PC advise

[James5]

I am after some advice I have been having some problems with my desktop PC for about a year now and the original problem was it would not read all the ram slots on the motherboard, So i recently obtained a tried and tested OEM motherboard to what my original spec motherboard was, all is good the Bios reads all the Ram slots now but thats all i get the pc will not boot it just hangs on the bios model screen then it will turn itself off???

Any ideas as to what it could be, before changing the motherboard over all compnents worked except for 1 of the ram slots.

[Shane P]

Is the hard disk being registered correctly in the BIOS?

Correct boot sequence?

Any error messages?

Hard drive plugged in the correct slot on the board?

Jus thought i'd mention the simple things first

[DaveMayGTT]

I would clear CMOS as a starting point with the jumper on motherboard and see what happens after that. Could try loading fail safe settings first.
If that doesnt work strip it to bare minimum, 1 stick of RAM, no add in cards, dont even need to have a HDD connected and see what happens like that.
Add stuff in till it goes wrong again if that helps.

[James5]

I would clear CMOS as a starting point with the jumper on motherboard and see what happens after that. Could try loading fail safe settings first.
If that doesnt work strip it to bare minimum, 1 stick of RAM, no add in cards, dont even need to have a HDD connected and see what happens like that.
Add stuff in till it goes wrong again if that helps.

#

Hi Dave,

many thanks for ther advice, I have tried it with the IDE DVD drive disconnected and the HDD SATA connection disconnected also but it just gets to the bios screen and dies.

The HDD and DVD drive when plugged in all register fine in the BIOS screen, I get no error messages at all. I can't even get up to the safe boot screen at all i have tried 1 stick of ram but the motherboard I have requires the only 2 slots to have 2 sticks in otherwise it doesn't register any ram at all.

I will check the boot sequence settings and then will try to find out how to do a CMOS reset for the board i have and were the jumper is located.

The PC isn't the best of specs it abouts 5+ years old now it is an oldish Packard Bell Intel dual core

[James5]

Is the hard disk being registered correctly in the BIOS? YES

Correct boot sequence? YES - but will double check again

Any error messages? NO

Hard drive plugged in the correct slot on the board? YES - SATA 1

Jus thought i'd mention the simple things first

Cheers

[DaveMayGTT]

It wont be too hard to find the jumper, look for the CMOS battery and it will be close to that normally. Make sure kettle lead it out the power supply and keep the jumper on the other pins for a good 30 secs to be absolutely sure its done. If you cant even get into the bios to load fail safes thats about your only option left.

[James5]

It wont be too hard to find the jumper, look for the CMOS battery and it will be close to that normally. Make sure kettle lead it out the power supply and keep the jumper on the other pins for a good 30 secs to be absolutely sure its done. If you cant even get into the bios to load fail safes thats about your only option left.

Dave, many thanks will try that tonight when I get home, of the top of my head there are 2 jumpers on the motherboard 1 as you say next to the battery and the other next to the bios chip itself.

[DaveMayGTT]

It will most likely be a 3 pin jobby next to the battery, hope that sorts it!

[phase i 16 v turbo]

In the old days we use to short the battery out.

[James5]

In the old days we use to short the battery out.

I remeber those Days Mike back when I was at college doing pc repairs a bit out of touch now. At college I was working on the 486 processor, and pentium 133mhz was the highest spec at the time and MMX technology had just started to come out now look at it all.

[phase i 16 v turbo]

I remeber those Days Mike back when I was at college doing pc repairs a bit out of touch now. At college I was working on the 486 processor, and pentium 133mhz was the highest spec at the time and MMX technology had just started to come out now look at it all.

You where lucky 486, while I was working on the old 8086. Showing our age now.

[James5]

You where lucky 486, while I was working on the old 8086. Showing our age now.

[Scoff]

my first PC was an IBM 8086 with 5mb hard drive, using "stacker" I had about 9mb before that I had been a BBC master nutter, before that it I had an acorn electron. am I going back far enough ?

[Penfold aka The Dealer]

I had a 386, 486 and a Intel P133, think i still have 2 in the garage, also had an Amiga 500, with 1mb ram upgrade... the 1mb ram is the size of a brick!!

[James5]

Ok reset the CMOS I can enter the bios as before but the pc still only goes to the screen were you can select to go into the bios if you leave it there for a min or 2 it turns itself off????
There is no safe mode option in my bios anywhere?

[DaveMayGTT]

Theres normally a load fail safe defaults but reseting the CMOS should do it.
Bit desperate but some boards react differently, your cpu fan is plugged into the cpu fan header?
I do have a motherboard processor and RAM spare, its nothing amazing, an athlon 64, 1 or 2gb of RAM and a DFI board with pci express or MSI board with AGP. Its been sat around for a long time but i imagine it will be just fine.
Let me know if its any use to you.

[James5]

Theres normally a load fail safe defaults but reseting the CMOS should do it.
Bit desperate but some boards react differently, your cpu fan is plugged into the cpu fan header?
I do have a motherboard processor and RAM spare, its nothing amazing, an athlon 64, 1 or 2gb of RAM and a DFI board with pci express or MSI board with AGP. Its been sat around for a long time but i imagine it will be just fine.
Let me know if its any use to you.

The weird thing is I have just plugged my old motherboard back in and all is good apart from it only using 1/2 the ram. I am on it now, but it's just strange how a brand new unopened OEM motherboard doesn't work> I have spoken with the place I got it from and they are going to have a look at the board and test it for me with the same spec stuff I am using.

Many thanks for all your help peeps

Whilst we are on the subject how to peeps use the TV's as a PC display as I have a 42" LCD or plasma thing with a VGA port. Do I need to do something to any settings?? or is it plug and play???

[DaveMayGTT]

Its slightly different depending on what graphics card you have and what you want to achieve. Do you want it as a clone of your current display so you can flick over to it when you want to sit back or do you want it as an extended second desktop you can drag stuff over to? I have mine set up as extended desktop so I can watch films on the TV while the girl friend has a look on the internet on main monitor and such like.

Check if you have a second VGA output or DVI or HDMI, if so just plug in and enable the second monitor in your driver settings

[James5]

Its slightly different depending on what graphics card you have and what you want to achieve. Do you want it as a clone of your current display so you can flick over to it when you want to sit back or do you want it as an extended second desktop you can drag stuff over to? I have mine set up as extended desktop so I can watch films on the TV while the girl friend has a look on the internet on main monitor and such like.

Check if you have a second VGA output or DVI or HDMI, if so just plug in and enable the second monitor in your driver settings

Feck the Mrs's I just want to use the 42" TV for the PC, just managed to sort it out on my old Nvidia 7950GTx2 graphics card, shame it will only display 1024 x 768 any bigger and I loose any picture at all.

Loving RTOC on big Screen

[James5]

Well sorted the problem out turned out my original motherboard had a knackered ram slot, the replacement OEM motherboard had a power supply problem on the board and the 3rd new motherboard is running perfect.

Many thanks to everyone for your help and advice