computer posts then shuts down

My old workstation is a mess. It all started when I had to remove the secondary slave HD to send back for replacement. The OS then stopped booting.

Since then I've tried pulling devices off and at this point when I turn the machine on I hear a beep - presumably for post, no display and a second or two later it powers itself off.

The mobo is an AOpen AX6L with the Award R1.5 BIOS chip. Before it got this bad I thought it was displaying a Bios version of 1.0 and I wonder if somewhere along the line it flashed the bios down. Is that possible?

So I've got the 1.5 version on a floppy but it won't try to read it.

Not sure what to do at this point.

Marty

 

Can you get into the BIOS?

Can you boot a boot floppy? i.e. take Windows out of the equation and see if you can simply boot a dos os floppy. You might have to get into your BIOS to modify your boot order but this is something you need to find out.

If you can't even boot a DOS floppy, it would appear that your problem is hardware-related....and at least that's a start.

You mean bios version? If so, I wouldn't be worrying about flashing your bios at this point.

You could do a CMOS reset/clear with the CMOS clear jumper (make sure your PC is unplugged) just for kicks and grins. Then go into the BIOS and "LOAD DEFAULTS ". But the first thing I'd do is see if you can boot a DOS floppy or not (www.bootdisk.com).

And I'm assuming you're trying to boot a PC here, not your toaster, right?

Gary

 

I don't think it is even showing the startup screens.

When you removed the HDD you may have dislodged some connectors. They could be the cable connectors for the main drive, cable connectors at the motherboard, the RAM sticks and even the floppy drive connectors. The BIOS will be trying to communicate with those pieces of hardware. You will need to pull out and reseat the connectors.

Check the CPU fan is spinning freely and there are no large quantities of dust in the heatsink fins (don't remove the heatsink from the CPU chip, but you may be able to remove the fan to clean the fins). Shutdowns can be due to high CPU temperatures.

Matt

 

Mattman's right, it starts up and shuts down with no display after just a few seconds. Considering that at this point the only things I have plugged into the mobo are the floppy, which isn't being read, and the pci video card, how do you suggest I proceed?

Marty