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Boot up roblems

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by jstarbolt

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I have a hybrid computer with a super 7 board with an AMD K-6 533 processor with 384 MB of RAM and I am running Wimndows 98 SE.
For the past month I have been having a lot of trouble getting my computer to start up--When I hit the power switch I see some lights and hear the fan but no beep for a successful POST and no error beeps or error codes. So I hit reset a couple of times with the same result. Then I turn the computer off a couple of seconds and then turn it back on and see the lights and hear the fan but no beep. The I hit the reset button. After a fews cycles of this I hear a beep, then see the first page and then the second spec page, but often the process won't go any further so I hit reset a couple of times until the process goes forward.

I have gone through setup, msconfig, etc looking for something that looks out of place. I have run scan disk, defrag, virus scan, and spyware checkers trying to fix the problem.

I have tried to get the computer to boot up from a start up disk with no result, so there must be some setting somewhere that has been truned off for this, but I can't find it.

I have looked through my thick repair books and found that if I can get it to boot up from a start up disk then I can run FDISK?MBR but I can't get the computer to start from a start up disk.

Could you tell me what section that I can get into to fix these problems?

6 replies

by sgt_shultz

from your description sounds to me like problems before even getting to windows, even getting to hard disk. can you try another power supply? did you try resetting the processor and ram?

by tech_wiz03

You are experiencing system failure at the bios level. This can be caused by shorted cabling, ram/cpu and boards not being seated correctly, dirty contacts on system connectors, improperly installed harddisk cables/jumpers, failing cpu and or power supply.
1) use eraser on memory and board contacts and reseat them.
2) verify cables are properly connected by seeing if you can post with drives removed (cable not on mbo)
3) swap in a power supply
4) check cpu seating

regards
rick

by bschmidt

It is a BIOS problem, that's for sure. If it doesn't beep at all, it could be one of three things -- memory, video card or power supply. Here's what I'd do, in this order.

1. Remove and reseat your video card, making sure all cables are well connected.

2. If that doesn't work, remove and reseat all memory chips. While you're at it, make sure your CMOS battery is well seated.

3. If it still won't boot properly, then check your power supply. Make sure the voltage on the power supply is set to 115V (some power supplies have a switch btw. 115 and 230, if it's set to 230V it will generate similar problems). I'd have a hard time believing it's a bad power supply, usually they will let you boot properly for a period of time and then cut out, or just not even work at all (no hard drive or fan activity).

This is all speculative of course, different BIOS will do different things. I would suggest downloading the BIOS Error Beep Codes from TechRepublic, finding your BIOS make and version, and seeing what it says.

by csmith

Check the power supply first.
This sounds like a corroded lead on one of the filter capacitors +5V , or a problem in power good signal.
This is not the common power supply failure.
There is nothing wrong with the hard drive, there is nothing wrong with the BIOS, and the error codes will all be erroneous on these intermittent failures.
Regards, Chris

by wa chege

As per the prevoius advice from the others above if none is working your only left with one thing CHANGE THE MOTHERBOARD could be a faulty capacitor or transistor or in short a faulty matherboard thank you

by jstarbolt

Tonight I pulled off the cables, opened the computer, put my wrist strap on, loosed the cards and reinserted them. I put in a new 256MB SDRAM to replace a 128 MB memory stick and loosed and reinserted the other one. I looked all of the connections over before putting the case cover back on. Then I carefully pulled the cables back on there right spot.

When I turned the computer back on, I went through the same routine as I described above with the same old results.

the one question that has not been addressed by the helpful answers is how to reset start up to boot from a disk--since maybe if I do that I can use a startup disk and use the FDISK/MBR command. Will this fix the problem, now that I reseated the cards and checked the cables?

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