Power Up Diagnostics (Xbox Original)
There are several things you can diagnose based on how the console boots up or doesn't boot up.
There are several causes of no power (no LEDs, nothing happens when pressing power button.
- Check PSU is good (See Power Up Basics)
- Check v1.6 board has good working clock capacitor by IDE (Without it, no power at all)
- Check power button circuit is connected well without trace rot or damaged resistors (see Power Eject Button Circuit)
- Bad power capacitors (check Power Rails). If the capacitors are bad or you are missing power rails it will possibly not boot at all.
If the console boots and freezes at the boot screen, this is often a missing DVD drive, and good HDD.
As soon as the system loads the dashboard it will try to load the DVD. If it is missing it can cause screen crashes.
This is more common when using SSDs with 80-pin IDE cables. With stock HDDs the system usually boots up just fine without a DVD connected but still can happen on 40-pin stock IDE/HDD.
This can be caused by:
- Bad HDD (failing to read and not timing out)
- Bad IDE
- Bad DVD
- No DVD (causing the system to hang or crash during boot animation)
The system actually needs the DVD drive present and working to fully boot into the dashboard most of the time. Sometimes it will load fine without a DVD, but most often it will cause boot up crashes.
If the console boots up to a service screen with green text, check the Error Codes page for more details.
If the IDE cable, hard drive and DVD drive are all known to be good and you still cannot read from the drive, check if using an upgraded SSD SATA hard drive. Using adapters other than Startech very often prevent the DVD drive from then loading discs, sometimes original, sometimes only copies, but it is known.
Make sure to use Startech brand.
