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Technology Tap
Technology Tap
A+ Fundamentals: Boot to Brains Chapter 4
A dead PC at the worst moment is a gut punch—unless you have a roadmap. We walk through the exact thinking that turns “no lights, no fans, no display” into a calm, step‑by‑step recovery, starting where every system truly begins: firmware. BIOS and UEFI aren’t trivia; they decide how your machine discovers drives, validates bootloaders, and applies security like Secure Boot and TPM. That’s why a simple post‑update check of boot order, storage mode, and firmware toggles can rescue a lab full of “no boot device” errors in minutes.
From there, we get brutally honest about power. PSUs age, rails sag, and idle tests lie. You’ll learn the outside‑in “power ladder,” why a line‑interactive UPS prevents ghost errors, and how unstable XMP profiles masquerade as OS problems. We demystify boot and drive failures—wrong boot entries, NVMe lane conflicts, cloning driver mismatches—and show how SMART data, free space, cooling, and firmware updates revive sluggish SSDs. Then we cut through RAID mythology: 0 for speed, 1 for uptime, 5 for read‑heavy with risk, 6 for double‑parity safety, and 10 for fast resilience. And we repeat the rule that saves careers: RAID is not backup. Verify restores, keep copies offsite or offline, and schedule tests before disaster strikes.
Video issues get the practical treatment too. No display? Check inputs and connect to the discrete GPU, not the motherboard. Blurry or artifacting under load? Validate refresh rates, cables, thermals, and PSU capacity. We close with a field checklist and a case study where a quality PSU upgrade stabilized 3D renders instantly—proof that systems thinking beats screen-chasing every time. If you want a technician’s mindset—evidence over assumptions, one variable at a time—this guide will sharpen your process and speed your fixes.
If this helped you think like a tech, follow the show, share it with a teammate who’s on call this week, and leave a quick review so more builders and troubleshooters can find it.
Interviews with Tech Leaders and insights on the latest emerging technology trends.
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Art By Sarah/Desmond
Music by Joakim Karud
Little chacha Productions
Juan Rodriguez can be reached at
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And welcome to Technology Tap. I'm Professor Jay Rollins in this episode troubleshooting PC Hardware. Let's tap in the video. You got your coffee, your project, and your confidence. You hit the power button, and boom, nothing. No lights, no fans, no display. Just a dead system looking back at you. Or maybe it boots, but the screen goes blue, your drives disappear, or your desktops turn into a break mid-presentation. That's the moment that separates the user from the technician because you know where to start. Today we're going to break down the art and science of troubleshooting PC hardware, BIOS, and UEFI fundamentals, power and disk diagnostics, and how to track down those sneaky video issues that even make pros scratch their heads. By the end, you have a clear roadmap, a checklist you can use in the field, in the class, or at your desk to turn chaos into calm. I'm Professor J. Rod, and this is your crash course into thinking like a tech. Let's tap in. When you press the power button, your CPU isn't magically ready to boot to Windows. It's actually clueless. It doesn't know your drives, your fans, your GPU, nothing. So how does it get started? Enter firmware, the system's conductor. For decades, that was the BIOS basic input-output system. It did its job small, 16-bit, minimal features, limited disk size, but it was built for an earlier era. Now we have UEFI, the unified extendable firmware interface, a smarter, more secure, and more flexible approach. By the way, that's why most PCs are IBM compatible, is because Compaq was one of the first companies that reverse engineered the IBM BIOS. And that's why you can take any computer and switch parts on it. Before you couldn't do that. BIOS versus UEM UEFI. BIOS uses a master boot record, which caps drive sizes and partitions. UEFI uses GPT GUID partition table, which supports massive disk, secure boot, and fast booth times. Think of BIOS as a stick ship from the 80s, reliable but limited. UEFI is the modern electric vehicle. More controls, more efficiency, more intelligence. When a BIOS or UEFI update finishes, I always do three things. One, check boot order. If your OS drive is in first, you'll get no boot device found. Two, check storage mode. Windows installs in AHCI, which won't boot in RAID mode. Check secure boot. If you're using unsigned loaders or dual booting, like Linux, secure boot can block you. True story, after UEFI rollout, half the lab machine suddenly failed to boot. The fix, convert their disk from MBR to GPT and repair the boot entries. 10 minutes later, all system screen lit. UEFI can disable front USB ports. Great for security and confusing for text. Fan monitoring, a lifesaver. If a system shuts down randomly, check the fan RPMs. Overheating is a silent killer. And firmware passwords, set them carefully and document them. Lose one and you're reflashing or replacing chips. Secure boot ensures only trusted bootloaders start, blocking root kits before the OS even loads. TPM trusted platform module stores encryption keys and provides system integrity. If one PC fails, secure checks while others pass. Check for tamper firmware or failed TPM binding. When all else fails, reset to optimize default. Verify time and date, confirm storage visibility, and always double check that your IO pump and CPU fan headers are correct. Half of all mystery reboots trace back to something simple as that. Power and disc troubleshooting. Dirty power. Power supplies age like milk. Capacitors dry out, rails sag, stability fades. A line interactive UPS isn't a luxury, it's insurance. Voltage regulation alone prevents countless ghost errors. The power up ladder. When nothing happens, think outside in. Check the outlet. Check the switch. Reset the 24-pin and 8-pin CPU cables and try a known good PSU or power supply unit. If the fan spins but no displays, reset the RAM and GPU, try onboard video, clear the CMOS. Post beeps or LEDs, decode them. They're the motherboard's SOS. And boot loops, often unstable memory profiles. Disable XMP or Expo, return the default and retest. Boot and drive errors. No boot device errors, usually beans, wrong boot entries, missing partition, or cable issues. NVMe not found, check if the M.2 shares lane with SATA. Some boards disable one with the other ones in use. Blue screens after cloning, that's a driver mismatch. Safe mode, rollback, done. Drive performance. Smart warnings. Never ignore them. An SSD slowing down could be full, hot, or updated. Free space, cooling, and firmware updates bring them back to life. RAID explained. Alright, let's shift gears to raid. Redundant array of independent disc. RAID is all about trade-offs, speed, fault tolerance, and capacity. You can have you cannot have it all, but you can pick what matters most. RAID Zero. RAID Zero splits data across two or more drives. The advantage? Speed. Multiple drives, read and write together like a team. The downsides, no safety net. If one drive dies, all your data is gone. RAID Zero is great for gamers, editors, and scratch discs where speed matters more than safety. RAID 1. RAID 1 duplicates everything on two drives. Loose one, you're still running. It's simple, reliable, and great for small servers, but you lose 50% capacity. If you have two terabyte drives, you're only ever going to be using two terabytes. The other two terabytes are just in case. Speed isn't the goal, uptimes. RAID 5 needs at least three drives. It stripes data and parity, offering a sweet spot between protection and performance. If one drive fails, the array rebuilds using parity data. But parity calculations slow, right? And if a second drive dies during rebuilding, you lose everything. Use RAID 5 when read performance matters, file servers and archives, but keep backups ready. One thing I will tell you about the RAID 5. On the literature, it with Comtea, it will tell you wait until it's downtime to switch the other RAID. To switch the drive. If one of the drive dies, ComTea will tell you, oh, wait until downtime and then switch it. Don't wait too long. Because if another drive dies, that's it. So if it drives on Tuesday, one drive dies on Tuesday, and they tell you, oh, wait till Saturday when we're closed to change it. Don't wait till Saturday. One, you're gonna experience a significant performance hit. Everybody's gonna be asking you why is the server so slow. That's number one. And two, you're never gonna know you never know when the other one's gonna die. And if the other one dies, you lose everything. Lose everything. Alright, rate six. Now there's here's the big brother, rate six. RAID six is like RAID 5 with an extra layer of safety. It stores two sets of parity across the drives. That means you can lose two drives and still recover. The advantage, high fault toler high fault tolerance. You can survive double failures, a lifesaver for larger rays. The disadvantage, performance hits. Right speeds drops because of due parity math, and you lose two drives worth of capacity. RAID 6 is perfect for environments where uptime is mission critical. Think Enterprise, NAS units or labs with dozens of drives spinning 24-7. But remember, more drives means more rebuild time. RAID 6 is safer, not faster. RAID 10. RAID 10 combines the best of both worlds: the speed of RAID 0 and then the redundancy of RAID 1. You need at least four drives. Half your space is for mirrors, half for stripes. It's expensive for blazing fast. Lose one drive per mirror pair and you're fine. Database, virtualization host, production server, RAID 10 is your performance fortress. But again, you have to lose. Yes, you could lose two drives, but you have to lose the right drives. Right? Because let's say you have two A's and two Bs. If you lose both A's, then you're you're done. Right? You lose everything. So you just gotta be careful with that. Alright, so let's recap. RAID 0 is for speed only, RAID 1 is redundancy only, RAID 5 is speed plus single drive safety, rate 6 is slower rights but double drive protection. Rate 10 is speed plus redundancy but costly. And let me just say this out loud RAID is not backup, it saves uptimes but not lost files. Backup off sites, off network, and off the clock. Make sure you do that backup. I've seen people get in a lot of trouble not backing up their stuff. Case study. A workstation is keep rebooting during 3D rendering. Power draw spiked and the 500 watt PSU couldn't handle it. We swapped it for a quality 750 ATX unit, rechecked its rails, and boom, stable. The lesson: troubleshooting isn't just testing, it's thinking in systems. Alright, systems and display troubleshooting. When a system fails, when a system fails, symptoms lie. Don't chase errors. Follow evidence. Check environments, connections, drivers, temps. Move from external to internal. Test one variable at a time. Dust kills performance. Clean filters, blow out fans, and replace old thermal paste. Check for bent CPU pens, solar capacitors, or scorch marks. Your eyes are diagnostic tools too. Missing video, no display, verify the monitor input cable and source. If you're using a discrete GPU, plug it into its port, not the motherboard HCMI. And if post LEDs are lit, follow their queue. Memory first, GPU second. Bad video quality. Blurry or glitchy video, fix the resolution, refresh rate, or replace the cable. Artifacts under load, stress test the GS the GPU and the PSU. Projector shutdown, check the filters and the fan path. And don't shut off the projector once it's done. Or don't unplug it. Because it's gonna once you shut up, if you shut off a projector, those small ones, once you're done, it's gonna keep blowing. It's blowing out the hot air. Let it blow out the hot air before you unplug it. Alright, checklist. Known good cable, correct input, GPU seeded and powered, files visible, then OS driver issues. Laptop test external display. Alright, today you just you just didn't learn fixes, you learned frameworks from BIOS to UEFI, from dirty power to drive rebuilds, from RAID OS speeds to RAID 6 safety. You now know how to think through the chaos. And now that you know, let's do our questions. I'm gonna give you four questions to test your knowledge. Let's see if you can get it. So the way I do it is I'm gonna read you the four one question at a time. I'll repeat it and then I'll give you a wait five seconds and then I'll give you the answer. All right, here is question one. After a UEFI firmware update, several live species show no boot device found. The NVMe drives appear in the UEFI menu. Which what should you verify first? A enable CSM legacy support, B convert the disk from GPT to MBR, C ensure the correct UEFI boot entry is first, or D disable secure boot. I'm gonna read the question again. After UEFI firmware update, several labs PCs show no boot device found. The NVMe drives appear in the UEFI menu. What should you verify first? A enable CSM legacy support, B. Convert the disk from GPT to MBR. C ensure the correct UEFI boot entry is first, or D. Disable security boot. I'm gonna give you five seconds. 54 3 2 1. You got the answer? The answer is C. The drive is detected, so storage is fine. Which means UF UEFI needs the proper boot entry. Windows boot manager must be prioritized. So it's C. Answer C. Have you got this? We got three more. Next. A desktop intermediately shuts down during GPU heavy task. Idle temps are fined. Which is the most likely cause? A failing CMOS battery, B insufficient PSU capacity or degraded PSU, C incorrect monitor input selection, or D MBR corruption on the boot drive. I'll read it again. A desktop intermittently shuts down during GPU heavy tasks. Idle temps are fined. Which is the most likely the cause? A failing CMOS, B insufficient PSU capacity or degraded PSU, C, incorrect monitor input selection, or D MBR corruption on the boot drive. So what's happening here? You're doing something heavy, right? Let's say CAD and is and it's shutting off. Right? So you know, it's not C incorrect monitor input selection. I mean that's you can rule that out. It's not a failing CMOS battery, right? It's B. Load-induced shutdowns usually means a failing or oversized power suppersized power supply. CMOS and boot issues don't cause mid-load failures. Alright. Halfway there. Hope you got two right. If not, here's your chance for another two. Three, a system boots but shows no video when connected to the discrete GPU. The motherboard has an HDMI port. Which steps should you try first? A replace the PSU. B move the cable from the motherboard HDMI to the GPU output. C convert the disk to MBR or D disable the XMP Expo. I'll read it again. A system boots but shows no video when connected to the discrete GPU. The motherboard has an HVM port. Which steps should you try first? A replace the PSU. B move the cable from the motherboard HCMI to the GPU outputs. C convert the disk to MBR or D disabled XMP Expo. This is an easy one, guys. This is the answer is B. Users often plugged into the motherboard's port instead of the discree GPU always connect to the GPU directly. Also, I wanna I I wanna take a this is a perfect opportunity to talk about when CamTIA gives you a question and they end it with first, like which steps should you try first, right? What should you do first? What Camp T is looking for is usually what's the easiest thing to try, right? I there's a question that I saw years ago about a laptop, right? When you try to power up a laptop or something up with a laptop, and these are the older laptops, not the ones you know with the battery on the outside. Remember, we had the laptops with the battery on the outside, now they have the battery inside. Well, it was like the battery, the laptop won't turn on. What do you do? And one of them was you know, take out and put back the battery, another one was reseat the ramp, the other one was unplug all peripherals, right? I forgot what the fourth one was. It's it's the it's the battery. You take it out, you put it back in. That's the easiest thing to do. Compte wants you to start with the simple stuff first, because it's what if you know why are you gonna start doing all this, you know, taking your computer apart when it's it where it's just a when it's just a cable. Right? So when they when you see that in the Comtea question, what should you try first? Or just the word first. You know, you try to try to see that the it's the simple, the simple task first. Now, you have to think about it like this. It may not be the right answer, right? I might seed reseed the battery on the laptop, and it still might not work. It might be something else is wrong, right? It's not asking you how you how you fix it, it's asking you what should you do first. And it always wants you to do the simple stuff first. Now it's up to you. You have to know what the simple stuff is first, but yeah, it's always it's always gonna ask you to do the the the simple stuff first. Alright, last one. A RAID six array reports a degraded state. Two drives have failed. What is the best immediate action? A replace both drives and start a rebuild. B delete the array and recreate it, C convert to RAID 0 for speed, or D continue using it until all drives fail. I'll read it again. A RAID 6 array reports a degraded state. Two drives have failed. What is the best immediate action? A replace both drives and start or rebuild. B delete the array and recreate it. C convert to RAID 0 for speed, or D continue using it until all drives fail. What's the answer? I'll give you five seconds. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Alright, the answer is A. Ray 6 tolerates two drives, fails. Replace them and rebuild. Never delete or convert the array. You lose parity and data. But at this time, I yeah, but you lost two, so you lost everything. So I mean you can do a rebuild, but at this point, your whole thing is hosed, and you have to hopefully you have good backups. And I'm telling you, like I said before, backups are important. I've seen people get fired and or almost get fired because of not having a good plan for backups. If you in charge of the backups, if that's your job, if you're listening to this and and your job is part of backing up, check your backup now. Most people don't back up. I my students tell me all the time that they back up. I know they don't back up. I it's it's you know, nowadays is you know, they make it so easy for you to back up. You don't have to back up your Windows, you don't have to back up your Word. That's all on the clock. All you gotta do is back up your documentation. That's pretty much what we all back up nowadays, anyway. Right click on download or right-click on documents, right? Upload to whatever drive you have, Google Drive, OneDrive. I have a Nas drive that I just you know copy paste to and let it run overnight when I back up. You know, yeah. I remember one time when I was working on my dissertation and my hard drive crashed and I lost every like my I lost everything. All my all my dissertation papers. But luckily, luckily, I passed all my everything that I wrote, I passed it through Grammarly to check for Gramma. And I had Grammy Pro and it kept it. So I had everything there, everything was there. I didn't care about anything else, but the the papers that I have written, because I had to make one website and post all my papers on it, and I didn't have them. So though be careful when you uh uh if you're gonna go and save to like Google Drive. I think Google Drive, when you save documents in Google Drive, it puts everything the same date. So if you're one of those people like me who don't save with exactly the same, you know, like if I'm writing a paper on podcasting and I don't save it like draft one podcasting, then you're gonna be opening up a lot of Word documents if you upload to Google Drive because it all puts it the same date. So all right, troubleshooting isn't guessing, it's pattern recognition, it's patience, it's practice. I'm Professor J-Rod, and this has been Technology Tap, the show where we keep tapping into technology one circuit at a time. Until next time, keep your cables neat, your backups verified, and your curiosity sharp. This has been a presentation of Little Chacha Productions by Sabra, music by JoKim. We're now part of the Pod Mac Network. You can follow me at TikTok at ProfessorJrod at J R O D, or you can email me at ProfessorJrod at JrOD at email me.