Problems Booting

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Good morning/afternoon/evening fellow Loungers! Hope you can help me with a little problem my 2nd PC has recently developed. When I swicth on the system, it completes the POST, I get a single beep and then one of two things happen: 1) It totally freezes or 2) The IDE detection starts, completes & then the computer will reset itself and repeat the process until it freezes or I switch it off.

The system is a Soltek SL75DRV mobo, Athlon 2000XP, 1Gb 2700DDR (in 2 sticks), Radeon 9800 Pro, IBM Deskstar hdd, Liteon CDRW & DVDROM, and Audigy soundcard, currently running XP Pro, SP2

Dunno if it’s relevant or not, but the Deskstar was a replacement (under warranty) for another unit that went about a year ago.

Thanks guys.

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I think the first thing I’d try is to make sure nothing has wiggled loose inside – RAM, cards, cables, etc. To check your suspicion about the HDD you could disconnect it completely and try booting from a bootable floppy disk to see if everything in POST will complete and boot you to an A: prompt. If it were me, I think the next “easiest” thing to check would be taking out ONE of the RAM sticks to see what happens. Then of course, swap them to see if this process can identify a possible bad stick. Let’s see what others have to say…

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I think the first thing I’d try is to make sure nothing has wiggled loose inside – RAM, cards, cables, etc. To check your suspicion about the HDD you could disconnect it completely and try booting from a bootable floppy disk to see if everything in POST will complete and boot you to an A: prompt. If it were me, I think the next “easiest” thing to check would be taking out ONE of the RAM sticks to see what happens. Then of course, swap them to see if this process can identify a possible bad stick. Let’s see what others have to say…

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I’m with Al on this one. Strip out absolutely everything you can and see if you can boot to a floppy disk with only one memory stick, no hard dives, no optical drives and no PCI cards. If that works then add things back one at a time. If it doesn’t boot then at least we have reduced the number of possible faulty components.

StuartR

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Thanks guys- that’s what I was going to try but wondered if anyone had seen this sort of thing before that didn’t involve me ripping everything out first!

I’ll do it this weekend and let you know how I get on…

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Lyra

For “reduced ripping”, you could initially just ensure that all the cable plugs and add-in cards are pushed home hard into their sockets, and that the memory stick(s) are correctly positioned in their more annoyingly-complex sockets. This will ensure that you are not suffering from the dreaded thermal creep. (Oh, you know him?!)

If that doesn’t work, then previous posts offer better suggestions…

John

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Lyra

For “reduced ripping”, you could initially just ensure that all the cable plugs and add-in cards are pushed home hard into their sockets, and that the memory stick(s) are correctly positioned in their more annoyingly-complex sockets. This will ensure that you are not suffering from the dreaded thermal creep. (Oh, you know him?!)

If that doesn’t work, then previous posts offer better suggestions…

John

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Thanks guys- that’s what I was going to try but wondered if anyone had seen this sort of thing before that didn’t involve me ripping everything out first!

I’ll do it this weekend and let you know how I get on…

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I’m with Al on this one. Strip out absolutely everything you can and see if you can boot to a floppy disk with only one memory stick, no hard dives, no optical drives and no PCI cards. If that works then add things back one at a time. If it doesn’t boot then at least we have reduced the number of possible faulty components.

StuartR

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Beep codes for most motherboards are docuemnted at Bios Central. Check there for hints before you start taking the machine apart.

Joe

--Joe

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Thanks Joe, but the POST is fine. Single beep, then goes onto IDE detection (have a removable hdd caddy so auto-detect IDE drives on each boot) before restarting and going into a loop of POST, detect, reboot…

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Thanks Joe, but the POST is fine. Single beep, then goes onto IDE detection (have a removable hdd caddy so auto-detect IDE drives on each boot) before restarting and going into a loop of POST, detect, reboot…

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Update for everyone who replied to my original post. The problem is now sorted- it seems like a dodgy PSU was to blame. It was a cheap Q-Tec unit that was the only one available in the shop. I replaced it yesterday with a shiny new 600W Jeantech unit and now everything is working tickety-boo!

Thanks again for all the suggestions.

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Hey, thanks for THAT update, Lyra. Isn’t it amazing how many times (here in The Lounge) that an obscure problem gets solved by a PS replacement, including me at least once. Good luck.

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Al – I wouldn’t describe you as an obscure problem.

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Gggrrrrrrr…

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Glad to read you got it resolved. Does this mean you get to rest easy over the holidays?

Joe

--Joe

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Rest? What’s that? I have a family that think ‘rest’ is everybody else….

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Rest? What’s that? I have a family that think ‘rest’ is everybody else….

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