this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2026
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My computer died so I'm playing troubleshooting motherboard error lights simulator
What hardware, what lights?
wall of text about pc issues
My mobo has error lights and my cpu light was on and it wouldn't boot. When i reset the bios it worked and things were fine for a few days. The problem happened again yesterday so i popped the cmos battery out thinking it would work again. Now it cycles to the BOOT light or hangs on CPU. I figured my ancient power supply was the issue, oldest part on the machine, but i just replaced it and the same issues exist.I got it to boot to windows exactly one time since this recent issue. When i had it running it was incredibly sluggish, like 5 full seconds to open the start menu
While it was running, i ran a cpu benchmark and was looking at the resource monitor but i don't really know enough to know what to look for. The resource monitor showed nothing was overloaded or close to 100% usage
Now i can't get anything to display on my monitor so I can't boot into the bios settings or anything
It feels like it has to be the cpu. Removing either stick of ram doesn't help and i ran a memtest recently, the gpu hasn't shown any signs of trouble, and the new power supply has 100w higher capacity. If the mobo had a short i figure it wouldn't be so responsive nor would the fans be operating normally
My first order assumption, not knowing what CPU or motherboard we're talking about here, is "CPUs don't go bad, motherboards go bad."
Are you hooking up your monitor to a video card, or to onboard graphics? Does your CPU even have onboard graphics?
Whenever i had a mobo go bad it just ceased function... could it really be just a short?
Thing is, there are just so many more things that can go wrong on a motherboard. Short, weakened solder joint opened by thermal cycling, bad cap, any number of things to let the magic smoke out, all of which can cause different weird behavior. A CPU is just one (or two in your case) little bits of silicon, if it passes factory inspection and binning, it's generally just good.
That hardware is fairly new to be failing at all, though. I can't find any such thing as a gigabyte b550 gen 3 motherboard, the only Gigabyte B550 board I can find with a 3 in the name is the B550 AORUS ELITE AX V3, is that what you're talking about?
Uhhhhh
https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/B550-GAMING-GEN3
This one and yeah i bought it in 2024
Okay, totally different brand. Upshot, MSI's manual seems more helpful than Gigabyte's was anyway.
The BOOT light indicates something wrong with the drive your OS is on. That also fits with Windows being really sluggish. What happens if you try to boot it without that drive attached?
I'll give it a shot after work tomorrow, thanks.
For the record, if i don't reset the bios by popping the CMOS battery and power cable for 5 mins, it hangs on the CPU light. Resetting the bios this way will make the next time i power it on go past the cpu light but hang on boot
Have you tried shorting the Clear CMOS jumper? (explained on page 37 of the motherboard manual:
You also might want to try updating your BIOS.
Yeah flashing the bios is hapening before i purchase anything else. I don't have a jumper cap and i didn't feel comfortable tying a wire to it lol but i was aware of the jbat1
A screwdriver is the usual tool for shorting motherboard jumpers. (entirely serious, not kidding)
Also fyi i very much appreciate your help troubleshooting this
No problem, this is fun for me. Do report back, don't leave me in suspense.
Couldn't acquire a flash drive for the bios thingy but powering on without the boot drive still results in the CPU light hang and resetting the bios isn't helping.
Current solution is I am using my wife's steam deck with a non-functional screen hooked up to a monitor and keyboard and mouse
My current guess as to what happened is that your boot drive failed and windows fucked up your bios somehow on its way out
Windows does like to do funny pranks like that, doesn't it?
It sure does. Your motherboard should be able to flash a new bios without being able to boot into its current one with the flash bios button on the back and a flashdrive.
yeah I'm gonna try to rustle up a drive tomorrow but the steam deck can basically run everything I care to play anyway
I will, just in bed rn trying to become sleepy
No onboard graphics. The cpu is amd ryzen 5 5600 the mobo is gigabyte b550 gen 3 am4