For the detectives out there..

[Zourous]

I'm still working on this one and this is what I've now worked out:

 

It is generally happening to the same PC's although others have shown the issue

If I leave one of the common offending PC's in our office, plugged into the power, but not turned on, several hours later when I turn it on, it fails to boot with the usual fan noise. I then have to leave it unplugged from the power for several hours again for it to boot again.

 

It sounds like a power supply issue to me now. They did replace a PSU and MB on one visit and it happened again the next day, but maybe this is a red herring. I'm going to maybe send another PC away to them again with details on how to replicate the problem.

[Snuffkins]

We had similar issues with Windows 7 machines. If they went into sleep mode or hybernation and were powered off without being bought out of sleep mode first they wouldn't power up unless power was removed for a certain amount of time. We just altered the power settings on the machines so they wouldn't go into sleep or hybernation modes and we've not had any problems since then.

 

You might also have allow hybrid sleep on in your advanced power options and this can cause similar issues from what i've seen.

 

I'd certainly try setting sleep to never in the power options. It's worth a try to see if that's what's happening at least and you haven't lost anything by trying it.

[Zourous]

Thanks snuffkins but I have already tried that. The PC is shutting down and the powersaving is set to never, but this hasn't always been set like this so maybe it has damaged the PSU somehow over time.

[edutech4schools]

Have you checked the bios. I had a pc that a pupil had changed the drive mode to udma or something like that and we were stumped for ages thinking it was a motherboard fault. We got no error message, just a blank screen and a power light.

[Dragon]

We have the same problem with another brand. All parts were replaced, essentially a new PC. Unplug everything inc power, try turning it on (without power) wait around 5 seconds and then plug power back in and turn on. If it boots then great, but each time it fails to boot after this run through the same process but add each peripheral back 1 by 1 to narrow down a device eg mouse, keyboard, monitor. Edited June 5, 2013 by Dragon

[themightymrp]

I had a similar issue on some PC's before. To get around it I unplugged the power lead, held down the power button on the front of the case for 20 seconds to dispel any capacitance and then plugged the lead back in. Seemed to work and is quicker than waiting half a day!

[Zourous]

Edutech4schools! your students can into your bios?? We've got ours locked down and yes it is the latest bios

 

Yep I've tried unplugging everything down to the minimum and the problem persists

 

Does holding down the power button longer get rid of any residue power still in the board? Unfortunately these MB's don't have a led showing residue power so I don't know what it is still holding.

[themightymrp]

To be perfectly honest, I don't know if holding the button down does get rid of residue power. That's the way I justified it in my head when I noticed that it seemed to work 20 seconds seems to be enough time, the ones I had the issue with also had no LED's to judge by

[edutech4schools]

Edutech4schools! your students can into your bios?? We've got ours locked down and yes it is the latest bios

 

They could on a few machines that had been set up by LA, but not anymore.

 

Another bios idea. If the hdd sata settings had been changed from the default, say AHCI was disabled or ATA was set as the default and then the OS installed, if the bios for what ever reason is not holding the user settings anymore and reverting back to its default, you might experience the issue you have.

[themightymrp]

As in the BIOS battery could be duff? Possible I suppose

[featured_spectre]

Have you tried a more powerful PSU?

Have you checked jumper settings on the mobo? I have had a jumper set incorrectly before by the supplier and it didn't get beyond POST

Is the HDD set to UDMA? (I have had a student do that before and it took a couple of minutes to work out)

Have you had the power checked in the room to make sure their is ample amperage going through to the plugs? (some people skimp on the circuit breakers and put in substandard ones, as I discovered when I needed 150 sockets put into a room to charge all the school laptops)

[Zourous]

Bump!

 

Anyone else experiencing this issue yet with Fujitsu Esprimo E3521's. To recap, on powering the PC on you hear a loud fan noise and the PC fails to boot.

 

The problem is spreading to more and more PC's as time goes by. We can practically stop the problem by powering off the PSU's on the PC's at the end of the day manually and turning them on again in the morning, but this is a real PITA. At the moment we have to do this to ensure a full working room each morning.

 

We've received some replacement PSU's from Fujitsu support, as this seems to fix the issue except for the odd one. It's the odd one which is throwing me and making me think its not the full answer. In fact this particular odd one crashed whilst already booted and showed coloured stripes on the screen (like a graphics issue, but it's onboard graphics). After powering it off you attempt to power it on and it's back to square one with the high fan noise on boot. This PC has now had 2 x PSU's and 2 x MB's replaced.

[Techie-v2]

Seen this on many a pc but swsppung the mobo out usually sorts it.

 

In the mean time could you get an emergency power kill button fitted to the ring main of the room in question like in science and tech labs, knock it off at the end of the day and back on in the morning. That way at least you wouldnt have to knock off each individual psu on the machines

[Dragon]

I tried disconnected everything and found that if I disconnected the VGA lead from the PC, disconnect the power, clear the power from the board. Plug power back in and it boots fine. Then put VGA lead back in!