Computer problems, need a bigger geek than I

[branman444]

thought about that but on a lot of new boards dont have any jumpers and there is no way im going to tell the dude to put a screw driver on his MB thats insane hope you dont rune it for sure. I work on Compaqs mostly and they have a nice little button. If that the case then definitely do that. Just a causion. Hope you get it working!!!

[digitard]

Its not insane by any means ... the solder points are the clear, and thats how you clear them.

If your not sure which set of pins it is you can refer to the manual on clearing the BIOS ...

The solder points are where the pins used to be, but with all the jumperless boards being released many motherboard manufacturers chose to just use solder points instead.

On a side note, if you have NO battery and NO power going into the board you could touch it anywhere with a screwdriver and not cause damage... as an FYI

I'm diggin' up the manual to your board now ... I'll give ya an image and some references on how to clear yours exactly in a few mins.

Sincerely,
Dave K

[digitard]

Alright, here we go ... On your particular board its the 3 pin jumper labelled CLR_CMOS in the image below. There should already be a jumper on 2 of those 3 pins ... remove the power and battery like I said above, and then move this jumper over 1 pin for approx 30 seconds, then put it back to where it was and reconnect the battery, and then the power.

<img src="http://www.plur2k.com/beta/clrcmos.jpg">

Hope that helps...

Sincerely,
Dave K

[branman444]

All in All Agreed!!! but id be kinda scared of telling that to someone that dont know alot about computers. (what if he left it plugged in )you can never be to carefull. The diag. should help him a lot though.

[bsusigep18]

wow...thanks for the advice. first off, i don't have a jumper on either of those areas...not sure why, but im guessing i just need a three-pin jumper to take care of it, right? which i can locate somewhere for the purpose of clearing my bios. am i correct?

[lopxtc]

If I am not mistakes cant he just gank the battery and wait a little bit LOL its how I use to bypass BIOS password on my buddies systems years ago

Aaron

[bsusigep18]

ok, im not exactly sure if i cleared the bios correctly, i took another two-pin jumper and set it at the setting that seemed appropriate, and im getting no beeps at all, with no ram or video installed. what now?

[branman444]

take it to a repair man....

[lopxtc]

Put the ram in and test it ...

Check the following;

1) Are the hard disks spinning? Look for activity light.
2) BIOS Beeps ... any or none ...

If your disks are spinning up, but you are getting no video, and no BIOS beeps then more then likely your CPU is bad. That was the problem I had on my system.


Aaron

[Miscue]

OMG. I don't know where you guys learned how to repair computers. The guesses you guys are making are... guesses. Anything could be wrong... you can't say that it's probably the CPU, or the MB... you have to troubleshoot to figure out what it is... could be bad floppy drive or keyboard preventing boot up for all you know. Sure, some things are more/less likely than others of course.

You do not need to remove your battery. The OLD OLD school way of clearing CMOS was to put the battery in backwards for a bit. This was a LONG time ago, and clear CMOS pins remove need to do this.

Yes, you can use a screwdriver, car key, etc. to short out whatever leads you want to short out. Turn off power from wall before clearing CMOS.

Make sure you have the motherboard properly mounted... no shorts.

Just try to get the board to boot. Take out all your cards and unplug your drives - including floppy. All you want on the board is the CPU+fan, memory, vid card, power from PS... the bare minimum. If this don't work, you have your bad part isolated to one or more of these parts.

[pbzmag]

Miscue is right. Last year I put my own system together and had the same exact problem as bsusigep18 is having. I had an Asus A7V266-E w/Athlon XP 1800+/256MB/40GB HD. When I powered it up, absolutely no booting at all. Mobo was getting power and the HD was spinning. There were no beeps and no video. After an hour of fiddling, I removed all non essential hardware and booted up again. It booted up, but I was still wondering what was causing the problem. It was then I plugged my old joystick and rebooted and the system wouldn't boot up. The joystick was from the early 90's and wouldn't work with my Asus mobo.


bsusigep18 - Reset your BIOS so that it goes back to the default. A bad BIOS setting can also cause the problems you're describing. If that doesn't work, take out all of your new cards and replace them with the old cards. Probably no need to remove the 400 watt PS. Clear the BIOS again and reboot. Your computer should bootup fine. If not, remove all non essential hardware like sound card, SCSI, NIC's, etc. Just have the original video card, monitor, mouse/keyboard, and the original stick of memory. Clear the BIOS and reboot. If it still not booting, one of the items in the pc is bad. Take out the cpu and check it for any burn marks or for a plastic smell. If you have one of those, the cpu is dead. Do the same with the memory and mobo. If it boot fine, turn off the pc and replace one card and reboot. Do this until it doesn't boot up. You found the culprit. Go back to the store you bought and get it replaced. If you still have problems, bring it to a computer store PCClub, CompUSA, or one of the smaller computer stores. Make sure that you bring it to a reputable store if taking it to one of the unknown shops. If anyone notice that I missed something, let me know. As a computer tech, I know what I'm doing but just don't write it down good.

pbzmag

[alkafluence]

Originally posted by Miscue
OMG.

Just try to get the board to boot. Take out all your cards and unplug your drives - including floppy. All you want on the board is the CPU+fan, memory, vid card, power from PS... the bare minimum. If this don't work, you have your bad part isolated to one or more of these parts.

OMG is right... I said this like 8 posts up


Just razzin' ya Miscue.

[Miscue]

Whoops. I'm sorry. You're gonna have to excuse me for being dumb... I've been doped up on painkillers...

[Miscue]

Originally posted by pbzmag
If you still have problems, bring it to a computer store PCClub, CompUSA, or one of the smaller computer stores.

Hehe... I used to be PC Club's youngest employee... funny you mentioned them. Most people have never heard of them.

I had the highest monthly profit margin out of every employee a few times. I also was their most productive technician a few times... I once single handedly did more revenue in tech work than any individual store with a full staff.

[CasingBill]

power supply?

Could he have a bad power supply? Once I had one go bad. It would make just enough noise and lights that i thought it was something else. Turns out it was not putting out the righ voltage it needed. Just a free thought.