BIOS Access

Hi Jeremy-

Just a thought, but maybe trying to clear the bios settings with a jumper. Most boards have this function, when you boot it up like this you should see something on the splash screen saying something like clearing nvram or cleared nvram.

One board I had allowed you to hold down insert on bootup to accomplish the same thing

To be honest, this sounds like a video card problem. I had a Savage4 card on a system and I ended up having to completely disable the hardware acceleration to get it to work and they confirmed for me that the card wouldn't work with the board I had. So maybe finding some old video card to use may lead you to some insightful information.

Good luck to you

Mark

I agree with first answer.
If you can't find the jumper to clear your Bios, just unplug the PC from the wall and remove the battery for 10 seconds.

Good luck!

Might sound kinda basic...but try unplugging the keyboard and plug it back in. Or if you have a spare try that..

Sometimes it's the simple things...

If you can't access the Bios it would scare me to clear seeing how if the bios isn't set up to do auto HD detection you may not be able to boot an OS after that. I would eliminate everything before I tried this including the keyboard and mouse as mentioned above. A couple other thinks would be the fan on the CPU, and remove any other cards that are in your machine NIC, Modem, Sound, ect...

It sounds like you have a corrupted CMOS.
Removing the battery for a short period is
not good enough.Cmos will retain information
for a good while even if you remove the battery. I would wait at least 20min or more
before re-flashing the CMOS.Dont forget to
load the bios defaults before you proceed
further after re-flashing.

good luck

After reading what you've already tried, I'm leaning towards a defective motherboard and if I could get it exchanged under warranty, that is what I would try first. However, I think the ideas of completely discharging the CMOS and swapping keyboards also have merit.

But as a general rule, once I've ruled out keyboard failure, if I can't get to the BIOS, I assume the motherboard is hosed. Particularly if the problem persists after I've removed everything but the video card and keyboard.

paul

i would unhook the A:drive. after doing that i would boot up your system. you should get an error and be able to get into you bios that way.

Looks loke oyur mother board is bad. To be sure try the following: Try other keyboard. Still have the problem?, try a new one. Boot the system with the video card, keyboard, mouse and hard drive only. Still locks? Disconect the hard drive, conect the floppy and boot from it. Still have the problem? Change the mother board.

I was just talking to a fellow techie last night about BIOS settings and problems. It sounds like the best and easiest thing to do would be to reset your BIOS. On most motherboards there is a jumper which you can disconnect or change, which resets the BIOS to defaults, with a clean slate of it. That is my advice