hardware or motherboard failure?

[JClark]

Hello Group:

My son's computer came home from school for me to tune up, and it
won't boot. Could it have been bumped around in the car? I can't find
anything loose.
Interesting that Bios loads, and I can change the settings in CMOS, so
the keyboard is OK during that phase, but when Bios goes to turn
things over to the OS, I get a blank screen where the windows splash
screen ought to come up. If I boot from floppy, the keyboard works
for CMOS, but doesn't work once I get to the A:\ prompt.
Sounds like a hardware problem, doesn't it?
Any suggestions about how to find the problem?

System: Asus A7M266, AMD 1.4, 512 DDR

Many thanks.

Jack

 

[kony]

Hello Group:

My son's computer came home from school for me to tune up, and it
won't boot. Could it have been bumped around in the car? I can't find
anything loose.
Interesting that Bios loads, and I can change the settings in CMOS, so
the keyboard is OK during that phase, but when Bios goes to turn
things over to the OS, I get a blank screen where the windows splash
screen ought to come up. If I boot from floppy, the keyboard works
for CMOS, but doesn't work once I get to the A:\ prompt.
Sounds like a hardware problem, doesn't it?
Any suggestions about how to find the problem?

System: Asus A7M266, AMD 1.4, 512 DDR

Many thanks.

Jack

Is it a USB keyboard? If so, enable legacy USB support in
the bios to attempt getting DOS keyboard support. If that
doesn't work try clearing the CMOS.

yes it could've jarred something loose in transport, examine
the interior, particularly cables and larger cards, memory,
etc. Since you can boot from floppy but not the OS, look
closely at the hard drive, it's jumper and cables. Check
bios for a boot order, and check the clock's time and
battery voltage. If you can't get it to try booting the HDD
anymore then run the HDD manufacturer's diagnostics on the
drive.

 

[JClark]

Is it a USB keyboard? If so, enable legacy USB support in
the bios to attempt getting DOS keyboard support. If that
doesn't work try clearing the CMOS.

yes it could've jarred something loose in transport, examine
the interior, particularly cables and larger cards, memory,
etc. Since you can boot from floppy but not the OS, look
closely at the hard drive, it's jumper and cables. Check
bios for a boot order, and check the clock's time and
battery voltage. If you can't get it to try booting the HDD
anymore then run the HDD manufacturer's diagnostics on the
drive.

Thanks for the assistance. Here's what I've tried:

1. I solved the keyboard problem by substituting a plain vanilla PS/2
keyboard for the USB keyboard (which didn't work even with a PS/2
adapter and with USB legacy devices enabled in CMOS).
2. I removed the CMOS battery to reset it rather than use the jumper,
but I must have not left it out long enough, because the time was
accurate after doing this. I'll try that again.
3. Changed the video card for another one. No result. Put the original
one back in.
4. Now with the keyboard functioning, I can boot with floppy and use
commands. F-Disk shows the correct partition on the boot drive.
5. Tried again to boot from Win2k CD, but it hangs at "Setup is
inspecting your computer's hardware configuration."
6. Tried booting with Linux CD (Knoppix) Hangs after setting up the
hardware and looking for network connection.
7. Hooked up a known good boot hard drive from another computer, with
the same result: BIOS runs, recognizes drives and PCI devices, hangs
at the place windows should be loading.

So it appears to be a problem somewhere between BIOS and the CPU. If
you have any other ideas of where to go from here, I'd be very
grateful. As of now, all I can think to do is replace the motherboard
and/or processor.

Again, thanks for the help.

Jack

 

[WebWalker]

Can your bios auto-detect your HD(s)?

 

[JClark]

Can your bios auto-detect your HD(s)?

Yes, BIOS detects all devices, as best I can tell. It sees the IDE
primary master (there is no primary slave) and the secondary master
and slave. It sees the two SCSI drives (SCSI ID 0 and 1), loads SCSI
BIOS and then lists 9 PCI devices. At this point windows usually
loads, but this is where it hangs.
Again, I can boot from Win98 floppy, but not from Windows 2K CD or
from the LInux (Knoppix) CD.

Thanks for your help.

Jack

 

[Rene]

Thanks for the assistance. Here's what I've tried:

1. I solved the keyboard problem by substituting a plain vanilla PS/2
keyboard for the USB keyboard (which didn't work even with a PS/2
adapter and with USB legacy devices enabled in CMOS).
2. I removed the CMOS battery to reset it rather than use the jumper,
but I must have not left it out long enough, because the time was
accurate after doing this. I'll try that again.

You have to remove the battery and then put the jumper on for some time.

Rene

 

[JClark]

Can your bios auto-detect your HD(s)?

Web: It looks like the problem is solved! I finally got a good
clearance of CMOS by waiting about an hour with the battery out and
also shorted two solder points on the MB. then I restored defaults,
and it started working.
This has never happened to me before, and I really don't understand
what might have caused it. The computer was working when it was
disconnected at my son's school, and then when I plugged it in here,
it wasn't. Mysterious.

I certainly appreciate the suggestions from you and Kony.

Jack

 

[kony]

You have to remove the battery and then put the jumper on for some time.

Removing the battery without touching jumper should work,
providing a few minutes elapse with the battery out and AC
power is disconneced from system.

I'm now wondering if the heatsink became dislodged somehow
and isn't making good contact, if it's crashing due to
overheat past a certain point. He might try putting the
system in the bios setup and watching the Health Monitor
info page if one is present, else just leaving it sit in the
setup screens then trying to navigate them after similar
amount of time has elapsed. Ultimately he could remove
heatsink, inspect it, reinstall with fresh thermal compound
after cleaning it off.

 

[JClark]

You have to remove the battery and then put the jumper on for some time.

Rene

Thank you, Rene. I did clear the CMOS and that solved the problem. I
forgot you have to disconnect the power cable as well as remove the
battery.

Jack