Not booting past POST

[Jobos]

I’ve got an XP machine that for 50% of the time will not boot past POST. When it happens the machine will just sit there with the power light on and no video output. Ctrl + Alt + Del has no effect neither does pressing the reset button on the case. When in this state the only way to boot is to power down the machine then power back up. I’ve changed the power supply and reset the BIOS. Any ideas what else to try?

[sparkeh]

Hmm tried reseating the RAM? Or different RAM?

 

Do you have onboard gfx or a card? Vaguely remember a similar problem where my gfx card was knackered..

[SYNACK]

Try reseating all add on cards and upgrading the BIOS to the latest version.

[Jobos]

Thanks, I'll try that and see what happens

[CHR1S]

The symptoms you describe are normally PSU/Power problems, did you swap the PSU for an old one or did you buy a new one?

There is also a possibility that the PSU could be underpowerd, do the drives and fans spin up or just lights only?

 

Also double check the main P1 power plug and smaller P4 (if its a newer PC) are seated properly.

 

The fact your not getting any post beeps could also mean a dead cpu but as its tempremental we can almost rule that out but it could be that the CPU isnt getting enough power on a cold boot to run the post/bios.

 

Hope that gives you something to go on?

 

Chris

[CHR1S]

Also, if your GFX are onboard you need RAM to post, so try another RAM stick if you have onboard. Edited June 23, 2008 by -Chris-
spellong

[Jobos]

Thanks. I reseated the ram but it made no difference. Lucky I had a new stick of ram spare so that’s now installed and so far I haven’t been able to recreate the problem which is a good sign. I’ll know more on Wednesday when I’m back in school.

[Little-Miss]

Hmm, interesting.

 

When i had a similar problem i replaced the PSU and that sorted it. Interested to hear if the RAM chage actually fixed it.

[FN-GM]

Do you have IDE optical or hard drives?

[Jobos]

Yes all the drives are IDE as the machine is around 4 years old.

[ICT_GUY]

PSU is a prime suspect. Also run memtest x86 that will spot bad ram, leave it running over night.

[FN-GM]

Try changing the IDE channel, one or two of ours have started doing this because of a dodgy IDE channel

[Jobos]

Update so far.

 

To recap the machine has a new PSU and new RAM and when I switched it on Wednesday morning the dam thing wouldn’t POST. There are no add-on cards at all and I removed the IDE cables just to rule them out. I was now ready to scrap the machine so in a fit of madness I removed the CPU and refitted it. It's been ok since so fingers crossed that’s it.

 

Thanks for all the help and suggestions.

[Michael]

It is pointing to a cold boot problem, which unfortunately means the motherboard itself is probably on its way out.

 

It is good practice to re-seat all components, such as memory and your graphics card etc... but if the problem keeps coming back, then you'll probably find it'll go to computer heaven at some point.