Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations derfloh on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

CMOS malfunction - System does not Boot! Help

Status
Not open for further replies.

Guest_imported

New member
Joined
Jan 1, 1970
Messages
0
I was installing Windows NT 4.0 just last night, but only finished installing half-way until it froze. When I rebooted the computer, it could recognize my CPU. So what I did was cleared the CMOS and then switched it back to the default. When I rebooted the computer, all I would hear was beeping noises, the monitor just staying black with no display, and lights from the keyboard turning on then off. Then, the floppy light stays on forever. What's going on?

joel
 
Well, bad news first, the CPU could possibly be history, or the motherboard, but let's not jump to any conclusions to soon. Best thing is to start taking stuff out. IE, strip everything out like PCI cards etc so you've just got your graphics card, motherboard, drives CPU etc left. With just the bare minumum of stuff in it, try and start it. If it starts then start putting bits back 1 at a time till it doesn't start, then you know the problem bit.

If you're down to just the bare minimum of stuff and t still won't work, try reseating the graphics card just in case it's that. You might also want to check all the cables and connections to make sure power's getting to where it should be going.

Still no joy? You said you tried clearing the CMOS, well, try it again, but take the battery out if possible and leave it out for about 15 minutes then stick it back. Still nothing? Try and beg/borrow/steal a similar CPU from someone, stick it in see if it boots.

If not it's most likely the motherboard. Not a very accurate diagnosis I'm afraid but hopefully you should narrow it down from there. The beeps it makes usually correspond to a specific error code, so it could be worth checking in your motherboard manual or on the manuf's website what the certain beeps mean. However, if your motherboards gone poof then they could be a bit misleading.

Hope some of that helps you diagnose the problem! Good luck with it! :-)
 
Sound adive from xscape. To add:

If you are getting POST beeps then the motherboard could be ok. Count them (the long and the short). Try booting without any memory and see if the beeps change, if they don't then try some fresh memory.

Try
for beep codes for your BIOS.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top