Computer won't boot up...

Factual Questions
1

I have been having quite the computer problem lately, which can be read about here.

If you don’t want to read the thread, I’ll just summarize the problem:

When I boot up, currently I get to the motherboard logo screen, and that’s it. The system freezes at this point.

Earlier, I was able to get past that point to the boot sequence, and could get into the BIOS. While there, I made all changes I thought I needed to. I told the BIOS to boot from my CD-RW drive first, since my XP install CD was in there, and made sure it detected my floppy drive and SATA HD, which it did. When I restarted, it would again get to the boot sequence, and say that it found my SATA HD, and then I think it was attempting to boot from it, even though I had told it to boot from CD. It would then lock up and go no further.

I am frustrated (read: mad as Hell) beyond belief. This thing has been busted sicne December, and I was really hoping my new CPU I got yesterday would fix my problems, but it didn’t, it’s still doing basically the same stuff it did before. I don’t want to be told my motherboard is bad, because…well…as I said in the other thread there is a chance that RMA-ing it to the store I got it from will result in me not having a motherboard at all and being forced to buy a new one.

When I get home tonight I will try the following things:

Inserting my old IDE hard drive and removing the SATA one. I will NOT reformat this hard drive and reinstall the OS on it, though. There is too much stuff on the hard drive I need to get.

Try to run a different program from my CD drive, like a memchecker. I know my RAM is good (ran a memchecker a while ago) but this will let me know if the drive works (it should.)

I’m open to other suggestions, thoguh I do fear I will have to get a new motherboard. :mad: :mad:

2

If your computer is freezing at this point, take out your RAM chips, unplug your hard drives and take out all I/O cards except your video card and see if it gets past the POST check. If so, start adding things back in one at a time.

Good luck.

3

Do you see any of the POST at all? I.e., do you see it recognize your RAM, processor, or drives? On some motherboards you must hit a key, like Esc, to get rid of the full-screen motherboard logo and see the regular POST information.

If you aren’t seeing any POST at all, then I’d start with the suggestions Fat Bald Guy gives. If you are able to see the post, go back into the BIOS and reset / clear it to the defaults.

Can you boot to a floppy? If so, it’s probably not your motherboard. If you can’t get it to POST with just the motherboard, processor, RAM, and video card (if it doesn’t have one onboard), than it’s probably the motherboard.

This may be counter to the DIY spirit, but if there’s a small, local computer services shop in your area that deals in AMD, they might have a MB they are willing to test with your processor, RAM, and video card. This could be a quick way to isolate the problem.

–nesta

4

I assume that you’ve already reset the cmos. If not try that first.

5

Yes, I have reset the CMOS and tried booting. As far as I can tell, it’s not posting. I can’t really know for certain, because I can’t get into the BIOS to tell it to display the POST information instead of the logo.

I have removed all peripherals and still it does the same thing. It was maybe a window of 30 minutes that I was able to access the BIOS, but it still wouldn’t boot from the CD after I did that. I didn’t do anything to have that 30 minute window, either. I just gave up for a while to let myself calm down, and when I went back, I could get into the BIOS, but then it stopped POSTing at all, it seemed.

6

Don’t be afraid to get a cup of coffee, go for a walk and go to a movie. It’s not advisable to work while frustrated.

I assume that you reset to the default settings.

Have you tried reassembling the minimal core outside of the case?
This’ll be what soyo helpdesk’ll ask you to do. Try it on your own.
If this doesn’t work, leave it out for your call to soyo. They were very helpful when I had to make my call (detailed in this forum somewhere).

7

Computer technician here!

The first thing you should do is to disable the motherboard logo (sometimes marked as “silent boot mode”) from the BIOS. Then you 'll be able to see any error messages during start-up.

Then remove all unnecesary external devices. Make sure you don’t have any USB storage devices such as memory card readers or external drives attached.

Start the computer and post here any error messages you will see.

8

I’d love to do that, but it locks up before I have any chance to get into the BIOS.

9

If the system is not posting, with nothing added into it…then you’re really narrowing down the issue. The only other thing I could think of would be a bad power supply. If you have another power supply, or a tester, you could eliminate that.

Other than that, I’d concur calling soyo…hopefully they’d RMA it for you

10

The Soyo tech support agrees with you. I managed to borrow a power supply from a friend, and will put it in tonight.

Another thing weird, though: Two or three times it actualyl got far enough that it would try to boot from the CD-RW drive before it locked up, but it kept saying ‘Primary Master Drve not ATAPI compaitable’. ? Huh? I was under the inmpression that every IDE CD/DVD device made in the past several years is compataible with every motherbaord, for the most part. Am I going to have to get a new CD drive as well? Or could this problem be a result of the bad power supply as well?

11

I’d say that the error is only more ammo for a bad motherboard. I just sent one back to ASUS because the SATA controllers would not recongise any hard drives…and went through much of the same stuff you did.

Try the power supply just to appease them, and when it dosent work, get them to replace it.

12

OK, so an update of my still busted-ass system:

Switched to my DVD drive which I thought was already busted, because when I tried it before it was do nothing but eject and retract the tray. Thinking maybe it was just from the bad power supply, I hooked it up and it actually worked. Didn’t eject unless I told it to and showed up in the BIOS. So I popped in my XP CD and booted up and was actualyl taken to the CP install screen. After finally figuring out how to get the SATA drivers to install (I assumed that after I pressed F6 I would get to install them right away…nope, I had to wait a few minutes, I kept restarting wondering if my F6 key was broken.)

Well, to sum it up, it wouldn’t install. It would get to the copying files point and lock up at some point, but never the same point. Of the times I remember, it locked up at 11%, 8%, 7%, 2%, and 0%. And yes, basically each time it locked up at a lower and lower percentage. Initial thoguh was CPU temp, but no way in Hell is my CPU temp bad. I booted up right after it locked up and went to the BIOS, and after letting it sit for several minutes it didn’t move a wink past 32 C.

On a whim, I took out my 256 MB memory module, leaving just the 512. Well, who knows how, but now it won’t boot from the DVD drive at all. It goes through the normal procedure, but when it gets to the point where it should say ‘Press any key to boot from CD’ it is just a blank screen…Yeah. I tried putting back the 256 module, I trued using just the 256 and not the 512, but I’m still at the same thing. What the Hell is going on? The motherboard? It jsut seems odd that if I had a bad mobo I could even get as far as I did.

I’m just afraid that if I RMA my mobo, I’ll wait two weeks (and spend $5 on shipping, no less) only to get a new one and have the exact same problems. God clearly has determined that I am not to have a working computer. That’s all there is to it.

13

Remove everything apart from 1 stick of memory, a video card, and the CPU - no HDD, no DVD and see if it will boot. Start adding things in from there in the order FDD, DVD, HDD.

BTW if you can make a DOS boot floppy, try formatting the HDD as FAT32 and copying the whole XP CD to \install.

14

I have been getting this message for over a year now, referring to the CD-R. I changed the CD-R and still get the same error message. Have to press F1 to continue bootting.

CD Writer works just fine. I am assuming that there is a fault with the IDE disc controller on the motherboard

15

I remember when i had a Soyo DRAGON board, and i hated every moment with it. One of things Soyo’s used to have was a fail-safe BIOS feature when you hold INSERT on the keyboard and turn the computer on, that would take you into BIOS and you can select the Fail-Safe Defaults and might have to tell the board it ignore fan problems just to make sure it really is fail-safe. Then have it boot to a floppy and then flash your BIOS.

I’ve assembled dozens and dozens of computers with all sorts of different motherboards, Soyo makes the list of the worst imo.

16

You’re describing the exact behavior for which I RMAed an ASUS MBD…I’m still waiting to get it back (been about a week). I’ll let you know how it goes when I get it back.

17

OK, it’s the mobo, confirmed. I replaced it with my old motherboard and lo and behold, problems gonew (well…not really…read on.) I didn’t want to do this before, because it means thre things:

  1. My CPU is underclocked. I lost my manual for this board, and the last CPU in it was an Athlon XP 1800+, which I’m pretty sure uses a different FSB, so I can’t change it to what I need.

  2. I have ot use slower and less RAM. I had 768 MB of PC3200 RAM, now I have to use 512 MB of PC2100.

  3. I can’t use my new HD. I bought a 250 GB SATA drive, but the old mobo has no SATA connector, so I’m stuck with my old IDE drive, which I will have to reinstall XP on, wiping out lots of my stuff in the process(I had lots of pictures and other things in the My Pictures and My Documents fodler.)

But, as will all things, I was screwed over again, here’s how:

Duruing the install, XP kept saying it couldn’t copy certain files, and I could try again (that never worked) or skip that file, well, I skipped it…buit then there was abotu ten more, I skipped all of them, hoping they were all part of a group I’d never have to use. This was at 30%. At 80%, it did it again, thuis time with about 20 files. Realizing that was too many files, I stiopped the install and looked at the disc. Yup, two large circular scratches, one close to the outside, one close to the inside. I don’t kow how these happened, but my guess is when I tried to use my DVD drive to install with the bad mobo. In a fit of anger, I pounded the top of my machine, and it must have caused the drive to scratch the disc somehow (now I’m installing on the CD-RW drive, which with the new mobo didn’t work, but of course works fine with the old one.)

So now I have to figure out how to get a new XP install CD…will MS send me a replacement if I send them the bad one back? I mean, Hell, I shouldn’t even have to send the bad one back, right? There’s no harm in having multiple CD’s, because what matters is the product key, not the physical CD itself, since I can just make copies of that real easy like.

18

You can find most motherboard manuals/settings/jumpers on line. Either from the m/b makers site or from useful DIY sites.

You say you’ll have to reinstall XP ? Why ? Because the XP that was on the old HD was for the other hardware ? If you really want the files on the HD then try booting XP and letting it sort out the new hardware itself (if it’s the same M/b it’ll probably work).

Failing that do a rescue install on the XP partition which should reinstall XP without nuking your files. The method below should still work for that.

Almost every copy of XP I’ve ever used (and that’s been a few different ones) does this. I’ve always figured it was a something odd about the way the CDs were written/produced. Anyway, I have a tried and tested solution that my help if you’ve got the same issue.

1/ Copy the CD stuff onto the harddrive before the install. You just need the i386 directory. If you’re relying on booting from the CD you could skip this but you’ll get better results.

2/ Install, skip any bad files, don’t panic. Place a small rock on the ‘ignore and continue’ button if you get bored.

3/ With luck you should get into windows, now you’ll either have a working system or a somewhat screwed system. If you have a working system the apply all the latest patches / SP2 etc and you’ll have replaced most of the bugged files anyway.

If you’re system is too screwed to do that try running the windows XP from inside windows telling it to upgrade windows (from XP to XP). I’ve found that doing this the system manages fix itself a lot of the time.

I can’t promise this’ll work for you, but I’ve ran two seperate computers for quite a while using this trick to get them up and running.

Finally, if you’ve already paid for XP and have a valid CD key then you just need to find a copy of the software. There are probably some ethical/legal issues here but if you have a valid CD key then you’ve paid for the software so I wouldn’t feel too bad if you resorted to having to ‘find’ another copy of the install files somewhere …

SD

19

SpaceDog - How can I copy the files? I have no OS! When I went to install XP on the HD, it basically wiped the old install off the HD to install this one. I have tried just booting from the HD, but I get an error about a missing file. And I have no way of getting those “shady” copies. I am posting from work, and while maybe I could get a bittorrent client and download it…then what? I have no CD burner on this computer, so I’m SOL. I really don’t think I can just skip all those files. All in all, I would say it was close to 100 files before I quit the install, and I’m sure more were to come. When I say there are scratches, believe me, they are HUGE and I am 100% sure they are the problem.

And let’s say I somehow do skip all of them and can even get to windows…I can’t update to SP2 because this CD HAS SP2 on it. It’s a brand new copy of XP that has SP2 so graciously added to it. I will try to skip all of them tonight, but it was getting annoying having to keep hitting ESC…that rock thing is a good iea, though. :stuck_out_tongue:

20

If you have a floppy drive at work and at home then you can make yourself a boot disk with CD support. Goto www.bootdisk.com which has lots of useful images. You want any dos boot disk, with CD Rom and ideally SmartDrive on it. There may be a way to get to a DOS prompt from the XP CD but I don’t have one to hand to check and it’d depend on the CD version.

Failing that you could try finding a small computer shop nearby and seeing if they’ll install XP as far as the ‘enter CD key’ screen. Probably not, but worth a try.

I’d still try installing while skipping the files and see what happens (it’s not likely to be any worse than it is at the moment).