I sent a perfectly good computer to my sister but now that she has it, it won't boot up. Will not get out of POST. Doesn't get an error message but just hangs. It does make a strange sound, not like your normal "beep." Hard to describe but it sounds kind of like "water" dripping. Kind of like "poooiiiiitttt". This repeats about every 10 seconds.

It sees the 256 megs of RAM, the PII 300 processor, the two hard drives, CD player, SCSI Cd writer, Zip drive, but before it gets to the floppy drive it stops cold. Disconnecting the Floppy or any of the other drives doesn't help.
I've spent six hours on the phone trying to walk her through checking wire connectors and ribbon cables for seating, pulling the processor and reseating it and the RAM. Tried all kinds of things; I've worked on computers for years and have built and had to troubleshoot 6 of them. This has me stumped and it doesn't help not having the thing here where I can tinker with it myself.

Called the MB manufacuter (The MB is a Microstar MS6111.)and they said to reset the CMOS, so we did that and still have the same problem after putting all the drive settings back in.

The power supply was new a few months ago.

One strange thing is that when we are in CMOS setup, the "poooiiiiitttt" noise stops. After exiting the setup, the noise comes back and so does the problem.

Any help would be appreciated.

Before someone else jumps in here and asks, is the noise coming from the system speaker? If you're not sure, unplug the speaker connector from the mainboard and see if the noise stops. Let us know.

Yes, the noise is coming from the system speaker. I had her use a tube to be able to directionally nail the source down.

Additional Checks and Tests today:
1. Power supply is set to 110.
2. Power supply fan is spinning and power supply is connected properly to MB.
3. Fan is spinning on the processor heat sink.
4. Changed Cmos Setup to have it do a "floppy seek" on boot. Will not do a floppy "seek."
Will not finish POST even if floppy ribbon cable is removed. I know this should work because I can do it on my other computers.
Shouldn't need a floppy drive to boot up, as far as I have experianced.
5. Took out each card and rebooted each time to see if one of the cards was causing the problem. Didn't change anything.
6. Took all ribbon cables off the board to see if it would finish POST. It does finish and is looking for a bootable disk in A\: It is also still making the "poooiiiiitttt" noise.
7. When the Floppy drive is hooked up again, without any other drive connected, then we go back to not finishing POST and not even looking for the Floppy.
8. I'm having her buy a new Floppy Drive but I don't think this is it.

One strange thing is that when we are in CMOS setup, the "poooiiiiitttt" noise stops. After exiting the setup, the noise comes back and so does the problem.



I take it from that you can actually get into the setup, so look for any kind of monitoring (voltages and temperature) options...do they look ok?

When you cleared CMOS did you manually enter the drive parameters or autodetect them?

Did you reload the defaults?



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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

Originally posted by mjc:

I take it from that you can actually get into the setup, so look for any kind of monitoring (voltages and temperature) options...do they look ok?

When you cleared CMOS did you manually enter the drive parameters or autodetect them?

Did you reload the defaults?


REPLY:
My sister is out now buying a new Floppy Drive so can't get info on voltages and temp but here is some more info:

When the CMOS was cleared, went in and set drives up to AUTO detect. Did not "reload defaults" because I thought that was what I was doing when the CMOS was cleared. Should I still do that?

New questions:
1. What does it tell you when I say that the "poooiiiiitttt" noise is coming out of the system speaker? That it is a BIOS problem and not an individual component?

2. Since the RAM and the CPU are showing up in the POST, does that mean that they are working correctly? Would they POST and then still not be working correctly?

Thanks for the help, Ed

Put the new Floppy Drive in and that didn't fix anything.

Here are the temps, etc. from CMOS:
Current CPU temp: 27c/80f
Current CPU fans speed: 5400rpm
Vcore: 2.800v
Vtt: 2.496v
Vio: 2.376v
+5,000v: 5.215
+12,000v: 12.288
-12,000v: -11.763
-5,000v: -5.124

Not to sure on that temp.....it looks a little too perfect to me, and the fan speed being dead on at 5400 seems a little strange too, but they could very well be ok. The voltages look ok....except for the Vcore, it seems a bit on the high side. Look to see if there is a Vcore setting in Setup or that one of the jumpers hasn't worked itself off...you will probably need a manual for that....Here (http://www.msi.com.tw/support/manual/manual.php?model=MS-6111)

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

Originally posted by mjc:
Not to sure on that temp.....it looks a little too perfect to me, and the fan speed being dead on at 5400 seems a little strange too, but they could very well be ok. The voltages look ok....except for the Vcore, it seems a bit on the high side. Look to see if there is a Vcore setting in Setup or that one of the jumpers hasn't worked itself off...you will probably need a manual for that....Here (http://www.msi.com.tw/support/manual/manual.php?model=MS-6111)



I think the readings are accurate since my sister said that they were varying as she watched them.
Vcore I will have to check. Already have the manual.

Big question, for me, is:
Since the CPU and RAM show up okay in the POST, does that mean that there is nothing wrong with them and that I should be looking elsewhere for the problem?

Ok, if they were varying then they should be fine.....I would think that, at least with the CPU, if it makes it through POSt then you are ok with it.

RAM could still be a problem though, POSt doesn't really give it a thorough examination, basically, is it there and does it powerup, and does it look like it will take data (yeah, a little more complex than that but not much). So depending on the exact point it gives out...

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

Originally posted by mjc:
Ok, if they were varying then they should be fine.....I would think that, at least with the CPU, if it makes it through POSt then you are ok with it.

RAM could still be a problem though, POSt doesn't really give it a thorough examination, basically, is it there and does it powerup, and does it look like it will take data (yeah, a little more complex than that but not much). So depending on the exact point it gives out...



If I took all the RAM out, would it still get past POST, if the problem was defective RAM?

No, it should beep and cough up a whole bunch of errors screaming about missing memory.....

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.