Aptiva 2176 won't post

I just tried adding a second hd to my Aptiva 2176 and it wouldn't post; the power light went on, the cd-rom light went on, the hd light went (the yellow one) and then it power down. No beeps at all.

So I removed the second hd and tried again; still not. This happened to me once before for no known reason and I ran couflash.exe onto a floppy, put the floppy in the drive and it got it back up.

Now I'm stuck. This box is networked to two other boxes and has lots of data on the hd I want and need on a steady basis. So while I'm happy to give up on installing this second hd on the aptiva I am either going to find a solution to the box not working or take out the primary hd and try slaving it to one of my other boxes so as to get to the data.

Help!!

Marty

 

Try booting to the a: drive with Win98 boot disk or equal.

Check all connectors and plugs for full insertion. Some of my worst nightmares have been the result of a partially unplugged HDD that I caused by moving the cable while plugging in something else. Sometimes the simple stuff....

If no joy, try it again with the HDD unplugged.

Check for proper voltages on the power connector if you have some means of doing that.

If you can't boot to the A: drive, and power is good on the connector, then you may have a BIOS problem. You can try flashing it or replacing the chip.

Can you enter CMOS setup? If so, reset it to the default values.

Slaving the drive on another machine, as you mentioned, is something to consider before doing anything drastic that might risk the drive data.

Check with the maker of the HDD to see if a diagnostic utility is available for troubleshooting.

Post back any results and perhaps more ideas will come to mind.

There's an Aptiva Forum here if you think it may be an Aptiva specific problem. I don't think so, but it wouldn't hurt to post up there anyway.

 

Did you try the two button reset for your Aptiva?
http://www.pc.ibm.com/qtechinfo/DSET-3FZBZ5.html

 

Marty,

Do try all the connections. A slight bump to a connection could be the problem. Also check your CPU. Make sure that it is on tight and secure. At one time, I had a problem with starting my 2176 and it was a loose processor. Give it a try and let us know.

Mike

 

got it posting, now bios is hosed

Thanks to all for your responses. I couldn't get it posting nor into the bios or booting from the floppy, so I jump cleared the bios.

Now it posts, but...

First time I got 2 beeps

-> bad cmos battery
-> date and time incorrect

after exiting setup I got

-> disk i/o error
-> replace the disk, press any key

so I went into the bios and reset the date and time. Now what I get is

POST Startup Errors
--------------------

262 configuration change has occurred
162 configuration change has occurred
1802 Adaper card resource error
1800 Adaper card resource error

Not sure what to do from here.

Marty

 

For 2176 error codes. beeps and there meanings.

 

Marty,

Hopefully, Russ' link will give you somethings to try. Looking at some of the errors, you may want to remove and reinstall the memory. Not sure what to say about the IRQ issues. try the link and let us know how you make out.

Mike

 

I had to move on with this one, iow I slaved the aptiva hd to another machine and it's available to me again which was more important than getting that box working.

Of course I'd still like to get the aptiva going again. It appears to be a very sensitive bios that doesn't like anything to change and makes me regret everything I do on the inside of the box. Are aptiva's known for this?

Now that I removed the ide, it won't even power up (again), which means I'd have to jump clear the cmos just to get a post error.

What a pain.

Marty

 

When you get the time to play with the Aptiva you may find this page a help.