Hi,

I am having some problem in booting my PC.

Processor AMD athlon 500 MHZ
ATX 6167 MB
Cybermax PC

When I switch on the electric surge protector strip to which the PC is connected, the power LED, HDD LED glows, The fans inside the unit (PS fan, CPU fan) starts working as if in a normal power on procedure but only lasts for a second! Then the power is down. All the fans stops, no glowing LEDs. Nothing. At this time if you push the power button on the front side of the unit, power comes back! Fans start, LEDs glow, CD-drive LED blinks, Key board LEDs blink, can even here humming of HDD with its LED glowing consistently for a while, but that's it, no beep, no signals to the monitor, no boot up! Not even reaching a stage where you can hit the del key and enter the CMOS setup. After a while the HDD LED stops glowing. All that remains on are the fans, power LED. The power is on for the system. If I push the power button on the front, there is no effect. power never goes off. If you push the reset button all these process (glowing LEDs, glowing CD-drive LEDs etc) happens again but no signal to the monitor and the system never boot up.

If you play around with the power button, reset button, and the main power switch on the surge protector strip for a while (sometime 5 minutes, sometime 15 minutes or even more) suddenly the system makes a beep and comes alive! boots properly and works fine for several hours till you shutdown. I have no idea which combination of switching on and off makes it work! While the system is working normally if you select restart from the shutdown option (My OS is Windows 2000 Server) the machine reboots without any problem. But if you shutdown, the system doesn't power off itself even though my previous OS Win98 were doing it. It will show the message safe to switch off then I will have to push the power button in front of the system and turn the main AC supply off. Next time when you start the same problems again.

This problem was very rare when it started showing up a week ago and it was less time consuming to make it boot again by playing around with the power switches. Then it started giving problems more and more often and takes longer and longer to make it work. I changed my OS a month ago to Win2K server from win 98 with a clean install. (Formatted the HDD and installed it). It was working fine for a couple of weeks even though I had problems to power off the machine automatically and windows shutdown. In CMOS setup the ACPI was enabled during installation of win2k and it is still enabled.

I increased the memory by adding 128 MB SDRAM to the existing 96 MB RAM in November 2001. At that time I was using Win98 and it accepted the memory and showed the total memory as 224 MB. Win2k server also recognized the memory as 224 MB when it was installed and still recognizes it when the system works.

Any idea what is happening?

Thanks
Shobhanan

Hi and Welcome,

Hey, thanks for all the info. Sometimes we have to drag it out of people. It always helps to have a little history to go on.

First thing I would do is pop open that case and have a look around. My computer was doing just about the same thing and I found it was a faulty connection on the main power switch.

Check for loose wires, or bad connections. You may have inadvertently bothered something whilst you were in there adding memory. Won't hurt to have a look. Post back with what you find.

Cheers,

Big Blue 66


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Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.
- Pamela Vault Starr

If you shut down, power off the CPU, but leave the main AC supply on... what happens when you turn the CPU on again?

Also, when you see that "OK to switch off message", what happens when you hit the reset button.

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If at first you don't succeed, get a bigger hammer.

Guys!

It was a faulty memmory stick. It was the new 'CENTON' 128 MB PC100 SDRAM causing all the problem. If I remove it everything works fine. If I plug it in the problem starts. But I have no idea why it some time works and accepts the memmory. Anybody had such experience? Any way My PC works fine without that memmory stick now. Thanks guys!

Wish you all a Happy New Year!

Shobhanan

By the way the shutdown power off automatically problem can be solved if you are sure that your PC is ACPI compatible. During installation of win2k there is a screen which asks you to press F6 to specify SCSI and RAID options. Press F5 there and you will get a list of options including ACPI compatible PC. select that and continue installation.

Thanks
Shobhanan



[This message has been edited by shobhanan (edited 12-28-2001).]