Tower trouble

V

Van Chocstraw

Guest
I have a computer that sometimes when I turn it on will continually seek
the harddrives, cd rom and floppy. The video never comes on and the
light keep blinking. Sometimes if I hold the start button down and shut
it down and restart it, it will come on and boot up. Other times I have
go give it a whack before it will come on. What should I be looking for
to remedy this?



--
<<//--------------------\\>>
Van Chocstraw
>>\\--------------------//<<
 
On Mon, 26 Jan 2009 10:25:05 -0500, Van Chocstraw wrote:
I have a computer that sometimes when I turn it on will continually seek
the harddrives, cd rom and floppy. The video never comes on and the
light keep blinking. Sometimes if I hold the start button down and shut
it down and restart it, it will come on and boot up. Other times I have
go give it a whack before it will come on. What should I be looking for
to remedy this?
Click to expand...
How old is this 'un-named' computer?

Does it run fine once it's up (and for how long?)

The motherboard back-up battery? Although, you should have received
warning messages at boot up prior to this....

A loose cable connector on the motherboard?
Gently unplug and reset all of them.

Jonesy
--
Marvin L Jones | jonz | W3DHJ | linux
38.24N 104.55W | @ config.com | Jonesy | OS/2
* Killfiling google & XXXXbanter.com: jonz.net/ng.htm
 
Allodoxaphobia wrote:
On Mon, 26 Jan 2009 10:25:05 -0500, Van Chocstraw wrote:
I have a computer that sometimes when I turn it on will continually seek
the harddrives, cd rom and floppy. The video never comes on and the
light keep blinking. Sometimes if I hold the start button down and shut
it down and restart it, it will come on and boot up. Other times I have
go give it a whack before it will come on. What should I be looking for
to remedy this?

How old is this 'un-named' computer?
Click to expand...
Not too old, A PC Chips K8 A31G motherboard with an AMD Sempron 64
1.8ghz and FSB 800mhz With OpenSuSE 11.1 running Gnome or W2k
Does it run fine once it's up (and for how long?)
Will run for days after is up with no problem. Never crashes.

The motherboard back-up battery? Although, you should have received
warning messages at boot up prior to this.... No

A loose cable connector on the motherboard?
Gently unplug and reset all of them.
Click to expand...
I'll try reseating everything,

Jonesy
Click to expand...

--
<<//--------------------\\>>
Van Chocstraw
>>\\--------------------//<<
 
I suspect the hard drive is on the verge of failing. There are, of course,
other possibilities.
 
One thing you might do is try to boot the machine from a DOS (or similar)
floppy. If it comes up reliably, you can eliminate most of the motherboard
problems.
 
Van Chocstraw wrote:

I have a computer that sometimes when I turn it on will continually seek
the harddrives, cd rom and floppy. The video never comes on and the
light keep blinking. Sometimes if I hold the start button down and shut
it down and restart it, it will come on and boot up. Other times I have
go give it a whack before it will come on. What should I be looking for
to remedy this?
Click to expand...
How old is it ?

Bad caps, failing PSU, failing mobo, you name it. The whack may indicate a
dry/cold solder joint or a lead-free one gone bad (tin pest / tin whiskers).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

Graham
 
Van Chocstraw wrote:

Allodoxaphobia wrote:
On Mon, 26 Jan 2009 10:25:05 -0500, Van Chocstraw wrote:
I have a computer that sometimes when I turn it on will continually seek
the harddrives, cd rom and floppy. The video never comes on and the
light keep blinking. Sometimes if I hold the start button down and shut
it down and restart it, it will come on and boot up. Other times I have
go give it a whack before it will come on. What should I be looking for
to remedy this?

How old is this 'un-named' computer?

Not too old
Click to expand...
How long is a piece of string ?

Graham
 
William Sommerwerck wrote:

I suspect the hard drive is on the verge of failing.
Click to expand...
That too. Backing up the entire drive with a cloning program (NOT Norton
<spit>) would be wise.


There are, of course, other possibilities.
Click to expand...
Potentially endless ones.

Graham
 
William Sommerwerck wrote:

One thing you might do is try to boot the machine from a DOS (or similar)
floppy. If it comes up reliably, you can eliminate most of the motherboard
problems.
Click to expand...
Hahahahaha !

Now he'll want to know how to make a boot floppy. What if his PC doesn't have
a floppy drive ? Darn useful things.

Graham
 
Van Chocstraw wrote:

I have a computer that sometimes when I turn it on will continually seek
the harddrives, cd rom and floppy. The video never comes on and the
light keep blinking. Sometimes if I hold the start button down and shut
it down and restart it, it will come on and boot up. Other times I have
go give it a whack before it will come on. What should I be looking for
to remedy this?
Click to expand...
A good, honest, competent repairman.

Graham
 
Now he'll want to know how to make a boot floppy. What if
his PC doesn't have a floppy drive ? Darn useful things.
Click to expand...
He does have one. He said so.
 
Van Chocstraw wrote:
I have a computer that sometimes when I turn it on will continually seek
the harddrives, cd rom and floppy. The video never comes on and the
light keep blinking. Sometimes if I hold the start button down and shut
it down and restart it, it will come on and boot up. Other times I have
go give it a whack before it will come on. What should I be looking for
to remedy this?
Click to expand...
I had the same bootup problem with my tower, but it would show up more
often
when it got cold in the room.(And after a good boot, would continue to
run and run.)
Seems that the power plug to my hard drive was intermittent (loose
internally).
Reseating usually made it boot up right away.
....I should just change the power plug and quit messing with it.

M.E.
 
Eeyore wrote:
Now he'll want to know how to make a boot floppy. What if his PC doesn't have
a floppy drive ? Darn useful things.
Click to expand...
A Freedos boot CD would probably suffice.

Dave
 
On Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:59:44 -0800, "William Sommerwerck"
<grizzledgeezer@comcast.net> wrote:

One thing you might do is try to boot the machine from a DOS (or similar)
floppy. If it comes up reliably, you can eliminate most of the motherboard
problems.
Click to expand...
Considering teh OP's complaint was that it would not power up, I'd
guess that the above reply is basically worthless.
 
In article <d6adnaL2SqVPSODUnZ2dnUVZ_jCdnZ2d@giganews.com>,
Van Chocstraw <boobooililililil@roadrunner.com> wrote:
I have a computer that sometimes when I turn it on will continually seek
the harddrives, cd rom and floppy. The video never comes on and the
light keep blinking. Sometimes if I hold the start button down and shut
it down and restart it, it will come on and boot up. Other times I have
go give it a whack before it will come on. What should I be looking for
to remedy this?
Click to expand...
Do you normally get a bios page before booting? If not it might be the
thing looking for the correct drive to boot from - that would account for
the searching. Can you set the bios to boot from HD only? If the searching
stops that might point to the problem. Which could be to do with the HD.
Or a million other things. ;-)

--
*Many people quit looking for work when they find a job *

Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.
 
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:

Van Chocstraw <boobooililililil@roadrunner.com> wrote:
I have a computer that sometimes when I turn it on will continually seek
the harddrives, cd rom and floppy. The video never comes on and the
light keep blinking. Sometimes if I hold the start button down and shut
it down and restart it, it will come on and boot up. Other times I have
go give it a whack before it will come on. What should I be looking for
to remedy this?

Do you normally get a bios page before booting? If not it might be the
thing looking for the correct drive to boot from - that would account for
the searching. Can you set the bios to boot from HD only? If the searching
stops that might point to the problem. Which could be to do with the HD.
Or a million other things. ;-)
Click to expand...
The CMOS might need shorting and reconfiguring. As you say, a million
possibles.

Graham
 
Hmmm, there was once a specific, odd problem very much like yours,
(but I never banged the enclosure to get it to run) with a AMD
pcChips' board
of the same era.
It turned out to be a defective diskette drive. Replacement allowed
this tower to consistently bootup.

M.E.

p.s. This is the first board that I came across in which the bios did
prevent a
bootup if the installed diskette drive was defective.
 
One thing you might do is try to boot the machine from a DOS
(or similar) floppy. If it comes up reliably, you can eliminate most
of the motherboard problems.

Considering the OP's complaint was that it would not power up,
I'd guess that the above reply is basically worthless.
Click to expand...
I would suggest that you actually read what the OP originally said, and the
initial responses.
 
Eeyore wrote:
William Sommerwerck wrote:

One thing you might do is try to boot the machine from a DOS (or similar)
floppy. If it comes up reliably, you can eliminate most of the motherboard
problems.

Hahahahaha !

Now he'll want to know how to make a boot floppy. What if his PC doesn't have
a floppy drive ? Darn useful things.

Graham
Click to expand...


Even _you_ should know that http://www.bootdisk.com has free
downloadable images for most Windows versions and other operating
systems.

Download the version you want, run it and insert a blank 1.44
floppy. When the program is done, the floppy is ready to use.

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There are two kinds of people on this earth:
The crazy, and the insane.
The first sign of insanity is denying that you're crazy.
 
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