hi everyone, new to this forum. thought id throw out a question and see if someone knows whats going on. my computer will not bootup unless i pull the plug from the wall or turn off the power supply with its switch. then it will boot just fine and windows will run and alls normal. cant figure this one out. if i dont remove the power first (110 volts from outlet) then the computer will not boot. all lights come on. harddrive working, but does not post, just sits there. thought i had a bad power supply, but tried two different ones same problem. if i install a program and it asks if i want to restart the computer it will do that normally. appreciate any ideas or fixes? thanks, sam

Welcome, sam! http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

Is this a pre-configured system, or one you built yourself?

Has it always acted this way or is this a new problem?

This sounds like it could be a BIOS setup program option. Or you may not
have the switch plugged into the right connector on the motherboard.

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Sounds Like the same problem I've been seeing with machines using an ATX power supply (see my question above...ATX PSU???) does it have an ATX psu if it's a 300mhz pc or above chances are it has an ATX PSU.

Originally posted by samgoben:
hi everyone, new to this forum. thought id throw out a question and see if someone knows whats going on. my computer will not bootup unless i pull the plug from the wall or turn off the power supply with its switch. then it will boot just fine and windows will run and alls normal. cant figure this one out. if i dont remove the power first (110 volts from outlet) then the computer will not boot. all lights come on. harddrive working, but does not post, just sits there. thought i had a bad power supply, but tried two different ones same problem. if i install a program and it asks if i want to restart the computer it will do that normally. appreciate any ideas or fixes? thanks, sam

Originally posted by tjaymadison:
Welcome, sam! http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

Is this a pre-configured system, or one you built yourself?

Has it always acted this way or is this a new problem?

This sounds like it could be a BIOS setup program option. Or you may not
have the switch plugged into the right connector on the motherboard.

yes it is a system i built myself. it has been running fine for about 8 months. checked settings in the bios. actually read the whole motherboard manual, which is quite extensive compared to most. all the wires are plugged in correctly. thought about the power supply. how do you know if its a atx psu? i have three atx power supplys. two 250 watt and one 300 watt.

oh yea almost forgot. this problem just started. but before this happened i had used the utilitys disk and installed a program. then a couple of days later the machine would boot up but told me my c drive was write protected. blew my mind on that one. thought about it a little while and then went into the bios and for some reason the c drive and floppy drive were set to read only. then changed them to read/write and then was able to boot into windows98se. worked fine for two days then i had this problem with bootup/power thing. thanks sam

Well go into the BIOS setup and see if the power switch has also been "reconfigured", it should be set to on/off or something similar. I would also run a thorough virus scan, from outside of windows. Bootdisk (http://www.bootdisk.com/) has F-prot setup on a single floppy.

Also, what was the utility disk supposed to do? I don't imagine that it was supposed to "reconfigure" BIOS settings.

You can also check to see if you have a faulty surge protector, can sometimes cause strange power related problems, by plugging the computer directly into the wall and if the problem disappears replace the surge protector.

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mjc
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