hey PC was working fine last night, haven't done anything then this morning turn on and it only shows motherboard screen, press del to enter setup and nothing happens, any ideas? haven't had much time to fiddle, gotta run off to work will check again when i get back and update with more details, in the mean time any ideas would be nice.

So you can't get into your BIOS?

 

Would you by any chance be running an ATI 4890? On Vista?

 

I had a similar problem at work where nothing would show beyond the Vista loading screen. BIOS was accessible.

 

Resolved (partially) by using dsub instead of dvi.

unplug harddrive then try booting and see if you get to the bios screen.

also find our manual look up bios reset jumper and reset your bios to factory standard.

PSU buggered ?.

psu power supply? possibly only a cheapo, i'll try the hardrive stuff now

think it might be power supply, i'll unplug all unnecessary items see if it boots

My last pc would power on - lights & fan, but then sit there not booting up.

 

Checked GPU and it was ok so we figured it was probably PSU, never found out though 'cos it was a good excuse for a new pc!

i'm pretty sure power supply is the problem, lights on fans were starting to flicker, its that $27 '860'w one from msy lasted a good 18 months, worth it imo. time for a reliable one.

update, got a new power supply to no avail, exact same problem, i unplugged both hard drives still same thing, just shows first picture describing motherboard

 

running XP home PC hasn't shown any signs of fagging up.

my uncle recently went up to the DDR3, he put a 4690 in it and it done the same thing, after i replaced it with one of my old 8800gts it worked perfectly and has done ever since.

 

sounds like a dead ram stick maybe... try reconfuring your ram stick setup. (ie take one out) different slots and so on, this may fix your problem mate.

 

let me know.

His computer wouldn't have even started with a RAM problem. BIOS wouldn't show up at all.

? threecharacterpost

bios doesn't show up at all, just very first screen that says asus p5n whatever my mobo is

Unplug everything cd hd floppy mouse keyboard etc. Only monitor pluged in .

When that doesnt work as said before take out all your ram. put 1 stick in slot 1 and try booting. then the same stick in slot 2 then slot 3 etc. next try another stick in slot 1 etc.

When that doesnt work find the clear cmos jumper on the mb move it from pins 1-2 to 2-3 for 30 seconds with pc off then move back and try the mem thing again.

This is all asuming the fault has just appeared and there were no hardware changes before. havent changed ram or put a new gfx card in etc.

Let us know how you go and what happens.

 

:hi:

cheers fallen will try that now.

unplugged everything, one stick of ram in first slot loaded first screen with mobo jargon,

then said

disk boot failure insert boot disk to continue

Thats good because you now know whats wrong

thats bad because it means 1 of your sticks is dicky.

if you plug everything back in and try with the proven good stick it should boot

if its an older board and uses ddr 1 then its about 100 for 2 gb and if is newer and uses ddr2 about 50 for 2gb.

seems like its the ram and if you can boot on the 1 stck that pretty much proves it.

Go get some new ram

if you can afford it get 4gb . win xp 32 bit will only use 3.25gb but it does make a good difference compared with 2 gb.

 

:hi:

trying now

fallen, i could kiss you.

sigh plugged everything back in again and same thing, (obviously i left the dead ram out) gonna go back a few steps plug everything in one by one and try it each time

Next time you get it to reboot with a good stick of ram make sure you reset your BIOS settings for fsb and memory timings to factory defaults.

Ive had bad ram that stopped a pc booting at anything other than defualt and also a bad hd that stopped it booting if plugged in.

sounds like it could be either.

It is matched ram ? all the sticks are the same model/brand/speed etc ? Its ok if they are not but it will effect what sticks you put where.

If it makes you feel any better , what your going through and doing now is what all us putter advice people had to do(mostly not by choice) to learn how to be putter advice people. Except Psyrus hes just a 1337haxor through a weird quirk of genetics.

:hi:

Edited July 25, 200915 yr by Shifty.au

k update, i'm writing this from my PC so it booted, got everything plugged back in except the stick of ram and a hard drive, also booted without mouse plugged in, if i plug mouse it it doesn't boot, (usb razor copperhead) put it in last week, go figure.

k update, i'm writing this from my PC so it booted, got everything plugged back in except the stick of ram and a hard drive, also booted without mouse plugged in, if i plug mouse it it doesn't boot, (usb razor copperhead) put it in last week, go figure.

 

If the Razor has onboard memory to keep records of profiles, that'll be what's doing it. Same thing happens with my n52 (not x52) and my external hard drive. Gone through all my BIOS settings and I can't figure out what it's trying to do - it's not trying to boot off those devices, but it's stalling on some sort of POST check somwhere I think.

 

Boot, load your operating system, then plug it in and you should be fine.

Edited July 25, 200915 yr by efgh146

ahhh, that explains this somewhat curious phenomenon, cheers staby

any fixes?