Un....BELEIVABLE!!!!!!

[Cloudy]

Been there, seen it happen (still do).
If no beep is heard, you've got a problem there (ooh, ain't I great ha ?)
You must start by a reset to your MB, take off the battery, wait for 15minutes and put it back.
Try to restart, and reconfig your bios.
If it still doesn't work, you propably have a hardware problem. I'v seen it happen because of bad memory contact and bad cpu contact. Try removing all Slot dwellers on your board, clean them and re-insert, then try to boot up again.
Playing with your bios settings won't harm your system hardware in *most cases*.
Good luck pal...


------------------
Cloudy
Asus P2B-DS, 2 x Celeron 400@75Mhz, 128Mb Ram, Xitel Storm Platinum,
2 x IBM 4.3Gb scsi,IBM 22GB IDE, Pioneer DVD ROM scsi, G400 32MB DH (Oc to 150/200).

[Jorden]

I go with all the ones going for the monitor.

Have you tried to lift the cable that attaches to your videocard?? If you see an image on the screen then, it is a broken cable. If your monitor doesn't have a cable you can detach from the back of your monitor, then all you can do is either have it repaired by someone who knows what he's doing, or buy a new monitor.

Also possible: unplug the cable from the videocard, and check the pins in the connector. Is any of them bend or missing?? There should be a couple of them missing, okay, but do you miss any of the pins in the connector that should be there???

A bent pin can be straightened using some tweezers or a fine pair of tongs. Do be carefull not to break it!!!

If one is missing, then you could try to rebuild the connector. Easier again is a new cable, but then again, if the cable cannot be detached from the back of the monitor....

Jorden.

[This message has been edited by Jorden (edited 01 November 1999).]

[cswan]

LAMFDTK: Dude, don't tell people they don't know what they're talking about if you don't.

Look up the term 'EPROM' and figure out its connection (and lack thereof) to the battery, K?

[merchant2112]

hey i hate intergrated video cards (built inn to mobo) we have two dells at work that we have to use an extrnal video card on and the dam onboard will not turn off (dell desided to use a software swich in the bios ) any way the dam thing won't turn off winblow still detects them and screwswith the output. dell sucks

[LAMFDTK]

cswan, take out your battery in your MOBO and put it back for me....

yes wrong wording on my part I meant CMOS

[This message has been edited by LAMFDTK (edited 01 November 1999).]

[Guyver]

Taking out the battery will do *NOTHING* except to allow the contents of the CMOS/EEPROM to disipate and reset (usually) to factory defaults. This should allow a safe boot (using a monitor attached to the integrated video card connector) - make certain that the Matrox add-in card is out of the system if you do this - as it will probably add to the confusion after a CMOS reset.

also, date, time, fd, hd and other params will need to be reset in the CMOS after this procedure....

This will *NOT* harm your system or erase any programming of PROMS/EEPROMS. It will just clear the seemingly bolluxed settings.

Guyv

[LAMFDTK]

CMOS SETTING information is usually stored in a memory chip and retained by using a small electrical charge provided by a battery installed on the motherboard. If the battery power fails, all CMOS information vanishes.

Is this the reason that there is a JUMPER that is set, for the replacment of a battery? Is this only for the "personnal settings" that you have chosen in your bios? Not the "factory" settings?

Hey I might very well be DEAD f%^Kin wrong here on the battery issue. But this is somthing that I would not screw with. Without the Jumpers set properly.


[This message has been edited by LAMFDTK (edited 01 November 1999).]

[Vic]

Razzle,

Have you tried another Monitor??

[Jorden]

(2nd time I try to type this... why doesn't this window remember my name and password, and why doesn't it remember what I typed when I press the back-button ... grrrrrrrrrr)

LAMFDTK:

Removing the CMOS battery can be done without harm, although you don't want to power up without it. No jumpers need to be set or unset either.

Why? Because you don't need to power up. The CMOS is held in memory by this battery, you're right. Removing the battery will flush the CMOS. Anytime between 30 seconds and 2 minutes will do, 15 minutes is a bit too much.

You can also flush the CMOS by jumpers. Cap or remove a jumper (depending on the mobo), boot up, shut down and uncap or recap the jumper (depending on mobo again). By powering up with that jumper set you will flush the mobo, the battery won't be harmed this time.

Third option is to Load Default Settings at every screen in the BIOS of the mobo, save changes and reboot.

But saying that removing the battery without setting jumpers properly is wrong, is wrong on your part. For you won't power up your PC after you have removed the battery, so no BIOS will see what changed on the mobo. All you do is flush the CMOS, temporarily held in that EEPROM, by the current of that battery.
Battery gone... EEPROM loses the memory.

(Although I'm not sure at this moment if it's a plain EPROM or an EEPROM)

What you should do is either disconnect your PC from the wall-socket, before you even touch the battery. Especially us fools who leave our PCs at standby

And also handy is to touch the metal frame of the PC, before you go rummaging in the insides of the PC. Static Electricity !!!



Jorden.

[Guyver]

Most newer systems will default to a mode where the HD's are auto-detected - and unless you are using HD's from an older system that used an overlay program to get larger than 500MB you should be fine this way. Then all that's left is to fine-tune your settings to give you what you want - whether that be performance, stability or some balance of the two...

Wiping the settings does not mean that you have to be a rocket scientist to get your system back up. If someone has told you that, then they were probably just trying to get you to pay them some extra moolah to do some very simple procedures...

Guyv

[LAMFDTK]

I stand corrected. I have had a battery/MOBO Phobia for years and I guess I did not know what the Hell I was talking about Now, I stand corrected, and humbled by the greater knowledge of others that actually read the directions.............

[Jorden]

We all learn LAMFDTK

That's what we're here for on these forums, or most of us anyway

Jorden.

[Scytale]

Looks like Razzle plugged his monitor cable in and then decided to call it a week

[rylan]

Somehow I still doubt it could be the monitor, since he said his systme doesn't even beep or do anything but spin up the hard drive (which only requires a good power supply). I'd love to be wrong though, since thats a lot better than whatI'm still thinking it is.. a dead mobo or fried cpu/memory.

Anyway, With all the confusion about the cmos/eeproms I thought I'd pitch in.

Jordan: Since you asked, the motherboards use a EEPROM (electrical-erasable programable read only memory) as opposed to an EPROM, since the EPROM needs to be bit with UV light to erase its data, whereas the EEPROM only needs a certain voltage level to reset and program.
Also, CMOS stands for Complementary Metal-Oxide Silicon, and is just the name of the transistor gate logic used in the chip to store the bios settings
Just some info incase anyone was interested.

[Marshmallowman]

If still trying to sort things out

1.make sure your moniter still works.
2.remove all cards and drives, put in a known good video card.
3.reseat ram (check jumper etc)
4.try different ram , try ram in another computer etc
5.try with another power supply

if stilll no luck then it probably is your motherboard or CPU

7. test cpu in differnt computer.

if the mobo has problems, you have on last alternative(chance)

8.make an emergency bios recovery disk.
deppending mobo this may be a floppy containing a bios image renamed to something xxxx.bin(check mobo maunfactuer) and/or a batch file to run bios flash program awdflash..etc

If this fails then you can panic.. breaking the mobo in half at this point may releive some stress
Then and buy a new mobo, get a good brand this time.