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What is No Fault Found or No Defect Found (NDF)?
When a desktop board is returned to Intel, testing is performed for continuous quality improvement. NDF is reported when the board passes testing at Intel after it has been returned as a faulty unit.
What causes NDF? Why is it that I detect a failing board when it passes testing at Intel?
Most often a board is seen as faulty due to: No power, no video, or operating system (O/S) hang/frozen screen. However, the product may be good and the failure possibly due to BIOS corruption, improper integration or test setup.
Typical failure definitions
Below are the four most common failure modes that generally turn out to be NDFas reported by our customers. Troubleshooting these failures will be described in the next section.
- No Power
- There is no evidence of power to the system. Fans are not running, lights have not illuminated, nothing is displayed on the monitor
No POST (Power on Self Test)
- Power is evident by fans running and lights illuminated. However, the monitor does not display the splash screen, memory size or drives installed. Generally, the monitor only displays a blinking cursor.
No Video
- Evidence that POST has completed but no image is displayed on the monitor.
No Boot
- There is clear evidence of power, the system has successfully passed through POST showing the splash screen, memory size and drives but will go no further to start up the operating system. Again, a cursor may be seen blinking.
Troubleshooting Help
No Power
Start with the obvious:
- Is the system plugged in?
- If the electrical source is connected to an On/Off switch, ensure that it is in the “On” position.
- Check the Power Supply voltage selector to ensure it is correct (115 V vs. 230 V).
- Verify that your chassis/case and power supply are appropriate for the processor and the motherboard you are planning to use.
- Ensure that power supply cables inside of the system are properly seated.
- Ensure that appropriate power supply cables are utilized within the system (Main, 2x2, and/or 1x6).
- Ensure that other cables from the chassis to the motherboard are properly connected (PWR SW and PWR LED).
Move to the less obvious:
- Verify the power supply has the capacity to power all the devices used in your system.
- Calculate the power requirements of the board, processor, video card and any other system components.
- Use a voltmeter to verify that each output from the power supply is correct. If any output is very low (especially the +5 volt output) replace the power supply.
- Check for shorts and overloads inside the system.
- Remove the nonessential components, such as extra controller cards and IDE/ATAPI devices, then reboot.
- Integrate only the motherboard, power supply, memory modules and the processor. Reboot the system.
- If the problem goes away, there was a short or overload with one of the components that you removed.
- Replace each of those items one at a time until the problem is isolated.
If the problem remains after removing the nonessential components, the problem has to be with the motherboard, power supply, memory modules or processor.
- Replace each of those items one at a time until the problem is isolated.
No Video
Start with the obvious:
- Make sure the monitor is plugged in and that the monitor is turned on.
- Make sure the video cable is connected properly at the monitor and the system.
- Determine if the power light on the monitor is lit. Most monitors have a green light indicating sufficient power exists and a video signal is being received. An amber light indicates power but no video signal from the system.
Move on to less obvious:
- If you are using a video card, verify the card is properly seated. Swap the video card with a known good card.
- Ensure that your video cable is fully functional by replacing it with a known good cable.
- Remove the video card (where applicable), check the connecting interface (gold fingers) for damage, reseat the video card.
- Reseat the memory modules.
- Update to the latest BIOS revision.
No POST
Start with the obvious:
- Make sure the monitor is plugged in and the monitor is turned on.
- Make sure the video cable is connected properly at the monitor and the system.
- Determine if the power light on the monitor is lit. Most monitors have a green light indicating sufficient power exists and a video signal is being received. An amber light indicates power but no video signal from the system.
Move on to less obvious:
- Verify your chassis/case and power supply are appropriate for the processor and the motherboard you are planning to use. See http://www.intel.com/go/chassis.
- Verify you are using approved memory.
- Verify you are using memory from the Tested Memory list for the motherboard you are using. For Intel® desktop boards, go to http://support.intel.com for assistance.
- If you are not using approved memory, we recommend keeping verified good memory for troubleshooting purposes.
Check the memory modules and processor have been properly installed.
Verify the memory modules are populated into the appropriate slots on the motherboard. Refer to Motherboard manual if necessary.
Remove all nonessential items such as extra controller cards and IDE/ATAPI/SCSI devices. Integarte only the motherboard, power supply, memory modules and processor.
Update to the latest BIOS version, available at http://support.intel.com.
Swap the memory modules with a known good memory modules and then reboot.
If you still get no boot, swap the processor.
Verify that you have mounted the motherboard correctly.
Reset the BIOS
- Once you have exhausted the above possibilities, try a BIOS Recovery.
No Boot
Start with the obvious.
- Make sure the video cable is connected properly at the monitor and the system.
- Determine if the power light on the monitor is lit. Most monitors have a green light indicating sufficient power exists and a video signal is being received. An amber light indicates power but no video signal from the system.
- Make sure the fans are operational and the processor is not throttling due to thermal issues.
Move on to less obvious
- Verify your chassis/case and power supply are appropriate for the processor and the motherboard you are using. See http://www.intel.com/go/chassis.
- Ensure all appropriate power supply cables inside of the system are utilized (Main, 2x2, and/or 1x6).
- Ensure the power supply cables inside of the system are all properly seated.
- Determine if the system started to load the operating system (OS). Did you see the OS Splash screen?
- Determine whether the system always stops in the same spot or if it is random. If it stops in different places, it may be a hardware issue.
- Boot into Safe Mode. If the system boots properly into Safe Mode, then the issue is likely related to a driver or software load issue.
- Identify potential driver issues by reviewing the boot log.
- Update to the latest BIOS version.
- Check the BIOS setup utility to identify the boot order. Ensure the system is identifying the drive you set as bootable.
- If you have recently changed the memory modules, check the BIOS setup utility with special attention to memory settings.
- Refer to OS specific fixes such as cluster recovery or virus detection.
This applies to:
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