PC WILL NOT BOOT....URGENT !

[kwunder]

My mate has a problem with his PC. Last week, he found every time he switched on his PC, it would not boot up. All drive lights came on and stayed on. He took it to a local reapair shop, who told him his mother board had died, and so he had to fork out for a new one. He upgraded his processor at the same time. He kept his original HD and got his upgraded PC back on Friday. It worked fine all weekend, but tonight, while saving some stuff to his CD Writer, the PC stopped responding. It would not shut down and the CTRL ALT DEL wouldn't work either. He had to pull out the plug as he says the reboot button wouldn't work either. Then The PC will not fire up again, just as it wouldn't prior to the upgrade.
My initial suspicions are that the HD is faulty, and that the PC repair shop has hoodwinked him into buying a new mobo & processor, when all along it was just the HD.

Any ideas urgently needed

Thanks in advance
kwunder

 

[jogairan]

What about the power supply? has that been changed too?

 

[Ragol1]

Could be a number of things from HDD to bad cards to Power Supply.
Is the bios accessable?
The repair place should have checked all these things B4 they decided on a new MB but as you say its an easy sale..
Good luck
P.s
Do you hear the drive spinning when you boot and what about bios beeps?

Nick
MCSE A+

 

[kwunder]

Just been in touch with my mate.

Jogairan : Yes. It's a new power supply.

Nick : He says that when he presses the start button, he can hear a little bit of HD activity, followed by the CD ROM drive spinning, but there is no output to the monitor, and then it just locks.

thanks for your time
kwunder

 

[Ragol1]

If he doesnt get any Video he may want to check that first see if he can get hold of any PCI or AGP card you dont really want to buy one as it may not be the problem.

Also if he has had the board changed has he changed RAM all pc133 is backward compatable but some pc100 wont work in new boards
Just another idea.
Its really a elimination process start with video and memory if he wants to check the drive just take it out and put it in a working P.C and see if it boots

 

[kwunder]

We'll see if we can get hold of a video card to try in it. I don't think it's the ram as it worked fine for three days.

He's not to clever with PC's. I shall have to nip to his house and have a look because he says after the initial boot sequence, there is NO activity. Am I correct in thinking that the PC would boot normally even if the video adapter was faulty ? as he thinks there is not enough sound coming from the HD after the first few seconds and so he doesn't think any of the startup app's are loading.

Thanks Nick
kwunder

 

[AlexIT]

I had this happen with PnP PCI cards in NT4.0. Pull the modem, NIC, and maybe sound cards. Then the PC should boot and you can shut down, add one card, restart until all cards are back in place. It had to do with the esrd (sp?) file becoming corrupt/erased and two cards trying to start using the same IRQ at the same time during the boot cycle. Putting the cards in one at a time allowed each card to claim an IRQ and the next card to know this was already taken during the next restart.

Alex

 

[kwunder]

hmmmmm.

I still can't explain why everything was OK for three days, then without change, it ceased to function.

kwunder

 

[AlexIT]

If the esrd (sp?) file, that is where the IRQ allocations becomes corrupt/erased it is possible that two cards then try to use the same IRQ at the same time. Since no card has been assigned this IRQ in the esrd file, both cards think it is available for their use. Then they fight over this single IRQ during the boot cycle, causing the PC to lock.

Alex

 

[steveman]

Basic trouble shooting technique is to remove all pci cards, disconnect all drives, floppy, cd-rom and hard drives. Disconnect from mb reseat video card, memory and processor.
Disconnect all power to all peripherals reseat power to MB.
Reconnect k/b mouse and monitor. Restart computer. You should if MB, memory and p/s and video card are good, you should see video bios on screen and then cmos bios. If you do not see this, bring unit back to where they replaced board. If you see bios on screen, turn off reseat floppy drive cable to mb and power to drive, insert startup disk in floppy and power up. The computer should boot. Next turn off and reseat hard drive cable to mb and power to drive, take out floppy disk and power up. First check all cmos settings are correct and bios sees hard drive. Next reboot Computer. If all is ok shutdown and start adding each peripheral at a time rebooting and shutting down after each peripheral attachment. Now do the same with each additional pci card. If computer does not boot after an install then you know which is bad.

Good luck
smandel@ecmelec.com

 

[kwunder]

steveman,
Tried all that overnight and he say's no good so it's back to the shop for a confrontation.

Thanks all. I'll post the outcome

kwunder

 

[kwunder]

Sorted. Returned it to shop, who said that they had had a recall from the mobo supplier as they were a faulty batch. Replaced with new board and it works fine.

Thanks all
kwunder