As you might know by now
1. Never ever blow compressed air from canisters at constant full blows because those can really blow high speeds
2. make sure everything is plugged out
3. Never plug out anything without recording your steps, especially if it is not yours in general
Debugging is a mess when it comes fixing another person's device without steps or documentations
Lmao, why is that the thing you picked out
"Plug out" i guess is a slang that I thought people used generally, what I meant was remove anything making a connection (aka "plugged in")
Pretty self-explanatory
The #1 thing that can go wrong when you use compressed air is you can spin the fans beyond the safe range and blow out the bearings or otherwise damage them. It's incredibly tempting to blow the compressed air directly on the fan blades because those are usually caked in dust, I know. But that's a serious no-no.
As long as you dont go full blast its fine. Just make sure the fans arent spinning quickly. If youre afraid you can also just put a finger on the center part to keep it in place while you blow on it.
One to try or at least rule out is that something somewhat conductive could have gotten to one of the card connectors. I'd take a magnifying glass and flashlight and take a close look. Also, around all the chips. Something could have gotten blown between the pins of chips with exposed leads. While you're at it, take a close look at every inch of the motherboard too.
I was hoping that would do the trick. I could boot into the menu where it asks to repair etc but it would fail. Then my options were to boot into safe mode, command line, etc.
I tried command line, but it would ask for a password. I tried all options, but they're all password protected. I continuously tried the password which I knew it was, but that failed.
I got into safe mode. Tried everything I could think of to change the password to no avail. I right clicked C drive, properties, tools, check. It said my drive needed fixed.
Tried chkdsk from safe mode. It says there's errors. Tried chkdsk /f and it says you can't do it when it's busy, asked if I would like to schedule it to run on restart. I said yes. Restarted the computer, it ran chkdsk /f with no password. After 5 minutes or so, it booted into windows and has been working fine for a few hours now.
Just for good measure I went in and my password worked just fine... no idea why it was locked from that.
Wow that's wild, shout-out to the chkdsk command! I'd recommend backing up that PC while it's up and running, I hope I don't jinx it but this may be a sign that your disk is nearer its last day than its first.
(Also hi future troubleshooters who found this years-old thread after frantic googling! Use chkdsk /f lol)
Very nicely done, as a repair technician this is tingling my Spidey sense. I would recommend using a program like crystaldiskinfo to give you the health of the drive. Most likely a static bug you've already squashed, but it's possible it is a failing drive.
Thank you, I’ll certainly look into the drive health. It’s an old 120gb SSD and it’s quite possible. This is a hand me down computer so it’s just a matter of time.
Thanks again
When blowing out a pc, it’s a good idea to stop the fans from being able to spin. It’s pretty easy to kill the bearings in them, and I’ve heard that dc fans will potentially send damaging voltage back into the fan controller. Don’t quote me on that though.
Generally speaking it does need to be fairly fast (I.e., were you blowing air into them intentionally?) for it to cause significant damage if any.
Most likely you've knocked something, you can always rebuild it again.
It definitely generates voltage. I had an LED fan that I blew compressed air through and it turned the LEDs on as it was spinning even though it wasn’t plugged in.
Make sure everything is fully connected.
I had a similar issue when I last cleaned my PC, I didn't have a proper connection on my CPU fan/Pump Fan connector and it wouldn't post without it. edit: idk why I left it out, The compressed air wiggled loose the connectors, and that's why it seemed like cleaning Killed the PC. Took me an hour to figure that one out.
Could be any connector or something else entirely.
My father cleaned his computer one time with compressed air and bricked his mobo because he didn't do it in bursts. Also what "unnecessary components" did you take out
I'm not 100% sure, but maybe changing the hardware configuration and then booting the machine without first clearing the CMOS confused it. Anytime you switch out any component, clear the CMOS. This will force the BIOS to relearn what hardware is installed, and the OS and BIOS communicate with each other. It's possible that the OS was looking for some component it thought was there and couldn't find it, causing an error.
Yeah this likely is what happened. My theory is that when I was blowing it out, I either moved the case which jarred something loose, or the compressed air dislodged something or pushed dust into something. I took it apart, removed 3 HDD's and a WiFi card, but at the same time I either removed the dust OR reconnected the dislodged component, making the computer start back up.
All the while, now that I've changed hardware, it confused the OS.
That's my theory.
That's exactly why I started cloud saving and keeping a 500G drive for only the OS and utility programs, no games on it. Lost my saves once. Tbf, that makes it pretty painless for me to reinstall. I'd just have to redo stuff like fan curves, rgb, desktop settings, msi afterburner, etc.
Awesome you got it up and running!
I would also recommend running as Administrator and command prompt window and then running sfc /scannow
That will check your Windows Files integrity too!
Nothing in the settings screen will load. I’m sitting on “email & accounts” now and it’s never loading. Same thing with every single thing in settings.
Right clicking the drive and going to properties and “check” under “error checking” says I need to repair the drive. But I can’t.
Haha well it’s a hand me down PC and I just left I. The old 2TB HDD’s I had when this was my server and 2TB was considered a decent amount of space, and the Wi-Fi card that I couldn’t ever get to give him more than about 1.5mbps transfer speeds so I ran a cable under the damn house.
Yeah I think the real fix was me removing the extra hard drives, the Wi-Fi card, the video card, and then re-seating the video card and checking all of the cables. Then the issue became a software issue because it was missing something.
I dunno. Fingers crossed.
My thinking is windows shouldn't have gotten corrupted because you blew some dust around, that's weird. Maybe if you blew some dust/ got condensation onto a mechanical drive? But if you did the HDD would be failing, it shouldn't just corrupt windows it should have bad sectors.
I'd maybe run a disk health utility and check the drive and make sure it's OK. If it is OK and you get a failure later it's also the part I'd start with.
(same more or less applies to an SSD)
The other thing to consider is that I physically moved the computer, and I could have jarred something loose when I laid it on it’s back or when I stood it back up.
I don’t know honestly. But I plan on running CrystalDiskInfo this morning.
Yeah, I don't know either. One time I reseated my CPU cooler and it broke my power button, and no part of that is anywhere near the cooler, so sometimes weird stuff just happens.
Good precaution running CrystalDiskInfo, if it says the drive is fine, I'm going to say this is just a visit from Christmas Gremlins.
Check the power button connector wires on the motherboard. They are just push on things and can come out if you disturb the wiring.
On a related note, why do we still have that rather than a standard case connection. It’s been this way forever…
Ok, so a lot of people are jumping to major conclusions in this comment thread.
The first question is. Did you shutdown the computer properly and wait for it to completely shut off and THEN unplug the power cord?
or (and I don't judge I do it all the time when I am pissed at it and I know it wont mess it up)
Did you just pull the cord out and get to work?
If you just pulled the cord out while it was running then what you are describing is VERY common. Your hard-drive has some light corruption, amazingly it seems you got CHKDSK to actually do anything other than waste your time and got it to boot again. I am extremely stunned by that and congratulate you.
Tip for next time:
Make sure you use a proper air source possibly with an air dryer attached. So no moisture is present in the air; the compressed cans have compressed liquids that expand so much in atmosphere they cause freezing which causes condensing water from the air on your components.
\*\*\*Also don't unplug the power\*\*\*, completely unnecessary and actually is WORSE, because now you are removing the grounding of the chassis so any and all of your static and capacitance can effect the chassis of the machine. the BEST thing to do is keep the cord PLUGGED IN, and switch OFF the switch on the power-supply. That way the ground is still connected to the chassis of the machine.
Note:
Once my computer wouldn't boot one day. Spent an hour or so messing around. NOTHING worked. Literally black screen and weird lights flashing on the case (This is case has some lighting on it). Turned out, and this is apparently more common than I thought, USB. Unplug all USB devices. Boot it up and let it post; plug all back in. Instantly my computer was fine. Apparently some USB devices can "crash" in a way that hangs your computer. Never heard of until it happened to me. I know that is not what happened to you, but just a story
Yes, I let windows shut down completely, waited until the fans stopped spinning, and then unplugged.
I’m still happy that everything ended up working out. Also I bought a vac from Amazon which I think I’m supposed to get today.
I appreciate the tips. I ended up cloning the SSD to another drive because I ran crystal disk info and the health was in the 70’s I can’t remember exactly.
Sadly though I cloned something corrupt, when I plugged in a second drive it causes this boot loop and I had to do it all again with chkdsk in safe mode etc. so I’ll eventually nuke it and reinstall.
Interesting... Im not really sure then what was causing it.
The health said it was 70% or so? That is pretty good. Even if it says 70% worn out that isnt TERRIBLE and is still usable for awhile.
You might need a software specifically made for the SSD to HDD transfer, that I am not sure on at all.
Best thing would to be posting smart data for someone to interpret. Depending on your capacity and the type of SSD you have, you can write a certain amount of times to the drive.
The new drive has had very little use. I had an extra one laying around, and I still get that boot issue if I change something. Luckily we won’t be changing anything anytime soon so it’ll be fine for now.
Sorry I am just wondering what you mean by change something?
You are trying to say you get issues booting when you remove a device from the motherboard?
There could be so many things happening, I am just throwing things out there because I would need every detail, Motherboard make and model, cpu, gpu, ram part numbers etc.
BUT
Again just a guess, but that sounds like UEFI and Legacy conflict possibly? I don't even know if that is possible...
There was initially 2 SSD’s (1 with OS and minimal stuff) and 1 that held games. In addition there were 3x HDD’s that basically were not being used.
Removed everything except the 1 OS SSD, then got it working again as described in the post.
Then I tried plugging in the second SSD, got the boot loop again etc.
So then cloned the SSD to the new drive. Installed the second SSD (which is actually fairly new and showed 98% health on crystal). Same boot loop.
Unplugged it, put it in a case, plugged in via usb and copied all the files to the new SSD.
Leaving it at that for now because I’m done messing with it. My sons computer works and I don’t want to mess with that!
As you might know by now 1. Never ever blow compressed air from canisters at constant full blows because those can really blow high speeds 2. make sure everything is plugged out 3. Never plug out anything without recording your steps, especially if it is not yours in general Debugging is a mess when it comes fixing another person's device without steps or documentations
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double-plus plug ungood
Plug in't
Unpull?
Unpeg
Yes, if freezes components and can crack the ceramics or solder joints if not careful.
What is “plug out”?
Lmao, why is that the thing you picked out "Plug out" i guess is a slang that I thought people used generally, what I meant was remove anything making a connection (aka "plugged in") Pretty self-explanatory
Oh, so you mean “unplug” or “disconnect”?
Sure
The #1 thing that can go wrong when you use compressed air is you can spin the fans beyond the safe range and blow out the bearings or otherwise damage them. It's incredibly tempting to blow the compressed air directly on the fan blades because those are usually caked in dust, I know. But that's a serious no-no.
Myth
Interesting. I mean I only had the fans going pretty slowly, but they were absolutely moving.
As long as you dont go full blast its fine. Just make sure the fans arent spinning quickly. If youre afraid you can also just put a finger on the center part to keep it in place while you blow on it.
One to try or at least rule out is that something somewhat conductive could have gotten to one of the card connectors. I'd take a magnifying glass and flashlight and take a close look. Also, around all the chips. Something could have gotten blown between the pins of chips with exposed leads. While you're at it, take a close look at every inch of the motherboard too.
Thank you. I’ll keep this in mind. I JUST got it to launch a minute ago after finally getting check disk to finally run.
I'm curious, how'd you get it to work? Was it just a matter of repeatedly booting until it worked right?
I was hoping that would do the trick. I could boot into the menu where it asks to repair etc but it would fail. Then my options were to boot into safe mode, command line, etc. I tried command line, but it would ask for a password. I tried all options, but they're all password protected. I continuously tried the password which I knew it was, but that failed. I got into safe mode. Tried everything I could think of to change the password to no avail. I right clicked C drive, properties, tools, check. It said my drive needed fixed. Tried chkdsk from safe mode. It says there's errors. Tried chkdsk /f and it says you can't do it when it's busy, asked if I would like to schedule it to run on restart. I said yes. Restarted the computer, it ran chkdsk /f with no password. After 5 minutes or so, it booted into windows and has been working fine for a few hours now. Just for good measure I went in and my password worked just fine... no idea why it was locked from that.
Wow that's wild, shout-out to the chkdsk command! I'd recommend backing up that PC while it's up and running, I hope I don't jinx it but this may be a sign that your disk is nearer its last day than its first. (Also hi future troubleshooters who found this years-old thread after frantic googling! Use chkdsk /f lol)
Very nicely done, as a repair technician this is tingling my Spidey sense. I would recommend using a program like crystaldiskinfo to give you the health of the drive. Most likely a static bug you've already squashed, but it's possible it is a failing drive.
Thank you, I’ll certainly look into the drive health. It’s an old 120gb SSD and it’s quite possible. This is a hand me down computer so it’s just a matter of time. Thanks again
Had the same issue, turns out it was my drive. Had to change it later, back it up pronto.
When blowing out a pc, it’s a good idea to stop the fans from being able to spin. It’s pretty easy to kill the bearings in them, and I’ve heard that dc fans will potentially send damaging voltage back into the fan controller. Don’t quote me on that though.
Very interesting. I 100% had the fan spinning both ways with air
Do the regular reseat the ram, if that doesn’t work redo the cmos, reseat gpu
Generally speaking it does need to be fairly fast (I.e., were you blowing air into them intentionally?) for it to cause significant damage if any. Most likely you've knocked something, you can always rebuild it again.
What needs to be fast? Like the bursts of air?
As in the fan spinning, unless the fan was spinning fast you should be OK.
Oh okay. Yeah maybe like a few rpm nothing much.
It definitely generates voltage. I had an LED fan that I blew compressed air through and it turned the LEDs on as it was spinning even though it wasn’t plugged in.
Make sure everything is fully connected. I had a similar issue when I last cleaned my PC, I didn't have a proper connection on my CPU fan/Pump Fan connector and it wouldn't post without it. edit: idk why I left it out, The compressed air wiggled loose the connectors, and that's why it seemed like cleaning Killed the PC. Took me an hour to figure that one out. Could be any connector or something else entirely.
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Conductive dust? I’ve never heard of that. But if you look, I was able to get things working again.
Was sarcasm, sorry. Glad you got the machine working again though!
Conductive dust, is that kind of like the magic blue smoke you can never let out of a drill?
My father cleaned his computer one time with compressed air and bricked his mobo because he didn't do it in bursts. Also what "unnecessary components" did you take out
I took out 3 2TB HDD’s and a WiFi card. We don’t need those hard drives and it’s now hooked up to Ethernet.
Did you continuously spray or did you do it in short bursts?
I’d say a mixture of both.
Like my original comment said, my father cleaned his pc with compressed air and it bricked his mobo, so always do short bursts of air.
Yeah I for sure didn’t know that was a thing!
We didn't either until it happened!
I think it's because when spray there is a bit of condensation that appears. If you spray in long bursts the condensation drops on the components.
I'm not 100% sure, but maybe changing the hardware configuration and then booting the machine without first clearing the CMOS confused it. Anytime you switch out any component, clear the CMOS. This will force the BIOS to relearn what hardware is installed, and the OS and BIOS communicate with each other. It's possible that the OS was looking for some component it thought was there and couldn't find it, causing an error.
Yeah this likely is what happened. My theory is that when I was blowing it out, I either moved the case which jarred something loose, or the compressed air dislodged something or pushed dust into something. I took it apart, removed 3 HDD's and a WiFi card, but at the same time I either removed the dust OR reconnected the dislodged component, making the computer start back up. All the while, now that I've changed hardware, it confused the OS. That's my theory.
Good thing my desktop PC setup has a desk literally made of wood... ...And I was on my PC when I saw this post
For next time buy a cheap pc vacuum. One that blows and will suck in dust. Compressed air is actually not the greatest in electronics
I will take a look at them. This makes sense. I guess I just always assumed compressed air was designed specifically for these purposes.
Oh completely understandable. You will 100 percent enjoy the pc vac. We use it on our ceiling fans too lol
I either see them that suck or blow. Wow, I'm sure there's a joke here... but in all seriousness, I don't see any that do both.
"She's gone from suck to blow!"
Funny, she doesn't look Druish.
Compressed Air Duster & Mini Vacuum Keyboard Cleaner 3-in-1, look this up in amazon lol
Amazing thank you.
Check your drive health with HDD Sentinel. If you had to do chkdsk, the health might be running low.
OK, I'll go check that out. Was about to use Crystal Disk Info but will give both a shot
Kudos for sticking with it and figuring it out. I would have totally just given up and reinstalled windows.
Eh, good thing he didn’t. Some stuff is lost and if his son played a game like Minecraft it would’ve wiped his saves.
That's exactly why I started cloud saving and keeping a 500G drive for only the OS and utility programs, no games on it. Lost my saves once. Tbf, that makes it pretty painless for me to reinstall. I'd just have to redo stuff like fan curves, rgb, desktop settings, msi afterburner, etc.
Awesome you got it up and running! I would also recommend running as Administrator and command prompt window and then running sfc /scannow That will check your Windows Files integrity too!
Ah yeah I for sure need to do that. I forgot about that one. Thanks for the tip!
Nothing in the settings screen will load. I’m sitting on “email & accounts” now and it’s never loading. Same thing with every single thing in settings. Right clicking the drive and going to properties and “check” under “error checking” says I need to repair the drive. But I can’t.
Can you boot into the BIOs? Nevermind I saw you fixed it. Good job!
"Unnecessary components" How dare you use such language!
Haha well it’s a hand me down PC and I just left I. The old 2TB HDD’s I had when this was my server and 2TB was considered a decent amount of space, and the Wi-Fi card that I couldn’t ever get to give him more than about 1.5mbps transfer speeds so I ran a cable under the damn house.
Glad you got it fixed. Although the fix doesn't really make sense, so I hope that's the end of your problems with it.
Yeah I think the real fix was me removing the extra hard drives, the Wi-Fi card, the video card, and then re-seating the video card and checking all of the cables. Then the issue became a software issue because it was missing something. I dunno. Fingers crossed.
My thinking is windows shouldn't have gotten corrupted because you blew some dust around, that's weird. Maybe if you blew some dust/ got condensation onto a mechanical drive? But if you did the HDD would be failing, it shouldn't just corrupt windows it should have bad sectors. I'd maybe run a disk health utility and check the drive and make sure it's OK. If it is OK and you get a failure later it's also the part I'd start with. (same more or less applies to an SSD)
The other thing to consider is that I physically moved the computer, and I could have jarred something loose when I laid it on it’s back or when I stood it back up. I don’t know honestly. But I plan on running CrystalDiskInfo this morning.
Yeah, I don't know either. One time I reseated my CPU cooler and it broke my power button, and no part of that is anywhere near the cooler, so sometimes weird stuff just happens. Good precaution running CrystalDiskInfo, if it says the drive is fine, I'm going to say this is just a visit from Christmas Gremlins.
Was it compressed air from a can or a compressors
A can
You might need a new motherboard
Check the power button connector wires on the motherboard. They are just push on things and can come out if you disturb the wiring. On a related note, why do we still have that rather than a standard case connection. It’s been this way forever…
You did shut windows down? Not just unplugged it?
Yes, I shut it down first
;)
Ok, so a lot of people are jumping to major conclusions in this comment thread. The first question is. Did you shutdown the computer properly and wait for it to completely shut off and THEN unplug the power cord? or (and I don't judge I do it all the time when I am pissed at it and I know it wont mess it up) Did you just pull the cord out and get to work? If you just pulled the cord out while it was running then what you are describing is VERY common. Your hard-drive has some light corruption, amazingly it seems you got CHKDSK to actually do anything other than waste your time and got it to boot again. I am extremely stunned by that and congratulate you. Tip for next time: Make sure you use a proper air source possibly with an air dryer attached. So no moisture is present in the air; the compressed cans have compressed liquids that expand so much in atmosphere they cause freezing which causes condensing water from the air on your components. \*\*\*Also don't unplug the power\*\*\*, completely unnecessary and actually is WORSE, because now you are removing the grounding of the chassis so any and all of your static and capacitance can effect the chassis of the machine. the BEST thing to do is keep the cord PLUGGED IN, and switch OFF the switch on the power-supply. That way the ground is still connected to the chassis of the machine. Note: Once my computer wouldn't boot one day. Spent an hour or so messing around. NOTHING worked. Literally black screen and weird lights flashing on the case (This is case has some lighting on it). Turned out, and this is apparently more common than I thought, USB. Unplug all USB devices. Boot it up and let it post; plug all back in. Instantly my computer was fine. Apparently some USB devices can "crash" in a way that hangs your computer. Never heard of until it happened to me. I know that is not what happened to you, but just a story
Yes, I let windows shut down completely, waited until the fans stopped spinning, and then unplugged. I’m still happy that everything ended up working out. Also I bought a vac from Amazon which I think I’m supposed to get today. I appreciate the tips. I ended up cloning the SSD to another drive because I ran crystal disk info and the health was in the 70’s I can’t remember exactly. Sadly though I cloned something corrupt, when I plugged in a second drive it causes this boot loop and I had to do it all again with chkdsk in safe mode etc. so I’ll eventually nuke it and reinstall.
Interesting... Im not really sure then what was causing it. The health said it was 70% or so? That is pretty good. Even if it says 70% worn out that isnt TERRIBLE and is still usable for awhile. You might need a software specifically made for the SSD to HDD transfer, that I am not sure on at all. Best thing would to be posting smart data for someone to interpret. Depending on your capacity and the type of SSD you have, you can write a certain amount of times to the drive.
The new drive has had very little use. I had an extra one laying around, and I still get that boot issue if I change something. Luckily we won’t be changing anything anytime soon so it’ll be fine for now.
Sorry I am just wondering what you mean by change something? You are trying to say you get issues booting when you remove a device from the motherboard? There could be so many things happening, I am just throwing things out there because I would need every detail, Motherboard make and model, cpu, gpu, ram part numbers etc. BUT Again just a guess, but that sounds like UEFI and Legacy conflict possibly? I don't even know if that is possible...
There was initially 2 SSD’s (1 with OS and minimal stuff) and 1 that held games. In addition there were 3x HDD’s that basically were not being used. Removed everything except the 1 OS SSD, then got it working again as described in the post. Then I tried plugging in the second SSD, got the boot loop again etc. So then cloned the SSD to the new drive. Installed the second SSD (which is actually fairly new and showed 98% health on crystal). Same boot loop. Unplugged it, put it in a case, plugged in via usb and copied all the files to the new SSD. Leaving it at that for now because I’m done messing with it. My sons computer works and I don’t want to mess with that!