Strange Boot/CMOS Issue

E

Edwe

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I've been having this issue intermittently for about 6 months and it's driving me nuts. Every couple of days my 3 year old PC is no longer able to boot. I switch it on and nothing happens - not even the BIOS seems to load, I just get a blank screen and the drives alternately become active for a second or so (like the computer is looking for some disk to boot from). Now for the part I find strange: invariably the only solution is to unplug the power cord, remove the CMOS battery, wait 30 seconds and then replace everything and start up again. Solves the problem every single time, but only for a couple of days. What is happening? I can't understand how even a flat CMOS battery could cause a complete failure to boot. :confused: Is the CMOS data being corrupted? Could it really just be the battery?
 
I had a PC like that one, is it a Gigabyte SiS socket 478 motherboard by any chance?
 
I would upgrade the BIOS IMHO...
Even if the CMOS battery was going flat it will only reset the BIOS to default values, which means the PC will boot. You already determining that by taking the battery out...

Good luck
 
Intel G965 "Shrewsbury", 6CH Audio, 1Gb LAN, 1394, VGA GMA X3000 - mATX?

Check with intel if your CPU is supported for your board as they tend to be quite picky.

Short of plugging a diagnostic card in the troubleshooting can end being a costly exercise
i.e. PSU, Ram, CPU swap out and testing.
 
Just another thing, i have seen this kind of thing numerous times with faulty RAM.
It takes a while of heating up for it to become responsive.

If you have 2 sticks, remove 1, if you only have 1 then try with something else.

Or try booting up without RAM and see if you get anywhere before the BEEPING makes you mad...

Worth a try :)
 
strange. i've just collected my rig today after experiencing similar symptoms over the weekend. was online sunday... went off for lunch... and on return found it in a 'suspend' state that i couldn't get it out of. restart - no joy... starts powering then dies for a few seconds, then goes again and as you say, never reaches cmos. drives make a few noise. laser under the usb mouse sometimes on, sometimes not, on various attempts.

took it in and the tech reckoned 5 other pc's had come in with identical symptoms. solved all of them including mine by unplugging everything, removing cmos battery etc then leaving it for a bit (not sure how long... mine was overnight). then put back together and - roberts your mothers brother.
 
not the identical problem but entry level celeron on a foxconn bought from matrix just froze and would not boot. friend brought it over, i went straight for replacement of the bios battery and the machine booted right up and never froze again. cost me R30.00 for the battery.
 
Yeah looking at all the responses think the best strategy would be to start at the cheapest component and go from there up.
 
Drake2007 said:
Intel G965 "Shrewsbury", 6CH Audio, 1Gb LAN, 1394, VGA GMA X3000 - mATX?

Check with intel if your CPU is supported for your board as they tend to be quite picky.
Click to expand...

Yup, that's my board... with Core 2 Duo E6300 Conroe 1.86 GHz 2Mb, which is definitely supported. Windows 7 RC is now telling me my hard drive is failing and fsck attempts to repair errors on it every time I boot Ubuntu. Unless a faulty hard drive can cause the BIOS to fail, which I doubt, it might be the SATA controller which is failing?
 
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Have you checked it's not RAM though? (run memtest on the pc)

It's possibly the controller and if that's the case the south-bridge is on its way out.
I'd swap out the SATA cable first and also test the HD in another PC first, before writing off the mobo.
 
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