Computer turns on but won't boot to bios?

Computer Hardware
#1

Ok my computer, after the last microsoft update for xp…imagine that! has started to have problems.

It will not boot into bios. it will not beep. the power and HDD activity LED’s will not light up. The reset button will not work. BUT

my dvd burner turns on, my motherboard has an LED on it that will light up, my fans turn on, and i “think” my HDD’s turn on but im not sure about that. my gpu fan turns on as well but its connected to the power supply. my cpu fan is connected to the board and it turns on.

So this is very frustrating. Even worse is that it will turn on after many attemps of powering on and off, and then it goes and works like normal…wtf!

so yah…im afraid one of these times i won’t get lucky and it will never turn back on, so hopefully you guys can help me fix it before that happens

a8n sli premium
3000+ amd venice
2gb corsair xms
150gb western digital x2 in raid
antec 500watt supply (top of the line at the time. $200)
6800gt saphirre

while trying to get it to work, the following is what i have attempted.

removing gpu and turning on resulted in no beeps and no improvements

removing all ram resulted in no beeps and no improvements

i dunno but its really confusing since i can get it to turn on every once in a while…if something was broke it should just stay broke :frowning:

#2

Sounds like hardware conflicts in the BIOS. Have you updated your BIOS firmware lately? And usually not booting from the BIOS means bad motherboard BIOS or motherboard or be both. Also what did you update on windows update? I know awhile back I think was AMD had problems with windows update service pack and required a patch to be download. Also what is the O/S your using and service pack?

#3

The A8N-SLI is kinda old… hows your CMOS battery? It’s a cheap thing to try…

Our old one died recently too (I had the Deluxe)… but more likely a result of dust build-up and my procrastination of cleaning it out… doubt that is your issue though since you had the thing open removing the guts.

#4

ok i took out the battery and after a few attempt i got to bios with a checksum warning, after a reboot it wouldnt start so its not that

then i swapped ram from a different computer…no dice

then i tore out the cpu and still no bios

then i stripped it down to just the motherboard, powersupply , and switches…still nothing

so how do i test the motherboard and powersupply at this point ?

p.s. not that it really matters at this point but while i had the computer on last night i did reflash the bios

#5

[QUOTE=hellbringer;2225516]ok i took out the battery and after a few attempt i got to bios with a checksum warning, after a reboot it wouldnt start so its not that

then i swapped ram from a different computer…no dice

then i tore out the cpu and still no bios

then i stripped it down to just the motherboard, powersupply , and switches…still nothing

so how do i test the motherboard and powersupply at this point ?

p.s. not that it really matters at this point but while i had the computer on last night i did reflash the bios[/QUOTE]

You aren’t going to get anything without a CPU installed.

I would replace the CMOS battery…if after messing with it a little you managed to get to the bios it would indicate to me that it is the problem. They are cheap to replace. At the least put a multimeter on it and make sure it’s putting out enough juice, should be 3.3V IIRC.

#6

my motherboard has something called post reporter and when speakers are hooked up it should alert me to problems…hence it should be turning on even with no cpu

#7

and is a bad cmos really going to stop a motherboard from booting to bios??? i dont really think so. it should just display a cmos checksum error. and with the battery removed…its gotta be the motherboard or psu.

if i get a multimeter they only come with 2 probs right? so how do i test with it when most outputs on the psu have alot more leads

#8

With a nearly dead CMOS battery, the computer will not post. Period. Check it with a multimeter to make sure it’s putting out 3.3V or ideally a little more.

You find a diagram of the PSU connector layout. PSU’s use the same layout, so a generic on will do. The main ones to test are the 12V and 5V rails and 1.3V CPU connector (this should be located near the CPU socket).

#9

if thats true then how did i get it to post once with no battery in? or does it only happen with a dead battery in?

#10

[QUOTE=hellbringer;2225967]if thats true then how did i get it to post once with no battery in? or does it only happen with a dead battery in?[/QUOTE]

hellbringer… a new CMOS battery is basically a wafer/watch battery… You can pick one up just about anywhere for roughly 5 bucks. It is certainly worth replacing and trying to see if it resolves your situation.

#11

A bad battery will not make a computer unusable.
I’d guess the motherbard itself or the PSU.
//Danne

#12

$5 for something i don’t need seems like a waste.

i did purchase a multimeter however and that sort of proved worthwhile.

i tested my battery just for giggles, also as a small test for my meter to learn to use it a bit. and the battery was 3+ volts.

then i tested all the leads for the 4pin power plug that went near the cpu, as well as the 24pin for the motherboard. i did this while the computer was “turned on” lol i think i need to make a new word for “turned on but fraked”

anyways all the leads were great, infact they were putting out a little bit extra.

strangely however there was a -5volt lead missing, and there was an extra lead in a hole in another spot. it was strange but i don’t think that was my problem.

even stranger, while i was testing all the leads the power light suddenly turned on and the post reporter said something about the cpu. so i turned her off and through the cpu in there. long story short, it kept reporting missing items and i kept putting them in one by one.

the result is ive found out my computer WILL post, it just takes in 10 minutes to turn on lol…frak to be clear nothing has changed, only that 10 mintues after pressing the power button does come to life and post.

so i still don’t know whats wrong, but i do have something im going to try tomorrow and that is to test the leads when the computer is fully turned on AFTER is has posted.

i do have a windows program and im not sure how accurate it is but these are the readings

+12v 11.84
+5v 4.838
3.3v 3.264
vcore 1.52

my vcore is set to 1.5 in bios by the way

so do those numbers sound ok?

#13

All those voltages should be fine as long as they stay that way then everything is in and running. I had a older asus board that would take forever to boot as well and in my case I had a SCSI card installed that it hated and took forever to load the drivers and card. When I removed it it sped up quite a bit not stumbling past that thing.
You might have a RAID port enabled or something that is not loading right causing your slow down. I have that very board I JUST retired in favor of a newer Quad core am32 sli deluxe or something like that.
If I have the extra raid ports enabled it boots slower when nothings connected to them, it was fine with several drives as a JBOD array.
Maybe your raid array is causing issues at POST?

ANOTHER thing, that very board has MAJOR issues if you load all 4 memory slots. Mine worked fine with all 4 for a year then started having memory failed post issues. I took 2 sticks outa the second set of slots and it boots fine, put them back in and it wouldn’t boot, booted partway, crashed, etc.
IF your using all the slots, pull the etra 2 out of the second set and it will work fine. There are some work arounds that sometimes help, but they didn’t for mine.

#14

All voltages should be within 10% according to the ATX specs if I’m not mistaken.
S939 CPUs/motherboards are in general picky with 4 DIMMs as Dartman said.
//Danne

#15

i tested the volts using the multimeter while running prime95 and the volts didn’t bunge one bit. so my power supply is a titan and that rules it out. the volts were almost spot on as to what the numbers were sopposed to be.

12.01
4.98
and i can’t remember the 3.3v but it was good to

so that leaves the motherboard/bios, and im thinking its my bios.

i tried to “downgrade” my bios and im having one hell of a time trying to do it.

i managed to go from 1303 to 1302 using the flash program in windows, but for the life of me i can not get 1009 installed…which is the newest “non beta” bios, which is what i would prefer to have in there at this point.

all attempts to downgrade in dos have failed ( it tells me i need to download the latest bios). when i try to upgrade back to 1303 i get a checksum error and it tells me to redownload the image file…which ive already done.

i tried useing my motherboard cd, but for some reason it can’t load. it says it can’t find C:/command

and the only drives i can find in dos are A:/ and B:/ which oddly points me to the same floppy drive

so if i could figuer out that problem that would help alot, i don’t think ive ever encountered that problem before…

oh and im only using 2 memory slots

and as for raid, i have to hard drives set up in raid, and 1 dvd burner. I do have 4 raid slots enabled however so ill try turning off the extra one and see if that helps