@@AshtonCoolman Some OE copies of Windows just come in one default language that's not possible to change. In this case, no choice but to use another key and do a fresh install if not happy with the default language.
Greg, NEVER install windows with more than one storage drive installed (because windows then chooses to put EFI partition on a random drive), now this poor souls has EFI partition on HDD, so when he removes the HDD, or when it dies, the whole PC will not boot anymore.
I doubt that. I've been installing Windows in my system with multiple drives and the EFI is always on the main drive. Maybe because I make sure the other drives don't have other partitions. I also use diskpart to wipe any remaining partitions in other drives.
Maybe that's what I did. I bought an NVME M.2 SSD and installed Windows on it while having other storage devices installed. I was going to take two of the SSD's out since I don't use them but when I remove them and boot up the PC I get an error saying Windows isn't installed. Maybe part of the Windows install got put on one of the SSD's.
Based on the orientation that you gave, that jumper was acting as a jumper to 3 positve terminals. The reason the CPU light was tripped was likely because of the voltage irregularity. Kinda nuts that it didn't fry the board, but I guess that's what those fail safes are for, to keep the system from actually booting and drawing real power that would definitely fry the board. Good catch!
Even PSU pinouts on the SUPPLY side of a power supply aren't standard across even the same brand. That's why PSU manufacturers always tell users NOT to interchange cables.
Just a quick note greg, the boot EFI partition is still on the HDD and if the HDD is removed the Windows wont boot. Probably best to delete all partitions from windows install menu so that the windows EFI partition is created in SSD as well.
I think so too. I don't know why Microsoft programmer think that the EFI partition has to be made on another drive than the OS itself. To me that is just plain stupid. Only connect the drive you want to install Windows on. Install Win10. Disconnect that drive, and connect the drive you want to install Win11 on. After install you can connect all drives. No problems with having your EFI partition on another disk, so when you have to replace a drive you won't run into any problems.
my first though when he reinstalled. sometimes windows installer trys to be smart and installs bootloader not on the drive you chose but the one already existing or set as first priority in bios/uefi. I ALWAYS remove any secondary drives when installing windows.
I love this series. It's fun to guess what's going to happen, and then be surprised at weird random things, like a speaker being plugged in to the wrong pins! I did not see that coming!
16:23 Oooo Greg I hope you did a proper windows reinstall (and it looks like you did in 19:35), since it looks like when you installed Windows on the m.2, Windows placed the boot partition (the EFI partition) onto one of the existing drives (most likely the Toshiba hard drive). This has been a cause of major pain back when I was helping friends out with upgrading their computer w/ a small SSD as a boot drive, and even though it shouldn’t affect functionality, it will if the drive w/ the EFI partition fails or gets removed. I usually wipe the drives completely during Windows install so that there’s no lingering EFI partitions around, or if the old data is important, just unplug the drive during Windows installation Every episode of Fix or Flop has either a reoccurring theme or just something completely unexpected, which is why I love this series
Weird that in disk manager you can't delete it, only way is in windows installer. You bet when the owner removes/replaces the drive the windows won't boot.
oof, i've had similar issues with that before. I gotten myself a new m.2 drive (had to use m.2 to pcie adapter cuz mobo was old) but for some odd reason it kept putting the bootloader into my older 2.5 inch ssd instead of the new m.2 one i was so confused as to why i kept getting a bsod at the bootloader saying it couldn't find its efi lmao
Also I noted that the partition E wasn't set up correctly. There was a small 900MB partition that wasn't merged with the main one, and of course that random EFI partition. Better to use something like Partition Wizard to clear everything up.
Great job...not too long i was able to help diagnose my friends pc thanks to u...after he upgraded from 5600x to 5800x3d...pc wouldn't post or power on...cant really remember...since it was just the CPU he changed...told him take out new CPU n check if the pins are bent...bingo bent pins...he straightened them but it still didn't fix the problem...told him i believe ur cpu is dead after he put his original CPU back in n everything worked as normal...he took it back for a new CPU...installed it...n his PC has been running fine...the work u do definitely teaches us ways we can self diagnose our pcs before having to kick out alotta money to computer repair shops
Just a tip Greg. When cleaning drives. Please use command prompt and use diskpart to completely remove the remaining disk partitions. The secondary drives don't need those partitions. Only the main drive needs it. I have multiple drives in my system and it's better for drive performance.
Still like seeing there are still new problems in each episode. ive been building PCs since the windows 95 days. I started as a kid and taught myself hardware and software. These videos are good for people that are advanced in building computers and new builders alike! Keep up the great work Greg. ❤
Based on what you were seeing it was grey/rebooting right after login, which would be when the windows music happens. So as originally connected that would be sending voltage out that + speaker to the + reboot. You nailed its cause perfectly.
he could repartition it in disk manager as well but on old disk that 960mb could be error point excluded by someone i did that on one fo my disk back in a day and it was runing at least 5 years fine (after that i upgraded to more storage)
Hey Greg! Just wanted to thank you for these Fix or Flop videos. I was able to diagnose a bad power supply in my system thanks to your troubleshooting methods. I don't live in Florida so naturally I don't qualify to have you fix it for me but your videos are the next best thing!
Why not use diskpart to do a complete clean of the drives, then build new partitions in Disk Manager? It'd get rid of the bad EFI partitions that you don't need any longer on the old drives and would be educational to those that watch these.
Keep doing these. Love em. I can't tell you how many times Ive had issues with my own PC and I come back to your videos and usually you diagnose the same problem I have. Very helpful
Great find for the troubles with that speaker. One advice - you can use diskpart in cmd in windows to clear off all the previous partitions of the drives. (You can even do it during the windows installation > shift + f10 > diskpart > list disk > select disk 0/1/2 whatever you want > clean).
For that hard drive in order to remove those extra partitions load up diskpart, select disk x, clean. That will fully wipe the drive to add a full partition
That little speaker was definitely causing an issue and well done in finding that! That was a tough one! Things plugged in wrong are some of the most difficult to find because of the lack of familiarity with the system. Compound that with a completely unrelated problem made it even more difficult! Well done Greg! 70,000 plus hours on a HDD!!! That's crazy! Only goes to show how well things were made back in the day.
16:43 yo I see a big mistake you did there If the Windows installer detects an existing EFI partition on any internal media it will just install the bootloader on that internal drive containing the aforementioned EFI partition no matter what drive the actual windows install will reside on So if the drive dies, gets disconnected or fully wiped the windows install on the other drive will no longer boot...
@GregSalazar great video as always. Learned a few new things from you AND the experienced viewers in the comments! Many thanks to all of you! Also nice upgrade. Exactly what the system was missing with these big installation sizes of some games these days. Keep going Greg 💯
Just read the letter at the beginning. I wish more people would just start with a new Windows 11 boot USB downloaded from Microsoft. For free. I recommend this because the "restore" option takes forever compared to a fresh install, and always leaves junk behind too. The most it could cost is a USB drive and a possibly a spare SSD to avoid erasing yours. Looking forward to seeing what it is.
Wow, I would not guess that issue. Nice catch! Two tips: 1: in the future unplug other drives to avoid "dual boot", you can fix it later with commands, but it's a hassle, 2: to wipe a drive that had windows on it, use diskpart in the command line. use diskpart list, then select disk (number) and then command clean. It will wipe out "locked" gpt drive.
Seems to me that windows was loaded on the ssd to start, then I bet something happened to windows; and windows recovery came up. The owner or recovery environment inadvertently moved the installation to the hdd, and something went wonky with recovery. The speaker being plugged in like that left the motherboard in constant reset state, so the bios wasn't finishing the post process; giving the weird boot phase and further corrupting windows. Computers can be weird this way, doesn't matter if older or newer, just Greg managed to diagnose, troubleshoot, and fix these little issues making the system work the way it should; awesome job!!
Tip: When I install Windows I have learned it is best to unplug or remove all of your drives, HDD, SSD, M.2 - except for your C: drive. Install Windows with just 1 drive in the system. If left plugged in, Windows will sprinkle stuff on the secondary drives that sort of link them. A back up may require you to do C: and D: for example. You may not be able to delete a file on D: because Windows has it locked. Weird stuff that is easy to avoid. After Windows is installed, plug the secondary drives in.
The initial boot drive configuration is giving me flashbacks to repair orders in PCBS. The OS is always installed on the HDD even if there's an SSD installed.
Yeah, I had a similar issue when my laptop's M.2 SSD broke, so this was a very familiar problem. Good thing the HDD could still be saved, even if for just a short time
CrystalDisk gives you a estimated life left on the left side, showed 70% left on that SSD. The HDD had that info cut off in the footage, but it should at least give you a decent idea of life left. I'd also look for any reallocated sectors on the HDD, that's a REALLY good indication of drive health.
Hey Greg u made a mistake. The same mistake I made. Having the EFI on the hard drive . In the longer term if he loses the drive he might have fresh install windows again. The other way around is to completely move the EFI partition before the drive dies. Using 3rd party software or diskpart.
But the windows won't boot without the EFI partition is what I wanted to say, In case the drive dies in the future we can assume that it can be sensitive and might lose even more data. Anyways wanted to share my thoughts on this. Edit. It's preferred to wipe the data on the installation process so that all the boot partition is on a single drive.
9:37 that POST is actually the VBIOS POST in action, some GPUs doesn't have them but the good ones have it, they work in low power situations like this one and can give you advice on what is wrong.
Nice, they don't even include those POST speakers with motherboards these days. I have them for all my builds from amazon. For me i like having that beep to let me know POST happened even if i don't have picture etc...
16:43 made me go 😵💫 use some proper disk management to delete the default windows partition you can't delete in windows disk manager 😉. I don't thing them existing will cause a problem but it's just a way to be asking for a problem later on.
Ny first guess was the power supply, but wow all because of the case beeper. I always fit those initially or provide one from my spares especially if the board doesn't have a Dr Debug LED readout. As seen in this episode, the traffic light diagnostic LED's can give false positives. In some cases the speaker can give beep codes that can narrow down the issue,but not if it is connected to the wrong pins!
Hi Greg, It's Sunday, and you are making my day. @1:16, good luck, Greg. If you need a Spanish translator, you should have no problem, as you live in Florida. Just go to a house that has new roofing being installed. @20:33, HHD Aug. 2013, Holy Cow!
in order to clean the drive, you should go into command prompt (in admin mode) and run "diskpart", then "list disk", then select the disk to clean and then "clean" the disk. that's how you get rid of those EFI partitions
Sometimes contact points in old PC PSU connectors gets dull with carbon, we can connect/disconnect the connector a few times to hopefully solve GPU related issue. Particularly when PC shuts itself down and GPU fans run at full speed with no display.
i do like seeing these videos with strange and wacky issues, my guess was it crashed a couple times or so and someone tried to use the speaker to debug. Its nice that the owners arent charged at all but at the same time it is nice to see some repairs that arent just throwing parts at the rig.
I like how u didn't bother to use diskman in cmd to remove that efi partition, it just looks like u glanced over the context menu and thought "oh, i cant delete this". U can do a override partition removal using diskman to remove protected partitions.
At the start of the video, i took a guess and thought it was cpu, saw it was a 3600X and thought it was yet another dead amd cpu. But a speaker connected in the wrong place was a refreshing surprise xD Always something new to learn from FoF :D Looking forward to the next video :D
I have a 4 tb storage drive that I use for video files that has been powered on for 62755 hours (or 7.16 years.) Second computer it was in. Was originally in my FX 8350. Everything is backed up but I don't think that age is necessarily an issue. Never a boot drive and likely mostly write to it a video file and then mostly leave it alone. The 2 TB would be useful for that as long as the own keeps backups.
15:40 - Correction. Windows power management settings are often set to spin down hard drives when not in use, this can lead to an extra count every time the drive is accessed. That being said for a nearly 11 year old drive that's an average of once per day... Also... you should probably figure out how diskpart works because leaving the EFI partition could cause issues, it's basically a rite of passage for IT
Ahhhh it wouldn't be a Greg show without the Power Strip not switched on trope !! ... Ya think by now he'd learn to check it before recoding starts ... lol
Yes, I've actually seen these plugged in to the correct spot and cause issues. I dont use them, although system diag beeps would be nice I can plug the speaker in as needed. I'm very surprised it didn't take out either or all the CPU, MB, RAM or Video card. Goes to show you that the hardware has come a long way from where an errand greasy potato chip bag would fry your PC setup due to static electricity.
The primary partition - 99% of the available storage - was cleaned. I couldn't delete the remaining, tiny partitions within Disk Manager. 100MB isn't much of an issue and didn't wanna fiddle with additional software to clear it.
It looked like you left the HDD and sata SSD connected while installing Windows, and that the efi partitions aren't on the nvme. By disconnecting them during installation, you ensure windows uses the nvme for everything.
There's a good chance that the 2TB drive has been "salvaged" from a PVR or similar. Over in the UK we have Sky TV and some boxes have 2TB drives which are great when you get them for free. The boxes switch off when not used and that could explain the power on count and the hours. I have just such a drive in my PC as a temporary data drive and it has 6 years and 127 days of uptime along with 12,289 power on counts. They're actually fairly reliable as they were designed for 24/7 use in set top boxes.
the power on count also goes up with system sleep and potentially when it enters deep sleep. Mine hit 1500 within the year and it’s a secondary drive that’s idles a lot.
I have had this issue with my latest pc.., had to disconnect the sata HD so my pc could even detect the M.2 ssd for windows installation....everything was good in the bios though , only problem was during windows setup menu
Greg, It looks like you left the UEFI partition on the HDD and some other partitions. This will cause problems. Here is a tip. Use diskpart instead. It is much more powerful and has the "clean" command to wipe all partitions and boot sector on the drives. Great videos as always.
After watching this video I downloaded Crystal Disk Info and holy, my laptop's HDD has almost 12 000 power on counts !! I've been daily using that laptop for 7 years. I recently finally upgraded to a proper PC with an SDD. Can't go back to that slow laptop now haha Great video as always ! :)
I had a pc not boot because i plugged the reset switch upside down. Definitely check your cables first when troubleshooting new builds or builds you've unplugged everything for.
Always install Windows with only 1 SSD drive then reconnect the rest after. You can also use Command Prompt to completely wipe data and initialize into a GPT partition.
If you think that drive is high hours, my old IDE drives that have run 24/7 for well over 15+ years would probably make you faint :D Guess what, they're still perfectly healthy with no bad sectors. Old mechanical drives can be a lot tougher than people give them credit for. I'd much rather trust a 5 year old drive with high hours over a new retail drive just out of the retail box. Especially if it is an enterprise class drive (the Toshiba here is not unfortunately). Still, if the old drive has a proven track record without bad sectors I'd trust it. New drives you just never know how good they are. I would definitely run a full surface read/write scan however not knowing the history of the drive. Sure, the old drive could fail. So can a new drive. The old drive actually has less chance of failure overall though. Either way, if it is important, back it up. Don't trust any drive will last no matter the age, brand, line of drives or type (SSD or Mechanical.) All have a chance of failure and you don't want to lose your important stuff.
The WD Reds spinning away in my NAS agree with you. Just sitting there chilling away and mirrored so if one fails I can hopefully swap it out before the other one does and save me finding where I put the backups.
I've got NAS drives that have been on for over 7 years straight now. A couple of the batch have bit the dust, but most of them are still trucking. The cooling in that case isn't great either.
Btw I've been following your channel for a every long time now and this is the first time in like 3 months I get you on my feed for some reason, I don't know what the hell is going on with RUclips algorithm but I guess the only way to get notified about channels I like is by turning on notifications...
at 1 mil subs Greg should shave his head
I'll be the baldest mf you've ever seen for 1M subs.
@@GregSalazar a wise man once said : "PG brother."
@@GregSalazar what eyebrows too? lol
@@GregSalazar Can I shave your head?
@@GregSalazar Crystaldisk is broken on windows 10 Microsoft wont let me use it
The fact that he just lived with windows being in Spanish despite him not knowing it is utterly insane to me
It's so easy to Google how to change the language too😂. Younger people don't know how to do things for themselves anymore.
@@AshtonCoolman 100% facts
@@AshtonCoolmanThey don't know the dread of playing Pokemon without Google
@@AshtonCoolman Some OE copies of Windows just come in one default language that's not possible to change. In this case, no choice but to use another key and do a fresh install if not happy with the default language.
I have been an IT professional for over 25 years and I literally never saw a speaker plugged in like that, definitely a new one on me.
I dont even understand the logical purpose of plugging in something like this.
@@knifeuu777 Debugging issues with beep codes which computers still emit
Nor have I. Almost nobody plugs in a speaker at all anymore. Motherboards don't include them anymore. I keep a couple around for diagnoses.
Haven't even seen a speaker for 15 years, but I guess that's what can happen when people don't read the manual and just plug things in randomly
especially when the speaker port on the motherboard says in giant letters speaker lol. but hey I get it, new to tech and such.
Greg, NEVER install windows with more than one storage drive installed (because windows then chooses to put EFI partition on a random drive), now this poor souls has EFI partition on HDD, so when he removes the HDD, or when it dies, the whole PC will not boot anymore.
Noted for the future and will remedy this for the owner should the problem arise.
I doubt that. I've been installing Windows in my system with multiple drives and the EFI is always on the main drive. Maybe because I make sure the other drives don't have other partitions. I also use diskpart to wipe any remaining partitions in other drives.
Maybe that's what I did. I bought an NVME M.2 SSD and installed Windows on it while having other storage devices installed. I was going to take two of the SSD's out since I don't use them but when I remove them and boot up the PC I get an error saying Windows isn't installed. Maybe part of the Windows install got put on one of the SSD's.
that litterally never happened to me even once in 25 years
Based on the orientation that you gave, that jumper was acting as a jumper to 3 positve terminals. The reason the CPU light was tripped was likely because of the voltage irregularity. Kinda nuts that it didn't fry the board, but I guess that's what those fail safes are for, to keep the system from actually booting and drawing real power that would definitely fry the board. Good catch!
The speaker has two wires only.
@@johnt.848 two actually functional wires, the other two are for grounding
I agree, board probably just seeing something weird with the power and throwing an error but ultimately not hurting it.
This is why you don't eyeball while building your PC. Not all pins operate the same. GGs.
Even PSU pinouts on the SUPPLY side of a power supply aren't standard across even the same brand. That's why PSU manufacturers always tell users NOT to interchange cables.
Just a quick note greg, the boot EFI partition is still on the HDD and if the HDD is removed the Windows wont boot. Probably best to delete all partitions from windows install menu so that the windows EFI partition is created in SSD as well.
I think so too. I don't know why Microsoft programmer think that the EFI partition has to be made on another drive than the OS itself. To me that is just plain stupid. Only connect the drive you want to install Windows on. Install Win10. Disconnect that drive, and connect the drive you want to install Win11 on. After install you can connect all drives. No problems with having your EFI partition on another disk, so when you have to replace a drive you won't run into any problems.
I reacted to this as well. I hope he did do a clean wipe of all drives and installed a blank Windows 10/11 so the EFI is correct.
my first though when he reinstalled. sometimes windows installer trys to be smart and installs bootloader not on the drive you chose but the one already existing or set as first priority in bios/uefi.
I ALWAYS remove any secondary drives when installing windows.
Shoutout from the Philippines. I love watching your videos on PC repairs. A future reference.
I appreciate the support!
I love this series. It's fun to guess what's going to happen, and then be surprised at weird random things, like a speaker being plugged in to the wrong pins! I did not see that coming!
16:23 Oooo Greg I hope you did a proper windows reinstall (and it looks like you did in 19:35), since it looks like when you installed Windows on the m.2, Windows placed the boot partition (the EFI partition) onto one of the existing drives (most likely the Toshiba hard drive). This has been a cause of major pain back when I was helping friends out with upgrading their computer w/ a small SSD as a boot drive, and even though it shouldn’t affect functionality, it will if the drive w/ the EFI partition fails or gets removed. I usually wipe the drives completely during Windows install so that there’s no lingering EFI partitions around, or if the old data is important, just unplug the drive during Windows installation
Every episode of Fix or Flop has either a reoccurring theme or just something completely unexpected, which is why I love this series
Those are leftover partitions from previous windows installations, in order to remove them you need to use DISKPART utility
Weird that in disk manager you can't delete it, only way is in windows installer. You bet when the owner removes/replaces the drive the windows won't boot.
oof, i've had similar issues with that before. I gotten myself a new m.2 drive (had to use m.2 to pcie adapter cuz mobo was old) but for some odd reason it kept putting the bootloader into my older 2.5 inch ssd instead of the new m.2 one
i was so confused as to why i kept getting a bsod at the bootloader saying it couldn't find its efi lmao
Also I noted that the partition E wasn't set up correctly. There was a small 900MB partition that wasn't merged with the main one, and of course that random EFI partition. Better to use something like Partition Wizard to clear everything up.
I often recommend that you don't even connect the 2nd drive until the OS is installed on the primary disk. Avoids this issue completely.
should go into Diskpart and do a clean on that old spinner. Kill all the partitions.
The ghost is back with that damn power strip
Great job...not too long i was able to help diagnose my friends pc thanks to u...after he upgraded from 5600x to 5800x3d...pc wouldn't post or power on...cant really remember...since it was just the CPU he changed...told him take out new CPU n check if the pins are bent...bingo bent pins...he straightened them but it still didn't fix the problem...told him i believe ur cpu is dead after he put his original CPU back in n everything worked as normal...he took it back for a new CPU...installed it...n his PC has been running fine...the work u do definitely teaches us ways we can self diagnose our pcs before having to kick out alotta money to computer repair shops
Just a tip Greg. When cleaning drives. Please use command prompt and use diskpart to completely remove the remaining disk partitions. The secondary drives don't need those partitions. Only the main drive needs it. I have multiple drives in my system and it's better for drive performance.
Still like seeing there are still new problems in each episode. ive been building PCs since the windows 95 days. I started as a kid and taught myself hardware and software. These videos are good for people that are advanced in building computers and new builders alike! Keep up the great work Greg. ❤
Woulda loaded Win 10 on the SSD and called it a day. But giving him a new 1TB M.2 was a very nice thing to do. You are a very generous person.
Using the screen capture was so much nicer than filming the portable monitor! Appreciate y’all’s work!
Based on what you were seeing it was grey/rebooting right after login, which would be when the windows music happens. So as originally connected that would be sending voltage out that + speaker to the + reboot. You nailed its cause perfectly.
should have deleted the partitions in CMD so that you can get the full space, nice catch with the speaker
Yeah, I was confused that he didn't do that.
he could repartition it in disk manager as well but on old disk that 960mb could be error point excluded by someone i did that on one fo my disk back in a day and it was runing at least 5 years fine (after that i upgraded to more storage)
it is better to clean disks in diskpart from cmd. it makes it easier to clean all of the partitions.
I'll be using it from now on thanks to your comments :-)
@trick0502 Thanks for sharing this great tip!
Always love these!
I like these videos. Fix or Flop is a good idea. Keep it up.
Thanks! Will do!
Hey Greg! Just wanted to thank you for these Fix or Flop videos. I was able to diagnose a bad power supply in my system thanks to your troubleshooting methods. I don't live in Florida so naturally I don't qualify to have you fix it for me but your videos are the next best thing!
Why not use diskpart to do a complete clean of the drives, then build new partitions in Disk Manager? It'd get rid of the bad EFI partitions that you don't need any longer on the old drives and would be educational to those that watch these.
Are you keep the EFI system partition on HDD? So if it dies or the owner throws it away, he will immediately get a brick. Good job!
Always great watching these
Keep doing these. Love em. I can't tell you how many times Ive had issues with my own PC and I come back to your videos and usually you diagnose the same problem I have. Very helpful
Great find for the troubles with that speaker. One advice - you can use diskpart in cmd in windows to clear off all the previous partitions of the drives. (You can even do it during the windows installation > shift + f10 > diskpart > list disk > select disk 0/1/2 whatever you want > clean).
For that hard drive in order to remove those extra partitions load up diskpart, select disk x, clean. That will fully wipe the drive to add a full partition
My 120G drive from 2008 finally bit the dust last week. It will be sadly missed.
I'm always here for my guy Gregg fixing PCs.
I learn something new every single time I watch these!!! I've never seen a speaker like that.
That little speaker was definitely causing an issue and well done in finding that! That was a tough one! Things plugged in wrong are some of the most difficult to find because of the lack of familiarity with the system. Compound that with a completely unrelated problem made it even more difficult! Well done Greg! 70,000 plus hours on a HDD!!! That's crazy! Only goes to show how well things were made back in the day.
If you're not having a lucky day, then you are good at this sort of diagnostic work. I always enjoy your work!
I appreciate it!
16:43 yo I see a big mistake you did there
If the Windows installer detects an existing EFI partition on any internal media it will just install the bootloader on that internal drive containing the aforementioned EFI partition no matter what drive the actual windows install will reside on
So if the drive dies, gets disconnected or fully wiped the windows install on the other drive will no longer boot...
@GregSalazar great video as always. Learned a few new things from you AND the experienced viewers in the comments! Many thanks to all of you! Also nice upgrade. Exactly what the system was missing with these big installation sizes of some games these days. Keep going Greg 💯
I just love this troubleshooting videos you make Mr.ScienceStudio dude, learn so much from this.
This was a great one! I love these types that make you think and learn! Great video!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Just read the letter at the beginning. I wish more people would just start with a new Windows 11 boot USB downloaded from Microsoft. For free. I recommend this because the "restore" option takes forever compared to a fresh install, and always leaves junk behind too. The most it could cost is a USB drive and a possibly a spare SSD to avoid erasing yours. Looking forward to seeing what it is.
That is for sure a better option provided one has another working PC. If not then the options are limited especially when the user is not tech savvy.
Nice catch! Never skip the basics.
So excited to see a new Fix or Flop! I've been itching for a new one every time I see a video posted. I love this series!
Wow, I would not guess that issue. Nice catch! Two tips: 1: in the future unplug other drives to avoid "dual boot", you can fix it later with commands, but it's a hassle, 2: to wipe a drive that had windows on it, use diskpart in the command line. use diskpart list, then select disk (number) and then command clean. It will wipe out "locked" gpt drive.
I've been a subscriber for years, and I have to say that Raymond is an awesome sidekick to Greg!
thank you for fixing my pc i am grateful that you can fix it and it is on a youtube channel
Seems to me that windows was loaded on the ssd to start, then I bet something happened to windows; and windows recovery came up. The owner or recovery environment inadvertently moved the installation to the hdd, and something went wonky with recovery. The speaker being plugged in like that left the motherboard in constant reset state, so the bios wasn't finishing the post process; giving the weird boot phase and further corrupting windows. Computers can be weird this way, doesn't matter if older or newer, just Greg managed to diagnose, troubleshoot, and fix these little issues making the system work the way it should; awesome job!!
Tip: When I install Windows I have learned it is best to unplug or remove all of your drives, HDD, SSD, M.2 - except for your C: drive. Install Windows with just 1 drive in the system. If left plugged in, Windows will sprinkle stuff on the secondary drives that sort of link them. A back up may require you to do C: and D: for example. You may not be able to delete a file on D: because Windows has it locked. Weird stuff that is easy to avoid. After Windows is installed, plug the secondary drives in.
Thanks!
The initial boot drive configuration is giving me flashbacks to repair orders in PCBS. The OS is always installed on the HDD even if there's an SSD installed.
Yeah, I had a similar issue when my laptop's M.2 SSD broke, so this was a very familiar problem. Good thing the HDD could still be saved, even if for just a short time
CrystalDisk gives you a estimated life left on the left side, showed 70% left on that SSD. The HDD had that info cut off in the footage, but it should at least give you a decent idea of life left. I'd also look for any reallocated sectors on the HDD, that's a REALLY good indication of drive health.
Hey Greg u made a mistake. The same mistake I made. Having the EFI on the hard drive . In the longer term if he loses the drive he might have fresh install windows again. The other way around is to completely move the EFI partition before the drive dies. Using 3rd party software or diskpart.
? This wasn't my PC. We _corrected_ the mistake, but didn't make it ourselves.
But the windows won't boot without the EFI partition is what I wanted to say, In case the drive dies in the future we can assume that it can be sensitive and might lose even more data. Anyways wanted to share my thoughts on this.
Edit. It's preferred to wipe the data on the installation process so that all the boot partition is on a single drive.
I always enjoy your videos. Of course the best part is seeing Raymond.
9:37 that POST is actually the VBIOS POST in action, some GPUs doesn't have them but the good ones have it, they work in low power situations like this one and can give you advice on what is wrong.
Great you could help his little brother.
Nice, they don't even include those POST speakers with motherboards these days. I have them for all my builds from amazon. For me i like having that beep to let me know POST happened even if i don't have picture etc...
Very interesting video. Speaker issue and Windows auto repair was something new to the issue list. 🤔
For every computer Greg fixes, his forhead grows a bit.
16:43 made me go 😵💫 use some proper disk management to delete the default windows partition you can't delete in windows disk manager 😉. I don't thing them existing will cause a problem but it's just a way to be asking for a problem later on.
Windows is enough, ie WIndows installation media. CMD, DISKPART, SELECT DISK n, CLEAN. It can be done in Windows PE with shift+F10.
Ny first guess was the power supply, but wow all because of the case beeper. I always fit those initially or provide one from my spares especially if the board doesn't have a Dr Debug LED readout. As seen in this episode, the traffic light diagnostic LED's can give false positives. In some cases the speaker can give beep codes that can narrow down the issue,but not if it is connected to the wrong pins!
Hi Greg, It's Sunday, and you are making my day. @1:16, good luck, Greg. If you need a Spanish translator, you should have no problem, as you live in Florida. Just go to a house that has new roofing being installed. @20:33, HHD Aug. 2013, Holy Cow!
I think it would be awesome to watch Greg do a fix or flop video live.
Truly my favourite series to watch on YT!
Very nice catch on that speaker hahahaha. Easy to miss, for sure.
So informative this series .
Keep up the great work mate 👍👍
in order to clean the drive, you should go into command prompt (in admin mode) and run "diskpart", then "list disk", then select the disk to clean and then "clean" the disk. that's how you get rid of those EFI partitions
That harddrive was super into Bayblade 24/7 "Spinning it out at the speed of sound".
Sometimes contact points in old PC PSU connectors gets dull with carbon, we can connect/disconnect the connector a few times to hopefully solve GPU related issue. Particularly when PC shuts itself down and GPU fans run at full speed with no display.
i do like seeing these videos with strange and wacky issues, my guess was it crashed a couple times or so and someone tried to use the speaker to debug. Its nice that the owners arent charged at all but at the same time it is nice to see some repairs that arent just throwing parts at the rig.
Have always enjoyed your content. Very entertaining and funny, and I'm always learning. Much luv from TN!
Thanx for the video. These videos should be on HGTV as Computer Flip or Flop 🙂
I like how u didn't bother to use diskman in cmd to remove that efi partition, it just looks like u glanced over the context menu and thought "oh, i cant delete this". U can do a override partition removal using diskman to remove protected partitions.
As always an awesome job! love the channel!
At the start of the video, i took a guess and thought it was cpu, saw it was a 3600X and thought it was yet another dead amd cpu.
But a speaker connected in the wrong place was a refreshing surprise xD
Always something new to learn from FoF :D
Looking forward to the next video :D
Very unexpected that was the issue but hey learned something new so pretty happy.
I have a 4 tb storage drive that I use for video files that has been powered on for 62755 hours (or 7.16 years.) Second computer it was in. Was originally in my FX 8350. Everything is backed up but I don't think that age is necessarily an issue. Never a boot drive and likely mostly write to it a video file and then mostly leave it alone. The 2 TB would be useful for that as long as the own keeps backups.
Love the twist to every episode
Greg Salazar - Just in time to fix me up with my fix for Fix or Flop
Looking forward to the next one as always, keep them coming.
15:40 - Correction. Windows power management settings are often set to spin down hard drives when not in use, this can lead to an extra count every time the drive is accessed. That being said for a nearly 11 year old drive that's an average of once per day...
Also... you should probably figure out how diskpart works because leaving the EFI partition could cause issues, it's basically a rite of passage for IT
Ahhhh it wouldn't be a Greg show without the Power Strip not switched on trope !! ...
Ya think by now he'd learn to check it before recoding starts ... lol
Yes, I've actually seen these plugged in to the correct spot and cause issues. I dont use them, although system diag beeps would be nice I can plug the speaker in as needed. I'm very surprised it didn't take out either or all the CPU, MB, RAM or Video card. Goes to show you that the hardware has come a long way from where an errand greasy potato chip bag would fry your PC setup due to static electricity.
16:30
Why didn't you clean all partitions with diskpart?
The primary partition - 99% of the available storage - was cleaned. I couldn't delete the remaining, tiny partitions within Disk Manager. 100MB isn't much of an issue and didn't wanna fiddle with additional software to clear it.
@@GregSalazar diskpart (usage: "delete partition override) is part of Windows. Not saying you did a bad job though :)
@@GregSalazar Use command prompt Greg. Knowledge is power.
It looked like you left the HDD and sata SSD connected while installing Windows, and that the efi partitions aren't on the nvme.
By disconnecting them during installation, you ensure windows uses the nvme for everything.
There's a good chance that the 2TB drive has been "salvaged" from a PVR or similar.
Over in the UK we have Sky TV and some boxes have 2TB drives which are great when you get them for free.
The boxes switch off when not used and that could explain the power on count and the hours.
I have just such a drive in my PC as a temporary data drive and it has 6 years and 127 days of uptime along with 12,289 power on counts.
They're actually fairly reliable as they were designed for 24/7 use in set top boxes.
the power on count also goes up with system sleep and potentially when it enters deep sleep. Mine hit 1500 within the year and it’s a secondary drive that’s idles a lot.
I have had this issue with my latest pc.., had to disconnect the sata HD so my pc could even detect the M.2 ssd for windows installation....everything was good in the bios though , only problem was during windows setup menu
Whoa, that was a sneaky one - well spotted!
Greg,
It looks like you left the UEFI partition on the HDD and some other partitions. This will cause problems.
Here is a tip. Use diskpart instead. It is much more powerful and has the "clean" command to wipe all partitions and boot sector on the drives.
Great videos as always.
After watching this video I downloaded Crystal Disk Info and holy, my laptop's HDD has almost 12 000 power on counts !!
I've been daily using that laptop for 7 years. I recently finally upgraded to a proper PC with an SDD. Can't go back to that slow laptop now haha
Great video as always ! :)
3:20 the mysterious power button ghost is in the new house!
I had a pc not boot because i plugged the reset switch upside down. Definitely check your cables first when troubleshooting new builds or builds you've unplugged everything for.
My suggestion: Use disk part for cleaning/ formatting any drive.
Always install Windows with only 1 SSD drive then reconnect the rest after.
You can also use Command Prompt to completely wipe data and initialize into a GPT partition.
If you think that drive is high hours, my old IDE drives that have run 24/7 for well over 15+ years would probably make you faint :D Guess what, they're still perfectly healthy with no bad sectors. Old mechanical drives can be a lot tougher than people give them credit for. I'd much rather trust a 5 year old drive with high hours over a new retail drive just out of the retail box. Especially if it is an enterprise class drive (the Toshiba here is not unfortunately). Still, if the old drive has a proven track record without bad sectors I'd trust it. New drives you just never know how good they are. I would definitely run a full surface read/write scan however not knowing the history of the drive. Sure, the old drive could fail. So can a new drive. The old drive actually has less chance of failure overall though. Either way, if it is important, back it up. Don't trust any drive will last no matter the age, brand, line of drives or type (SSD or Mechanical.) All have a chance of failure and you don't want to lose your important stuff.
The WD Reds spinning away in my NAS agree with you. Just sitting there chilling away and mirrored so if one fails I can hopefully swap it out before the other one does and save me finding where I put the backups.
Nice find on the speaker!
I've got NAS drives that have been on for over 7 years straight now. A couple of the batch have bit the dust, but most of them are still trucking. The cooling in that case isn't great either.
Btw I've been following your channel for a every long time now and this is the first time in like 3 months I get you on my feed for some reason, I don't know what the hell is going on with RUclips algorithm but I guess the only way to get notified about channels I like is by turning on notifications...
Even when plugged at the right pins it only takes a bit of smoke to make you care about polarity. Speaker + , - matters.
you should use a tool like mini tool to delete all of the smaller partitions, I use the tool at work. It is pretty powerful
that toshiba drive still running like a champ after 8 years, might have to get me a couple for bulk storage
good luck you better hurry as the company filed for bankruptcy