Machine not booting

voodoo

Hi all,

Wonder if anyone can help. I have an issue with a Medion PC running Windows XP. The machine is probably not 3 years old yet, but of late, it seems to have become clunky on me... Taking ages to boot up and like as if the HDD was about to crash.

Last Thursday it wouldn't even boot for me. It seems to stop at Bios with the Bios details and only the following, which doesn't even seem like an error message -

Main Processoer: Intel Pentium 4 2.66ghz
Memory Testing: 2621442k ok

That's it!!!

Wont go past this... I dont actually think it's a HDD issue as I swapped out the hard drive but the same thing.

If anyone has any suggestions, let me know...

Voodoo

kmb

Could be a power issue,could be a irq issue,ram problem.anything.

My first thing would be try another psu.And if you can get to bios turn off all usbs etc and take out any extra pci cards.

But psu would be first!!

regds kieran

Zoned

are there any beeps when you start up the machine?
Can you get into the BIOS?

voodoo

No beeps at all... Cant even get into Bios...

Sorry, meant to also say that there is a choice on the bottom left to press F10 or DEL to enter setup, but neither options work...

Nothing has been done to the machine of late - no hw added etc... I will see about getting an old PSU and trying it in it...

Gurgle

voodoo wrote:

there is a choice on the bottom left to press F10 or DEL to enter setup, but neither options work

Do you know how to clear the motherboard's CMOS memory?

voodoo

No... Im not overly technical... can try? Is it simply by removing the cmos battery or can that even be done anymore

Velcrow

voodoo wrote:

No... Im not overly technical... can try? Is it simply by removing the cmos battery or can that even be done anymore

Yeah start by resetting cmos, then cpu, hdd, cd rom, .... its a case of trial and error.. but its great to learn but not so great if you need to get work done

gamer

Usually theres a jumper on the motherboard that u remove 4 a minute or change position, to reset the bios to default mode,do google search your pc name model reset bios settings jumper or look up ur motherboard info jumper settings on google.i see no point in changing the psu ,the pcs coming on,can u hear fan,,if the cpu is overheating it knocks off pc after a few seconds to protect it,is cpu fan on,is psu fan on. take antistatic precautions if opening pc, knock off pc, ,take out pc power plug from esb socket. u cud try putting in bootdisk win98,,download on 3/half floppy from bootdisk.com ,win98se is the best.; setups ut cdrom drive and ramdisk with all the main dos commands,in it, dir chkdsk etc. disconnect the hd completely, my hd was faulty, it stopped pc from booting ,and i cudnt get it bios,,pc froze ,u may have master slave jumper on hd 1 or 2 setup incorrectly.

Gurgle

voodoo wrote:

Is it simply by removing the cmos battery or can that even be done anymore

Removing the battery won't do it, the CMOS memory uses so little power and low voltage that the smoothing capacitors on the line can keep the data for hours.
You have to find the CMOS jumper on your motherboard. Its 3 pins, with a jumper connecting two of them. Pull the jumper off the two that its on and put it on the middle one and the one that was previously not connected. Some motherboard require a power-on power-off to clear the CMOS.

Then you put the jumper back on and reboot. The board should be set to bios defaults - i.e. running everything at minimum speed.

Now if it boots, your hardware is OK, if not you've got a hardware problem.

gamer

leave battery in , try finding bios default reset jumper ,follow instructions above,what pc have u got,ie dell model 3000 ,google search UR PC MODEL WHATEVER NO, try win98 boot disk first,,first disconnect both harddrives completely ,from ide cables ,then reboot pc,,see does it boot up,,if it does it means the slave/master jumper is set wrong on 1 of the hds, or one of the hds is faulty.causing pc to freeze,or crash.

sweno

gamer wrote:

leave battery in , try finding bios default reset jumper ,follow instructions above,what pc have u got,ie dell model 3000 ,google search UR PC MODEL WHATEVER NO, try win98 boot disk first,,first disconnect both harddrives completely ,from ide cables ,then reboot pc,,see does it boot up,,if it does it means the slave/master jumper is set wrong on 1 of the hds, or one of the hds is faulty.causing pc to freeze,or crash.

Yip gamer has it down to a tee.. If it still isn't working there are few things left to check really. Check the RAM is seated ok also, I've seen case's where PC's have got a small knock and caused similiar problem. Once the Ram was reseated it booted fine again...

Also if you do get it going again (which I'm sure you will, just stick at it) would be no harm to wipe the hard drive and restart from scratch. You said that it was slowing down, stuff tends to pile up if you don't keep an eye on it and in the end its best to start from scratch

ShiverinEskimo

After CPU and Mem testing the next step is all the I/O ports on the motherboard - usually starting with IDE then SATA (if available). If it stops immediately after testing CPU and Mem but before IDE detection then one of your IDE drives (floppy, cd or HDDs) is not responding properly and your BIOS freezes.

Remove all the IDE devices and see if it gets as far as telling you there is no bootable drives available - if so plug in each ide device in turn until it freezes again and which ever one when on its own causes it to happen is your culprit.

Do all this after resetting your CMOS however.

kmb

Hi,Did you try the psu?

regards kieran

Standard Toaster

Sounds to me like a dying harddrive.
If all else fails take it out and put in the freezer.
Something like this.

gamer

Disconnect all hds from all ide cables, reboot pc, if pc boots up then hd is faulty or the hd jumper slave/master jumper,or jumpers set up incorrectly. u cud try just booting off a bootable cdrom from a pc magazine, or get bootable cdrom from sum1.theres only 5percent chance psu is faulty,,take antistatic precautions,earth yourself,touch metal water tap,gets rid of static. there are os,s avaidable minios linux,or knoppix that boot os from a cdrom drive .90percent of time if u cant get into bios pc freezes that mean a device on ide like hardrive is faulty or jumper is set wrong, jumper bout 2mm size, it cud have just fallen off.