PC refuses to restart after installing Komplete Audio 6 Interface - Help urgently required!

[Jabba1]

Of all the days that this chooses to happen (just about to start work on what for me is a major project, full time)... severely p*ssed off doesnt even begin to describe it.

Dunno if anyone is aware of any issues with this interface or not - have installed it, as per the CD, nothing appeared to be wrong with the PC at all, it fired up this morning perfectly OK. Got to the part where it says you must restart the computer for the changes to take effect... then... nothing. Refuses absolutely, totally point blank to restart. I have pulled every single USB connection from the PC, powered it off, powered it on and.... nothing. Does. Not. Want. To. Know.

PC is a Dell Precision 390 running Win 7 X64 Ultimate, 8GB RAM, and has previously been utterly rock solid and completely problem free. Is anyone aware of any issues with this particular driver for NI. Komplete Audio 6 at all, or have any ideas how I can get this sh*gging computer to restart?

Or is it a case of extract the hard drives from the machine, throw it in the bin and start yet again by opening the wallet??

**And if anyone says "yeah, go buy a Mac".... dont tempt me. I' ve never been closer to doing so!

Any help or nudges in the right direction would be very gratefully recieved!

[xoshy]

Not sure if it's just me, but I didn't quite get what's happening with your PC exactly.

Does the computer not turning off anymore (as it seems to sound when you say "restart)? Does it simply don't turn on anymore? Does it turns on but the Windows doesn't? The Windows doesn't complete to load? Or is it just the installer that don't work?

Taking a head start: if it's just the installer, you must download it from the manufacturer's site instead of the CD (I always do this, since it's likely to have some software update ahead of the bundled CD)

If you could give more info about the issue it might help to know what's going on.

[Jabba1]

My apologies, frustration was kinda boiling over at the time..

Whats happened is it did the shut down part of the restart OK, but then refuses to come back to life. I'm not even getting as far as the BIOS coming up. Its almost as if the MBR has been wiped, but if that was the case, I would have expected at least the BIOS to have started and for the system to have said "Invalid or no system disk present" inviting me to press the any key to continue... but... nothing. No scrunching or any other sound present from any of the disks, just, nothing. Power supply appears to work and the daft thing is, prior to popping in the CD for Komplete Audio 6 this morning, it fired up OK. It would lead me to believe that something in this installation of this driver has nuked the PC, but I would have thought that such a thing would not really be possible in this day and age... would it?

[xoshy]

Oh, then the thing is worse than I've imagined.

AFAIK it's unlikely that a driver for a USB device would "broke" the bios in any way. It might be a weird coincidence or a sum of factors.

If you don't have some computer knowledge, go to tech support since there's no "dummy way" to fix this kind of issue.

If you have confidence to open up your PC (and can tell what's inside it), I'd recommend a CMOS reset for start. It'll reset the BIOS to its standard values. You may or may not have to change some configs in the BIOS setup then, so you kind of have to understand what you're doing.

And I recommend to check this link, where it shows some troubleshoots at your issue.

Hope it helped.

[Jabba1]

Thanks for that, hadnt thought of it. Did try it but unfortunately has made no difference. Have solicited some other professional opinions by phone and theres an awful lot of sucking between teeth going on, so... I think this is the bit where the doctor walks into the patient and says "I've got some bad news...."

[BJG145]

So...no BIOS display at all. And no activity on the disk light...? Definitely the PC and not the monitor...? And you've tried taking the battery out...? If you have more than one stick of RAM it might be worth removing one at a time.

[Pete Kaine]

It would lead me to believe that something in this installation of this driver has nuked the PC, but I would have thought that such a thing would not really be possible in this day and age... would it?

No, it's not possible.

The part where you see it saying "now starting windows" is where the drivers are loaded. Prior to that in reverse order the mbr is called upon (or whatever they call it now) before that the board checks it's hardware, before that mem check, and before that post/cmos call.

Your not getting as far as the post it's a physical problem. You can pull the battery on the board with the mains lead out for 5 mins to clear the bios as a first check, but past that something has died.

I wouldn't rule out the PSU, I've seen all the fans on a board spin up before, with all the lights on and the psu's still been shagged (technical phrase that one) on one of the low load voltage lines.

The pulling the memory trick above is worth a punt as well but knowing what they put in a Dell psu wise, and what they put in memory wise my money would be on the PSU personally.

Past that you (or someone you rope into it) need to start swapping bit's in and out to establish what's gone down the swanny.

Software of the kind you were installing can't impact outside of windows through, so it's not the card. The interface may have pulled more from the USB port than was available (how many devices you have plugged in?) but if that was a case it's a poorly designed board/spec'd psu rather than the interface itself.

[The Elf]

Of all the days that this chooses to happen (just about to start work on what for me is a major project, full time)...

So, knowing this, you made a full system image backup before undertaking any major changes to your PC so you could recover in minutes if it all went horribly wrong, didn't you? Didn't you?

Fingers crossed for you...

[Richie Royale]

Did you have to move the computer to do the install? You may have knocked or jostled something out of place. Is the power cable firmly seated and have you checked it is working in another piece of equipment? It might be something trivial!

[JMulvale]

Sounds like a HDD fail to me, that's the symptoms I had. Brand new laptop, 2 weeks in after installing something it failed to start, not even get past the BIOS. I put my ear to the laptop where the drive was and it was making a scraping sound. Could just be a coincidence, or installing a huge sample pack uncovered some physical damage to the drive and knackered the head. I hope it's not of course, and I hope you have a backup. Good luck.

[OneWorld]

Sounds like a HDD fail to me, that's the symptoms I had. Brand new laptop, 2 weeks in after installing something it failed to start, not even get past the BIOS. I put my ear to the laptop where the drive was and it was making a scraping sound. Could just be a coincidence, or installing a huge sample pack uncovered some physical damage to the drive and knackered the head. I hope it's not of course, and I hope you have a backup. Good luck.

You can get to the bios without a drive being installed.

As mentioned by P Kane, this is looking a lot like power failure, it just so happened when yo installed the software.

And as another poster mentioned, you did do backup? I could have been really horrid here and said do yo want to pass the work over to me LOL

But backup is EEEEEEsential!!! Acronis TrueImage and me are joined at the hip.

And if anyone does mention getting a Mac, look at the thread regarding Lion playing up - or hardware dropping dead. I finally retired an old Pentium P4 that was something like 8 years and was as trusty as old boots, except when the power supply went pop one day, and yes the fans spun up, but that is as far as it got. It too happened close to adding something new to the PC so I spent days trying to get it to come back alive, until after going round and round in circles (Quote Einstein - If you keep going back to a problem and coming to a different conclusion each time, then the question is wrong!) I finally concluded, it can't be but it must be - power supply! and within 5 mins of fitting a new PS, I was logging in again.

ANother clue as to whether it is the power supply - do you get any beep codes, if not, then it obviously isn't getting as far as loading the bios

And as Ritchie says - check every single connection methodically, even if it means pulling out the PC from under the bench or where ever, getting it under a good bench lamp and make sure everything is seated properly and connected as well

[Ojustaboo]

I've had this happen a few times over the years.

It appears the PC is dead and nothing seems to fix it, even a BIOS reset.

What did work was pulling the plug and leaving it unplugged for 5 min.

I unplug the cable, then press the PC power button (not saying you need to, just what I do), wait 5 mins, plug power cable back in, turn it on and it works.

I have a Gigabyte X58 DS4 motherboard, it happens around once every 3 - 6 months, haven't a clue why, now if it does, I don't even bother resetting the BIOS, I just unplug the cable as described above. When I plug it back on and power on the BIOS has reset to default values automatically, hence I need to enter date and time, set disks to correct mode, set up any other stuff I need.

Hope that helps

Joe

[Folderol]

This is a long shot...
Do you have a spare PSU at all - I know Dell kit can be non-standard in many respects but hopefully the MB connectors are sane.

Failing that, do you have a test meter and can you check the +5V line? (red to black).

The USB power feed is supposed to be protected but it's just possible that something went wrong there and partially killed the PSU.

Finally, there is often a tiny LED somewhere on the MB that is always on if power is getting in.

P.S.
Fan running does not mean PSU is OK.

[Jabba1]

Thanks chaps for all your inputs. Some of which I'd tried, pulling the CMOS battery, etc, and yes, I've got a copy of Acronis and yes, the most recent backup was the last time the system was used about three weeks ago. Dont have a test meter, I'm afraid, or a spare Dell PSU. And yep, the green LED light on the MB was illuminated as well.

Considering it was an ex-corporate that was 2 years old when I bought it and I've had it for the best part of two years, I guess something was likely to go *pop* at some point anyway. Being determined to get this project done in the alloted timescale, and also finding that with specialist providers of DAW PC's taking between 5 and 14 working days to build to order (which I understand the reasoning behind), plus losing another 2 days to reinstalling and reauthorising everything, I've decided to go down the IMac route instead. Had things not been so time sensitive, the decision may have turned out different.

Thanks for all your input guys

[Ojustaboo]

Just want to point out something in my earlier post that isn't clear. When I say pull the plug, I mean physically unplug the power cord from the PC and waiting 5 mins.

Simply powering down and turning the switch off on the PC power supply didn't work.

Best

Joe

[ezza]

I've had this happen a few times over the years.

It appears the PC is dead and nothing seems to fix it, even a BIOS reset.

What did work was pulling the plug and leaving it unplugged for 5 min.

I unplug the cable, then press the PC power button (not saying you need to, just what I do), wait 5 mins, plug power cable back in, turn it on and it works.

I have a Gigabyte X58 DS4 motherboard, it happens around once every 3 - 6 months, haven't a clue why, now if it does, I don't even bother resetting the BIOS, I just unplug the cable as described above. When I plug it back on and power on the BIOS has reset to default values automatically, hence I need to enter date and time, set disks to correct mode, set up any other stuff I need.

Hope that helps

Joe

I had this problem with a Gigabyte x58a mobo. It was the PSU...

/erol

[Ojustaboo]

Thanks

if the problem starts occurring more frequently, I will look at the power supply.

One I have is quite high end (not that that means it cant fail of course), I have a

Tagan TG700-U25 700W ATX2.0 Dual Engine silent sli

best

Joe

[Pete Kaine]

The "unplug for 5 mins" thing to reset the PSU. It's a feature of one of the protection circuits (AFAIK) like a trip on a fuse box. Possible something spiked it whilst shutting down previously, I've noticed a few of the better high end units doing it for safety.

[DaveFry]

If you left the install CD in the drive take a paper clip , straighten it out and use it to open the drive tray by pushing it in the little hole by the tray open/close button . Remove CD , close tray and try again .
- Just an idea ......

[Ojustaboo]

The "unplug for 5 mins" thing to reset the PSU. It's a feature of one of the protection circuits (AFAIK) like a trip on a fuse box. Possible something spiked it whilst shutting down previously, I've noticed a few of the better high end units doing it for safety.

Ah, many thanks.

best

Joe