A technician is troubleshooting a high-performance workstation that abruptly shut down during a heavy rendering task. When the power button is pressed, the system power LED blinks briefly and cooling fans turn for a fraction of a second before the system immediately shuts off. Toggling the wall outlet power switch is required before the power button responds again. What is the correct sequential order of troubleshooting steps the technician should perform to isolate this hardware failure?
- 1Disconnect the main AC power cord from the power supply unit (PSU) and hold the computer's front panel power button for 15 to 30 seconds.
- 2Unplug all internal power cables from system components and verify DC voltage rail outputs using a power supply tester or multimeter.
- 3Disconnect all PCIe expansion cards, auxiliary storage drives, and front panel headers, leaving only the motherboard, CPU, cooler, and one stick of RAM.
- 4Remove the motherboard from the chassis and execute a bare-bones bench test on an antistatic, non-conductive surface.
Answer
The technician must first discharge flea power to reset the PSU safety latching circuit, test the power supply independently to verify voltage stability, reduce the computer to a minimal POST configuration inside the case, and finally remove the motherboard to perform a bench test on a non-conductive surface to rule out chassis grounding shorts.
The standard hardware troubleshooting sequence moves from non-invasive resetting to isolated component verification: first discharge residual flea power to clear the PSU safety latch; second, test the standalone PSU outputs; third, reduce internal hardware to a minimal POST configuration; fourth, extract the motherboard to bench-test for chassis grounding shorts.
Step-by-Step Solution
Key Concept
CompTIA sequential hardware troubleshooting for power latching and short-circuit isolation