Problem with AMD homebuilt system

T

TMgo

I need help to understand why my son's PC is behaving a certain way!!
It starts to boot up and then after going through the boot-up from BIOS it
stops with the cursor blinking in the top left corner.

I reset the BIOS by moving the jumper - thinking that it might need to be
reset since I was seeing an inconsistent boot-up process - sometimes it
would start to boot-up and get stuck at the step that it is "Checking
Memory", requiring that I turn off the power, other times it would go past
that. I inserted a bootable Norton Systemworks 2003 CD and chose a step to
get it to boot from the CD drive but again I got the 'blinking cursor in the
top left corner of the screen".

What could be going on???? Is the CPU/motherboard bad? or is it the BIOS?

I changed the lithium battery on the BIOS - just to rule out the battery
being low, and there was not change in the above problem!!!

Thanks,

Ted M.
 
S

Stephen Austin

I need help to understand why my son's PC is behaving a certain way!!
It starts to boot up and then after going through the boot-up from BIOS
it
stops with the cursor blinking in the top left corner.

I reset the BIOS by moving the jumper - thinking that it might need to be
reset since I was seeing an inconsistent boot-up process - sometimes it
would start to boot-up and get stuck at the step that it is "Checking
Memory", requiring that I turn off the power, other times it would go
past
that. I inserted a bootable Norton Systemworks 2003 CD and chose a step
to
get it to boot from the CD drive but again I got the 'blinking cursor in
the
top left corner of the screen".

What could be going on???? Is the CPU/motherboard bad? or is it the BIOS?

I changed the lithium battery on the BIOS - just to rule out the battery
being low, and there was not change in the above problem!!!

Thanks,

Ted M.


My first thought would be either a dodgy power supply or a cracked
motherboard. The former is a damn site easier to check/replace.
 
G

Groove

TMgo said this...
I need help to understand why my son's PC is behaving a certain way!!

If the system fails POST it could indicate a hardware problem. Since you say
it stops at memtest sometimes the first thing I would try is to replace the
RAM with a known-good stick and see if that fixes the problem.
 
S

Scott

Groove said:
TMgo said this...


If the system fails POST it could indicate a hardware problem. Since you say
it stops at memtest sometimes the first thing I would try is to replace the
RAM with a known-good stick and see if that fixes the problem.

Agreed! Then if that doesn't sort your problem, remove all hardware (cards
etc) one by one to see if any of those are the culprits.

Couldn't hurt to try.

Scott
 
D

Dave C.

TMgo said this...
Agreed! Then if that doesn't sort your problem, remove all hardware (cards
etc) one by one to see if any of those are the culprits.

Couldn't hurt to try.

Scott

Agreed with both suggestions. The symptom is pointing at power supply
(weak) or bad RAM or possibly a bad video card. -Dave
 
P

PWY

TMgo said:
I need help to understand why my son's PC is behaving a certain way!!
It starts to boot up and then after going through the boot-up from BIOS it
stops with the cursor blinking in the top left corner.
! =-----

As you describe the situation above, the machine is completing the post from
bios and fails at the point of loading the operating system. Sounds like bad
hard drive to me.
Let us know how this turns out.

PWY
 
G

Groove

PWY said this...
As you describe the situation above, the machine is completing the post
from bios and fails at the point of loading the operating system. Sounds
like bad hard drive to me.

I wondered about that too. But it sometimes seems to fail earlier in the
process so I settled on the ramtest first. Isn't remote diagnosis a bundle
of joy? <G>
 

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