Hardware - Can't Boot

Author

Can't Boot

rnrkenzie

2003-09-06, 3:53 am

a friemd of mine just e-mailed this to me and I am at a lost on how to help him..any ideas?

E-mail.....
When I turn on my computer, this is what I get on screen:

Award Medallion BIOS v6.0, An Energy Star Ally
Copyright (C) 1984-2001, Award Software, Inc.

ASUS P4T533-C ACPI BIOS Revision 1003

Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 2271 Mhz Processor
Memory Test : 524288K OK

Award Plug and Play BIOS Extension v1.0A
Initialize Plug and Play Cards...
PNP Init Completed

Trend ChipAwayVirus(R) On Guard

Detecting Primary Master ... ST34342A
Detecting Primary Slave ... IOMEGA ZIP 100 ATAPI
Detecting Secondary Master... MAXTOR 4K040H2
Detecting Secondary Slave ... SONY CD-RW CRX0811

*blinking cursor*

That's where it stops. It doesn't even start checking the drives for a bootable OS, nor does it allow me to go into the BIOS. I tried putting in DOS disk 1 into the A drive, but the boot up sequence doesn't even get far enough to look at it. Because of this, I doubt that this is a hard drive problem (please tell me I'm right ). Heh, I'd rather blow a CPU than lose my data.

Anyway, the last time I had the computer on, I was trying to open Internet Explorer, but each time I did it stopped responding when trying to access a page outside of my computer (this is not new, the computer would start freezing during the duration of a page load, until I rebooted and then it would be fine for a while... I have 56k). The computer was hanging up pretty badly which was frusterating, so I did a ctrl+alt+delete, and clicked shut down. The window popped up asking me if I want to wait for IE to respond or close it down. That's when it just froze, so I turned off the computer manually. This morning, it wouldn't boot.

Does anyone have experience with these kinds of problems, and could tell me what the problem most likely is? Any help would be appreciated.

I just put this computer together a year ago. I've always had to turn the computer on twice for it boot, because the BIOS doesn't like the CPU setting (which is the corrent setting, 2266 Mhz... I have a motherboard with the jumper free thing. The only other settings are 1700 mhz and Manual). On the first boot, I get no video. On the second boot, the BIOS safe mode would come up, and tell me my CPU setting was wrong. I don't change anything and exit the BIOS. The computer would work fine, and in Windows the CPU clocks at 2266 Mhz, which is what it should be. CPU demanding software works fine. I don't know if this is related to my current problem, but it seems like my motherboard doesn't work well with the CPU, even though the board was made for my processor. Odd.

azimuth40

2003-09-06, 6:02 pm

Normally that is an indication of marginal RAM or and overclocked CPU that heats up during post. Is it really a 2.26Gig P4? Notice it says 2271MHz an indication that the motherboard clock may be drifting unless the bus clock is off by 1MHZ. The math seems wrong there however. Lets see 133.3 times 17 is 2266.1 and 133.3 times 18 1s 2394 so how does it come up with 2271, the bus being closer to 134 would do it and then marginal DDR would cause the hang.

Crank it down to the next lower speed and see if it runs or play with the manual option and see what it allows. If so then I suspect a firmware upgrade is needed if those are the only autoconfig options available. Looks like he as always had problems with the system and now as it is aging electronic drift has set in.

If that is not it then you are looking at memory. Ignore the memory test OK because it really only tests the first meg. If it was on full test it would take several minutes with a half gig.

Tennman

2003-09-06, 11:37 pm

I agree with azimuth40.In some systems if you have a Dimm with bad lower memory in slot 1, it will not boot.

rnrkenzie

2003-09-07, 2:19 am

Thanks for the response guys. I was thinking it could be the memory.
But I have never delt with the overclocking thing so I thought I ask for some input. Thanks again

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