbelievably enough, Best Buy saves the day. Bet nobody would've expected that 10 years ago. After fishing around on /r/buildapcsales and finding some good brands and models (leading me to a PSU tier list I didn't even know existed), I search on Best Buy, Target, and any other electronics store in the area with curbside pickup. Target was a no go. Best Buy, bless them, has a A tier Corsair PSU for pickup 10min away. I choose it, and of course, because it's "fuck you" day, the order gets cancelled and refunded 30min later because the store didn't actually have inventory.
I pick the next closest store for pickup, which is an hour away. Thanks to the delay from the first store, I'd be leaving and driving back all during rush hour. I do it anyway. I have to say, Oakland's Best Buy is really interesting. Like a car dealership/warehouse but for electronics. I got the feeling there's a lot of inventory meant for pickup. There were some very nice-looking displays for some lesser known brands like Glorious Gaming in the desktop enthusiast section. I had a GG mouse, so seeing the brand was a nice surprise. Too bad this store is so far away or I'd consider taking a closer look.
We're not even at the stress-inducing part of this whole travesty. Spoiler alert: it's not even directly related to the PSU.
I eventually disconnect the dead PSU and planned to use the old cables to connect to the new PSU, but apparently that's not a good idea. I don't know enough about PSUs and "proprietary cable" technology enough to determine whether this was just forcing vendor lock-in, so I didn't take the chance. What should've been an easy PSU swap turned into a more irritating 1 by 1 cable swap.
PSU swapped, case dusted, everything should be fine now, right?? RIGHT????
Eks dee fuck you edition
No it was not fine. It now powers, but is stuck doing the same power cycle loop as before. Now I'm thinking maybe the GPU or the mobo are also damaged. The GPU would be shitty but not hard to replace. I just don't want to buy one while prices are sky high. The mobo would be the biggest problem, as Win7 chipset support is long out of production, not to mention having to relodge all the other parts. The mobo's red LED ights are complaining about CPU and RAM.
A PC enthusiast friend suggested doing a CMOS reset, which sometimes fixes problems. I try it, and booting is now successful. I get on my Linux fine. Now, when I try booting into Windows... nope. Still stuck on the logo boot screen. It's startup repair time!!
Startup repair singlehandedly turned this into a days-long struggle because of how finicky it is. First of all, it is finicky. It dislikes the slightest thing, it'll bork the system. Second of all, thanks to Win7 and certain poor decisions, USB3 support does not come straight out of the box. That also adds all sorts of weird errors when you're trying to troubleshoot and it's not clear whether the errors are from startup repair or USB3. This means you should always use USB2 ports, but if startup repair also says it fails on there, what are you supposed to believe? 🙃
Some context on my setup, which unfortunately added to the plethora of confusion over some errors that popped up during my startup repair troubleshooting:
- My current installation of Win7 was done with a custom DVD made by Integrate7. The original post is on SevenForums but it's suddenly closed to non-users without explanation. It's one of the greatest QOL installation media ever, highly recommend.
- The script comes with a bunch of "new age" tech drivers, including USB3.
- The custom DVD includes many updates past SP1. This doesn't become an issue until later.
- The Windows partition uses MBR and not GPT.
So, the first attempt of startup repair. It immediately offers to detect and fix any startup errors, and of course I tell it yes, please do it. It finishes and tells me, whooo!! It recovered a bunch of things!!
And then I reboot.
Two immediately fuckups become visible: the GRUB bootloader is gone, so now I can't get into Linux. Not surprising, since Windows isn't polite about dual boot setups. The real fuckup is that my Windows bootfiles got deleted. I can't even get to the Windows logo boot screen anymore. FUUUU-
It's now midnight (I know because I was liveblogging rage updates on Discord) and I manage to make things worse. And if you've read any of my previous rage posts on tech troubleshooting, you know that I don't let technology win. EVER. We're continuing this bullshit.
bootmgr is ded
Since startup repair caused the issue, SURELY making it run again will fix things, right?? RIGHT????
Any headline with a question can be answered with a no.
I get slightly different behavior from startup repair this time. It says it detected my Windows installation, but when the window to choose my installation pops up, it's empty 🤡
Now, a million search engine queries later, I learn about a number of repair tools available from command line that the GUI uses. Thus begins the great adventure of getting diskpart, bcdedit, and bootrec to work. The internet instructions are somewhat scattered and not always properly explained, but the summary of my adventures with this is the below picture:
To add onto the frustration, I also start getting random BSoDs while booting in startup repair. Halfway through this all-nighter adventure, so there's even more shit wrong. I also started doing sfc /scannow hoping that it'll fix bootmgr problems, but nope. Not only does it not help, a BSoD in the middle of it might've messed the system up even more. I have to run more sfc to clean up the corrupted stuff from the failed run.
Now I suspect the RAM might be causing issues, so I run a memory test. Panic ensues. PSU failure might've taken more parts with it.
I'm still hoping the RAM isn't actually fried and I just knocked it loose while cleaning. I open the case, and luckily, I see that there was a dust bunny that made its way into the slot, and that one stick slightly slid out. I readjust everything, rerun the test, RAM problem solved.
Now it's time to be angry about the install media on the USB. It's the same media I used for installing the OS last time, so things shouldn't go wrong. It was also taking forever, at least an hour, definitely not within an expected load time.
At the same time, I'm also trying to understand what the Windows install environment is seeing. Instead of going to startup repair, I go into the installation menus. Strangely enough, it can see my partition and its associated data. Good, that means everything on the OS is fine, only the boot manager is broken. Bad, because why can't startup repair behave the same way???
Installation detective work ends here, because the USB is booting in UEFI mode, and it only supports installing to GPT partitions.
I muck around the BIOS, hoping maybe the UEFI vs. BIOS/Legacy settings on the motherboard might be causing the USB startup repair issues. Unlikely because I never changed those since installing Win7. I only cause more BSoDs and failed boots. The motherboard actually detected bad BIOS settings so it forcefully reverts itself, and I have to try something else.
My memory on the next few struggles are hazy, but after spending some time failing to use a freshly created Integrate7 disc, I give up for a bit and try to restore GRUB so I can at least use Linux. I give credit where credit is due, restoring the GRUB bootloader via LiveCD took me 20min to read and follow instructions. Compare with trying to restore Windows bootloader, multiple all nighters and still no breakthrough.
I also learned about a very cool tool Ventoy. I was using a single USB to juggle between my Integrate7 install media and the LiveCD, which put stalled me in keeping up my troubleshooting momentum.
Ventoy had some weird issues with booting Windows media, a known issue. I had no idea the BIOS even had these error screens before using Ventoy.
My troubleshooting setup is super jank. I couldn't put the open case back on the floor in case I need to tinker with parts some more. If I put the case on my computer table, then it blocks my monitors and I'd still need a display. In the end, I put the case on the dining table, attached a spare wireless mouse, bring over my keyboard, and used a projector to display to the wall. That's why the above photo looks so bumpy, it's my wall XD
After days of trying different combinations of Win7 install media, USB2/3 ports, and BIOS, I DID IT. The right combination of hardware configuration and recovery tools manage to save me.
To summarize, Windows is expecting its own tiny hidden partition to restore the MBR and add a boot entry. This isn't normally a problem, except thanks to replacing the Windows bootloader with GRUB and dualboot, the hidden partition no longer exists. All these help sites, even the ones that talk about dual boot setups, failed to point this out. Additionally, and this is where I am really salty, most of these help sites fucked up hard by not specifying the correct drive when using the recovery tools. I was trying to fix MBR and everything on the wrong drive the entire time!
Much credit to the WOSHub article out of at least 30 that I looked at, with the correct instructions. I was actually ready to register on the SevenForums and ask for help.
TEH URN happened by plugging into a USB2 port, then running the trio of MBR commands specifying the correct drive. The real kicker is, the command line still reported the same error/failure before, that the installation couldn't be found!! So imagine my surprise when I get through Windows boot!! ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜
This also erased my GRUB again so I need to do the whole chroot song and dance again. I still haven't gotten around to it, but I should.
Concluding remarks
Now, I still have the dead PSU to deal with. I could go through some effort of testing whether it's truly dead with a bent metal pin and a multimeter, both of which I do have, but is it really worth it? It had a 5 year warranty, and it hits 6 years in April. It's not as if I'd swap back to it since I already have a PSU upgrade.
I'm probably going to pack it up and drop it off at an ewaste recycling center.
Another fun thing I found is that some newer motherboards can support Windows 7 installations. I probably won't buy any of the compatible motherboards before they go out of production though.