Temperamental Boot Up

[jemmo]

When I start my PC, power comes on, and that's it.
It doesn't even get as far as trying to boot from the A: drive.
All you hear is the fan on the power supply, and the fan on the processor. No other whirrings or clicks.
The green power light is full on, as is the red led indicating hard drive action is on constantly.
The only solution is to switch off the power at the socket.

I have reseated the processor, changed ribbon cables over, given the PCI cards a gentle wiggle, but there is nothing I can put my finger on to say 'that's what the problem is'.

It's going to be something pretty fundamental, and I was wondering if anyone has had similar experiences, or whether the symptomns are pointing to a major component failure?

I am running a PIII600, with 256MB RAM, W98SE. Would any other info be any use?
(Got it working mow though - obviously - but it is so unreliable)

[Gecko]

These types of startup problems are sometimes hard to track down.
It could be a number of things like power supply, video card, ram or the motherboard.

Are you getting any beeps when the system fails to boot?

[jemmo]

I get a faint beep - not as loud as when it boots properly.
I don't want to turn it off now it's running.

[PCguy]

Have you checked to see if there is a latest BIOS for your mother board?

[icecube]

Try clearing the cmos.

Open up the computer and right next to the battery there is usually two or three pins with two of them connected with a jumper. And it usually has clearcmos printed on it in some abbreviated form. On some motherboards, its two solder points that you ground with the tip of a screw driver. The motherboard manul can be a great help here.

After you clear the cmos, you'll have to go back into the bios and reset everything.

[Geekgirl]

What's on the monitor? Anything, a cursor, an error ?

You obviously can get it working "sometimes". So Im thinking something is loose or not seated properly on the motherboard.

Check to see all the IDE calbes are tightly fitted and all the cables are connected firmly.

Can you physically see the fans on the cpu and the psu spinning?
Try not to mistake fans spinning when in fact it's a case fan.

[jemmo]

Hmmmm...........clearing CMOS and updating/resetting the BIOS.........I don't really want to go there. This is where you can REALLY mess things up right?
I wouldn't know where to get BIOS update from in any case.

The fan on the CPU is definately spinning. As is the fan on the power supply.
There is nothing on screen - just black.
I have reseated all of the cables, but not all of the cards.

One thing I have noticed recently though, is that now and again the screen will freeze for a few seconds. Then after it has had a rest, it will catch up with whatever you were typing. It made me think when Gecko mentioned Video Card. The card is a Matrox Millenium Flex 3D (which is coupled to a Matrox RT2000 (it just froze again as I was typing) video editing card).

To get it to boot, the current process is
1. Switch on.
2. Working okay?
3. No.
4. Remove plug from mains socket.
5. Insert mains plug to power socket.
6. Repeat until Step 3 result is 'Yes'.
(took me 15 mins this morning - first time I got it going it loaded everything - and then said 'Going to sleep' and turned itself off)

donchajuslovecomputers!

[Geekgirl]

Can you boot into Safe Mode?
The "Going to Sleep" you mentioned makes me think something is not correctly set in your Power Management Properties.
Boot into Safe Mode, then go into your Display Properties. Screen Saver tab, then at the bottom in the Energy Saving features click settings.
Make sure the Power Scheme is set to Home/Office Desk.
Now click the Advanced tab, and where it says Power Buttons make sure when you press the power button on my computer it is set to Shutdown not Standby.

Let us kno

[jemmo]

The 'Going to sleep' message is in the monitor. I don't this it's any reflection of power settings in the machine. It took me 20 mins earlier to get it to boot, and after I put in the pasword for McAfee Admin and the PC loaded all the desktop icons, it just shut down again. And it took me another 20 mins at least to get it power up properly again.

I think I'm going to try and get an updated BIOS. Do you know if it will load automatically or will it need to be configured?

Failing that, I'm going to have to find the time to take it all apart and refit all the cards.

Failing that, I feel like throwing the damned thing in a skip!

[Geekgirl]

I apologize I misunderstood the going to sleep message.....

Have you tried to disable Mcfee at boot to see if thats the program that may be causing a problem?
Can you boot successfully in Safe Mode?

[jemmo]

Yes I thought about disabling McAfee.

I can boot in safe mode - if I can get it to boot. I am just reluctant to power down at the moment while it is up and running.

I'll try it later (or tomorrow) and let you know what happens.

Cheers.

[Geekgirl]

Hmmm after re-reading everything in this thread i think Im heading in the wrong direction.

If your not making it past the post I'm betting its your processor or memory that is failing.
The only way to resolve this problem is remove the offending device and replace with another. If it persists, it may be the socket or the slot. If thats the case the mobo will need replaced.

[jemmo]

I'm just looking through the mobo manual (again) and reading up on memory.
It says;

Fot 66MHz host bus CPU's use 12ns or faster DIMM module.
For 100MHz host bus CPU's use 10ns or faster and PC-100 compliant modules.

I'm going to take the manual to a computer shop tomorrow and make sure I have the right kind of RAM. But how do find out whether I have a 66MHz or 100MHz host bust CPU?

[Geekgirl]

BIOS should tell you what frequency you are running at. Im betting its 100MHz with a PentiumIII 600 but you should double check.

[jemmo]

Just noticed the RAM in the PC is 256MB PC133, but my mobo book says to install PC100 RAM. Could this be causing problems - only 256 shows in the properties window of My Computer, yet I have 2 sticks.