My computer locks up and refuses to boot. What could it be ?

Computer Forum General Hardware
1

Sometimes I managed to boot the computer but mostly not.

I don’t even come to the post screen.

I’ve tried to trouble shoot, I also tried with replacing the graphic card,
how ever it didn’t do any difference.

All the fans and harddrives seems to get started
(I get a green power light and red hdd light) on the
front of where the start button is which seem to
indicate something is starting) and cpu starts (I’ve checked inside)
but the monitor refused to start and I don’t think the windows
started to load either.

I have found a way to start the computer and that is to turn everything off,
also the monitor, do a clear C-mos and then and then re-boot, then it starts…

Unfortunately I have no money to buy spare parts for a long time now and
I would be very grateful for any advice.

The motherboard doesn’t give any bios beeps when trying to boot at all, it just goes black.

But when I manage to start it it stays on and I have no problems ones it have started.

When I get money in some 2 months I’ll try to replace the power supply
and if that doesn’t work, the monitor.

My monitor is actually some 10 years old so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was that !

But I still really would like some input if anyone could help me .. please

/maria

I have a AMD64 3000+ CPU
a ASUS K8V-X mo-bo
Ati Radeon 128mb graphics
256mb ddr400

2

Hi,

I had a similar problem once. I turned on my computer and nothing seemed to happen, with no post beeps. After a lot of trouble shooting, I took out my agp video card and tried a pci card and it worked. The company sent me a replacement agp card, I tried it and it still didnt work. I ended up getting a different motherboard and then my agp card worked with no problems. If you are using an agp video card right now, have you tried installing a pci video card to see if that works?
:slight_smile:

3

No, I haven’t got any spare PCI graphics card so I can’t try it !

but yes that is one possibility of course, that it is a motherboard error.

But why does it start when I do a clear C-mos then,
if it would be broken then it should be broken what ever I do.

4

Lose RAM could be the culprit here. Resit your RAM and restart your computer.

5

I did look at the RAM a bit in the same time I checked if the CPU fan started
and I couldn’t see anything suspicious but I check ones more next time I reboot!

I can also try to replace the Ram completely, I think I’ve got an extra ram somewhere !

Thanks for your suggestion !

6

Loose RAM could be the culprit here. Reseat your RAM and restart your computer. (this is what karan meant, remove and reinsert RAM)

7

When you reset the BIOS, all of your settings are lost. So what you should do after you reset it is to go straight back into the BIOS and reconfigure your settings. Make sure the CPU and memory settings are correct because this could cause your computer to stop booting.

Also, your CMOS battery may be running flat

8

lol yes, I did understand that…

but to I just said since I have another RAM I could try with that one first,
just to make out that it is the RAM that is the problem, I may also test another RAM port, just because…

Of course I did that, but there is not a lot to change really, the RAM and the CPU speed are auto configurated and do not need to be changed.

The only thing I need to do is reset the clock (approximately, after I boot I reset it with Atomclock online) and I disable the onboard LAN (since I have a better LAN card) and the onboard sound (since I have a high quality sound blaster Audigy player) so I wont get any IRQ conflicts.

Also, your CMOS battery may be running flat

As I have understood this it shouldn’t matter,
the only thing that does happened if your battery is flat is that the time will be reset to 1999-01-01 every time you reboot !

Also I bought the motherboard and the battery with it only last summer…

Any other suggestions is also appreciated but you may be right about the RAM though.

I had another RAM in it in the begging and I got these “Memory refresh error” beeps from it and the screen also use to get black but that was in the middle of everything, not on boot.

I thought it was a RAM error and changed it and since that I haven’t had any of those errors, but it could be something with the RAM port or similar.

I’ll check that first now for sure :smiley:

anyway, thanks for all your advice this far.

I’ll keep them in mind when I reboot the computer, which will not be for another few weeks at least.

Just because if nothing works I don’t want to fiddle with it in wain since I have no money to buy spare parts if needed.

I may not get it started again before I do http://hem.bredband.net/b360565/smilies/90/0010/1/14.gif

But I will report back when I have tried everything so if anyone else gets this particular problem may find it helpful …

9

Ok, I have now worked on it a little and well, I’m still not sure.

I changed RAM ports, but I don’t think that is the problem anymore and I tell you why.

I think it’s the PSU or the harddrive or the power cord from the PSU that is having some problem.

You see, I did take out all power cords from all harddrives and then reset them, but it couldn’t find any hard drives then at all, I tested with other cords as it have a lot of them inside and then it all of a sudden worked, it found the harddrives but then I got some boot error problem. It said “NTLDR is not found” then I really tried to push the power cord into the boot hard drive, then it worked all of a sudden.
Then I thought that if I would be careful I might be able to assemble the lid on the computer and set it back without turning it off, but by accident the thick black cord pressed just a little on the enter socket on the boot hard drives power cord and then the computer went black again.
I turned off completely and pushed them in again and I saw some boot errors first but it did boot Windows after all anyway .
.. and when I went to bios.
The hard drive that I have installed Windows on is not at all listed in the boot-order thingy,
only the other 2 hard drives, but I have set “boot other devices” or something similar, so it did boot.

So now the question is, is it the bios, the hard drives socket or the power cords socket or just a general PSU failure… hm…

Can I edit the “boot.ini” file to search to boot from the right hard drive/partition.

Now the “boot.ini” says this, but it seems like it’s set to only search from one IDE-port, not both as it should.
I have my windows 2000 installed on my “E” partition, not C.
Could it be that it changed by a windows update? that it changed the “boot.ini” file ?
this happened first time after I did some Windows updates.

[boot loader]
timeout=1
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT=“Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional” /fastdetect

10

Did you have a T-storm lately? Try to turn on the power while it is not plugged in. It worked for me once.:chk:

11

http://www.math.princeton.edu/~aizenman/OpenProblems.iamp/solved.gif

Anyway, it’s now solved.

It was one of the older hard drives that was giving up.

The primary slave that is.

Disk1 in this picture, the C and H drive.

http://hem.bredband.net/b360565/temp/sep/11.jpg

When I removed the hard drive and booted it there was no problems what so ever, it booted fast and without any error or warning messages :slight_smile:

It is of course never nice to loose a hard drive but it was my oldest anyways, I put a new one on my “wish list” :stuck_out_tongue:

12

Thanks for the update crystalize

13

Sorry to say but I have to “unsolve” this.

I had to re-boot the PC because I installed a NetApi Buffer Overflow security update and it happened again !

How ever I also learned a “workaround” this.

If first turn off the computer, turn off the switch in the back of the PSU and then pull out the power cord, then re-attach it again and switch the power switch on then it starts to auto-boot because I have that setting in bios (auto-boot after power failure)
How ever I immediately of course assumed that it was the PSU but I switched it and the problem didn’t go away.

And it’s not like it doesn’t start to boot kind of, even the keyboard leds gives a blink like it normally do when it boots,
it just don’t get to the boot screen on the monitor (i have tried switching both graphic card and monitors with no change)

Also I’ve tried with let it stay on for like 5 min to see if it does boot but you just can’t see it but you can’t find it from my other computer
through network neighborhood, so the boot must get stuck somewhere.

Theres really nothing I haven’t tried except to reluctantly assume it’s a motherboard error, the only thing that I really dread,
I neither can afford one and I hate to change motherboards as you have to take everything out and put back again.

Any further ideas ?

And it can’t been a power surge that done any harm. I have one of those over-voltage protection thingys that looks like an alien ! :chk:

http://hem.bredband.net/b360565/temp/sep/47.jpg

14

Damn true! Do u know that I m facin the same problem with my laptop as well. But it works sometimes if I pull out the battery and press the RAM little bit… I dont know how??
I m also believing that Mobo is the culprit here with me…
you also try to change the RAM slots and also if you can run it on onboard graphics…

15

Yes I have tried with switching both the RAM and the RAM slots but I don’t have onboard graphics.

I never buy motherboards with onboard graphics as they reduce CPU power with at leat 10-15%. You wouldn’t think but it does really !

16

Only if you enable the on-board graphics.

What PSU do you have? Make and model (wattage does mean much)

17

Very true :stuck_out_tongue:

What PSU do you have? Make and model (wattage does mean much)

They are both 300W, the original and also the other that I switched with to test. No difference how ever, so it just can’t be it …

I have now also tried to switch the power cord it self, that is the only part I hadn’t switched besides the motherboard (except the floppy I think lol),
how ever I haven’t re-booted since I did that so I can’t really say, how ever I don’t count on it helping any … :open_mouth:

Also I assume it’s not a boot virus problem … in all my years I only heard of these, never encountered them in person … http://hem.bredband.net/b360565/smilies/90/0010/1/50.gif

Is there anyone who knows where to find this type of virus in that case and how it would look approximately ?

18

Go through [link=http://www.hardwareforums.com/power-supply-sticky-5218/]this[/link]…