boot, reboot or restart problems

I'm running wind98se,IWILL ka266plus board, wd hd, simple tech ddr ram, dvd rom drive, Aopen Nvidia GF2Ti video adaptor and a standard fd. Problem... Computer will boot when cold MOST of the time. It will not do a restart or a hard restart( if necessary) MOST of the time. System will POST(single beep) on a good boot and will not POST on a bad boot. When the computer will not POST, there are no beeps heard. I have replaced the power supply with a better one than was orginally installed. A KINGWIN 350W unit. Old one was a POWMAX 350w. This change was at the recommendation of the IWILL tech support group. Seems that better supplies have better watts than cheap ones. This change did not alter the problem in any way. I'm at my witts end with ideas on what's going one with this computer. Can anyone give me some HEEEEELP???? Thanks

 

Hi

suspect the following:

keyboard connector

all ribbon cables & associated connectors (check all connectors seated OK and wiggle), ribbon cables themselves can fail after time, not expensive to try a new one

if you can get it running as far as scandisk with surface scan, set that going and wiggle gently along the ribbons - usually stops scandisk cold when you find the bad bit. You may lose data but if this is what's wrong then I'm afrid you probably already have

improperly seated RAM modules or other socketed chips

plugin cards - poor contact on the edge connectors

poor soldering on the chunky connectors like where the PSU wiring goes to the motherboard - rule of thumb: the thicker the pins the more likely a dry joint. Unfortunately you cannot generally see these without taking the whole shebang to bits. If you can look at the soldering and it shows signs of a ring around the pin you've likely found it...

the times when it doesn't boot OK, do you see the keyboard LEDs self test OK?

do you have documentation of the POST error beep codes pls? - might help rule a few things out
Good Luck, Hugh.

 

Private comment first - St Catherines nothing - MIT, CalPoly, RPI or Georgia Tech. Hehehe..............

Now to the bum boot ........ In addition to the above suggestions, You may want to head into your BIOS and set everything using the setup tab. Then recheck your processor speed or clock setting and don't change anything else. Now save your settings and try booting. If thats any better, post back and I'll send you to the definative guide on setting your bios for max performance. If you are shy or don't feel comfortable doing this, go through every page in your bios settings first and write down every setting before you reset using the default setup as suggested - then you can always change back.

Should you really mess up your setting and can't boot at all, you will need to disconnect the ATX power supply header connected to your motherboard and move your CMOS jumper to pins 2&3 for 4-5 seconds, then put the jumper back on 1&2 and reconnect the power supply to your MB. Now you can boot again.

Let us know how you make out. As an aside, incorrect memory settings will also cause exactly what you have described. You may want to try 3-6-3 while setting latency at 2.0 instead of 2.5

 

Hi bill1

I think I may have misfired a bit here; when you said

did you mean cold as in temperature, or cold as in from power-off, pls?

I was thinking hardware/temperature problems particularly as you said you changed the PSU... upon rereading though, not sure. But I think you can probably rule out my "worst case" which was a DJ on the motherboard's PSU connector; you would have altered the behaviour one way or the other by the action of unplugging old / replugging new PSU, almost certainly.

dry joints and naff ribbons - that sort of thing - have to be a bit suspect if the behaviour from power-off is inconsistent. Rockster's quite right about the memory though (Hi Rockster ), and seems to have a good suss on your BIOS...

...and batteries go dead so checking the BIOS is indeed indicated

has got to be a really good thing to do even/particularly if your PC's working OK

what would really help here is some idea of how the fault first manifested itself - like, did it creep up slowly or start suddenly? If suddenly, any clues tallying it to installing new hardware or software? Always helps getting the history...

If no "change" was been made to system - and the battery hasn't gone flat - then I would still have to plump for hardware.

Does this PC have any known valid POST outcome causing no beeps to be heard? This worries me a bit.

I will watch with interest to see how this one goes...

Good Luck All, Hugh

 

Thanks for the replies gentlemen...... I had checked all the plug-ins, I replaced the PS with a BETTER one, thinking the cheap one I had didn't have enough GOOD watts. I reseated the memory, the video adaptor, and replaced both IDE cables. Idid not do a reset of the CMOS. The unit would boot 99% of the time when it is cold. After warm-up and whatever you were working on required a reboot, you could guarantee yourself it would not do it. Computer would check the cd-rom, then it would go to sleep, or it would indicate POST (1 beep) begin with the very first boot-up screen, then freeze. The numlok would be on and frozen. This MoBo is about 3 months old and has been a problem since day one. After 4 or 5 tries and a lot of high BP, unit would boot all the way to windows. Finally, as a last resort, I was advised by the board manufacturer that a BIOS upgrade would solve the problems. So, after careful studying of this procedure and making double sure everything was letter perfect, I attempted the flash. Part of the flash was OK according to the color coded progress marks and some were indicating failure. So after 3 hours and when the warning message went away, I restarted with an attempt to go to setup for the rest of the flash procedure and unit would only check the cd-rom drive. It was dead..... I have contacted the IWILL tech group and am sending this THING back for repair or replacement...... Is it really worth it???? To top it off, I went to a local shop and bought a new ABIT board, installed it and it works like a champ!!!!! This proves that all hardware was OK, only the board has the problem. Lesson learned... On computer stuff, always BUY THE BEST........

 

Hi bill1

with the temperature dependence and the intermittency - it might very well be hardware - dry joint on motherboard somewhere, or (very close second) plated through hole (connect top track to bottom track) - which isn't plated through... (these are to find, they never go wrong when you're trying to faultbust them)

if either of these were indeed the case your course of action in changing the motherboard was surely correct

actually - whatever it was - thinking of the intermittency, your course of action in changing the motherboard was surely correct!

like Rockster says about knowing when to stop... life's too short to waste on this sort of grief...

don't they call cars like this "lemons" or something? when they aren't calling them something else rather rude, that is...

gotta go, glad you have it sorted - best wishes, also to Rockster, HJ