Thread: Computer Not Booting

  1. #16
    PC Fixer-Upper Waldo2k2's Avatar
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    >>Well, he was calling someone stupid!

    Learn how to read, Bubba was calling him stupid
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  2. #17
    Set Apart -- jrahhali's Avatar
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    LED Light Red

    Just a few days ago a vaguely remember my LED light being green on my mobo and now it is now red. Is that bad? I mean, red doesnt' seem like a good colour , and it may indicate a problem as to why my system won't boot.
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  3. #18
    Registered User axon's Avatar
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    so why did you have to start a new thread about this...couldn't you just continue in the other "problem with booting" one??

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  4. #19
    and the Hat of Clumsiness GanglyLamb's Avatar
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    The led of my mobo is always red, i never saw it being green...

    Its a p2 so maybe its red because it wants to tell me that i should please upgrade and that the mobo wants to retire and be left alone...

  5. #20
    Set Apart -- jrahhali's Avatar
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    Alright Waldo2k2, that's probably the best idea, to get a friend who knwos what their doing.

    >>what?

    What i meant by clearing my CMOS.....umm. I did what my manual told me. . One of the troubleshooting techniches that my manual told me to do in the case of a boot failure was to clear my CMOS.
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  6. #21
    Set Apart -- jrahhali's Avatar
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    >>so why did you have to start a new thread about this...couldn't you just continue in the other "problem with booting" one??

    Very true axon, my mistake. I actually cringed when i posted it. I knew someone was going to knock me for that.

    Thanks for the verification GanglyLamb. I feel less stressed.
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  7. #22
    Sweet
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    All I have to say is Jimbob you are a moron and have no room to talk about anything here until you prove yourself not to be a moron, which will probably never happen. And jrahhali sorry to hear about comp troubles
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  8. #23
    and the hat of int overfl Salem's Avatar
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    > Very true axon, my mistake. I actually cringed when i posted it.
    Both threads merged into one.
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  9. #24
    and the Hat of Clumsiness GanglyLamb's Avatar
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    Well dont take my word on this one...

    I mean for all i know something is wrong with my mobo as well i dont know,best thing for you to do is check your Mobo manual and see what the red light means ( probably there will be different possibility´s) , then you can now ask yourself what you chaged before it got red ( any bios setting, any jumper on the Mobo itself etc...).
    From there on you should find out why it was red etc...

    Greets,

    Ganglylamb

  10. #25
    Set Apart -- jrahhali's Avatar
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    Ok, i found out that the red light is normal on my mobo.

    My computer then gave me this error (after like 20000 boots! )
    Primary IDE channel no 80 conductor cable installed
    i checked it up and i had not connected my ide cables right. My 80 wire one was not hooked up to my HDD. So i changed that hoping that would slove my problem, and my computer would boot.....it didn't happen. Recieved no error this time but once again, just before the boot up screen it freezes, or restarts. um, then the power shuts off!! Now there is no red light at all and my mobo is not recieving power. No fans including my power supply is running. It's not overheating because both the powersupply and cpu are cool. This happened yesterday too, and i though i blew my powersuppy, but i tried it again hours latter and the computer came to life again. I don't knwo what else could be the problem. I am going to try to get someone over to look at it, but in the meantime any thoughs, suggestions?

    Motherboard AOpen ak77-333

    edit: i should mention that fact that when the system restarts at the winxp loading scree a blue screen with a bunch of writing on it flashes for a split second, not long enogh for me to tell what it is. Anybody might know what this is?
    Last edited by jrahhali; 09-09-2004 at 06:35 PM.
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  11. #26
    PC Fixer-Upper Waldo2k2's Avatar
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    It could be a lot of things....we can only speculate, you really should just try to find someone who can take a look at it. No offense, but you're not exactly a do-it-yourself kind of computer guy...we can't really do much but make educated guesses.
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  12. #27
    Registered User VirtualAce's Avatar
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    Mobos and cases both have a circuit fault that will shut off the system during a direct short or power outage. Often with mine when the power goes out you cannot restart the comp once the power comes on. The green light flashes and you must turn off the black power switch on the power supply to reset the circuit breaker. Most power supplies support this and most cases also support this as well.

    But just waiting should not cause the system to work. This sounds suspicously like something is overheating, cooling down and then working. When you boot the heat begins to build and the component fails....probably causing the blue screen in Windows. The problem is probably not Windows itself, but the problem is causing Windows to fail. Remember the whole thing is a system and works together. One failure can cause many other failures just like on a car leading you to correct the wrong thing. Be very careful in your diagnosis.

    Best bet is to take everything off the board not necessary for booting. Unplug extra hard drives, floppies, CD-ROMS, sound card, LAN cards, etc., etc. Get your system down to just the boot drive, video card, CPU, and RAM. If you are using multiple sticks of RAM take the extra sticks out.

    1. Boot the system with one of the RAM sticks. If same thing, wait, swap sticks, and boot again. Repeat until problem stops. If problem does not stop....it is not being cause by your RAM and all your sticks are good. Leave the system on for some time before rebooting and swapping sticks. We are trying to see if we can get the component to heat up, fail, and reboot the system. Also you may want to try using NO ram at all. If it fails and reboots, it's not your RAM overheating...it's another component.

    2. Remove the video card from the board and and boot. You should get beep codes. Leave system on for awhile. There will be no picture but what you are looking for is if the system still shuts down automatically. If the component in question heats up again...it should theoretically cause the system to shut down no matter what task it is doing at the time - whether booting into Windows or sitting there telling you to put a video card in the mobo dummy.

    3. If system does not fail or reboot itself.....then it is probably not a heat issue in the CPU, power supply, or board. If it was then the computer just being on should cause the component to overheat.


    Basically what you want to do is try all different permutations and hardware configs to try to isolate the component that is causing the failure. Once you have ensure certain components are ok....include them in your next test because you know they are good. For instance, if you know the hard drive and video card and RAM are ok then try putting in the sound card and reboot. If problem happens....it is your sound card. If not, it is something else.

    This method will show you exactly what is wrong. If it is your CPU...all of the above tests should fail eventually because there is always voltage going to the CPU. As the CPU heats up it should cause the item in question to heat up and cause the problem. If not it might be your chipset...although I doubt it because they can run just fine with no cooling fans and dont get nearly as hot as the CPU.

    Also if you can get your hands on a DOS boot disk try to boot into DOS mode and just let it sit there at the command prompt. If DOS works fine...then it is most certainly something in the Windows boot process causing the problem. The only thing that will cause the computer to reboot in protected mode or real mode or any mode is a triple fault in the CPU. This can be caused by any multitude of code problems, errors, exceptions, etc. If you do not have a boot disk I have a diagnostic boot disk that I wrote that will simply boot and hang. But it does allow you to test the floppy drive, RAM, power supply, video card, etc. It's just a simple 512 byte boot sector floppy but it will show you that the CPU and everything are in working order if it boots. This is extremely useful as it is very hard to diagnose Window boots problems because so much crapola is going on.

    You can try safe mode with command prompt, etc. Also you may want to boot with your Windows XP CD and let the computer sit there. If it does not crash....your hardware is fine. Choose to use the Recovery Console and then at the prompt type:

    chkdsk /r

    This is much more thorough than chkdsk /f or anything available in Windows. This will fix and correct any and all errors on the drive.....but it does take quite some time. If this does not fix the problem when you boot from the hard drive....reboot with XP cd and choose to repair the Windows XP installation. (choose Install, then choose repair, then select which installation of XP to repair). If this does not work when you boot from the drive, then I recommend completely wiping the drive - format (use FAT32 if you can - NTFS has major issues....directly from MS tech support). NTFS will no longer be supported once HPFS comes out. I've had NTFS.SYS get corrupted on boots, and then magically begin to work again and other weird stuff. NTFS sucks - the only person it prevents from accessing the drive is ...well....you. Everyone else can hack the stupid thing. NTFS can allow programs to put directories on your drive that you cannot get rid of, display the contents of, or erase.

    This is pretty much everything I would try if I were to come to your house and fix the thing. Of course I'd also charge you $60/hour, but that's another story.

    Last edited by VirtualAce; 09-10-2004 at 08:08 AM.

  13. #28
    Set Apart -- jrahhali's Avatar
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    Few, alright, i did everything you told me to do, it was a lot of work. Everything was unplugged from the mobo except my processor, HDD, RAM, and Video Card. Here are my results in the order that i did them in:

    1) Took the RAM out and booted up, let it sit for a while (while listening to annoying beeps every 2 sec). Note: I only have one stick of RAM, so i couldn't test multiple sticks.
    -->No Ram but Video Card
    -->Didn't restart or freeze

    2) Took the Video Card out, put the RAM in, it didn't restart or freeze.
    -->RAM but NO Video Card
    --> Didn't restart or freeze

    3) Put the Video Card plus the RAM in, which resulted in freezing or restarting whenever it got right past the winxp loading screen
    --> RAM & Video Card
    --> Restarted or Froze

    4) Hooked up my floppy drive (with my vid card and RAM), loaded DOS off a diskette, let it sit at the command prompt and did some simple operations like 'echo', 'dir', it was fine, didn't freeze or restart.
    --> RAM, Video Card, A: Drive, Sitting At Command Prompt
    --> Didn't restart or freeze

    5) Hooked up my CD-Rom Drive, put in my winxp setup disc, after extracting files, frooze at the message "loading windows."
    --> RAM, Video Card, A: Drive, CD-Rom - Loading Winxp Setup
    --> Froze.

    I think that all what you told me to try, except the chkdsk /r because i can't get into safe mode or safe mode w/ command prompt without it freezing.

    Maybe some other usefull info: The computer can sit at the start up screen fine ( ei the screen where it tells you that keyboard error when it isnt' plugged in), without it freezing, but as soon as I enter the BIOS, and try to do anything there, it freezes.

    This is a lot more information then "my computer is not starting, why?"
    hope it helps

    edit: Thanks a lot Bubba, i really appretiate the time that you took/are taking to help out.
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  14. #29
    Set Apart -- jrahhali's Avatar
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    Alright, I found out some more information, hopefully it's usefull.

    I remembered i had another video card, I plugged that in and the bios didn't freeze or crash, put the xp cd in, it didn't freeze or crash also. So i was finally able to try to use the repair option on my xp cd. I did that and the blue screen with a bunch of writing on it i mentioned earlier came up, except this time, the computer didn't restart before i could read it. This was the message:

    A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

    The problem seems to be caused by the following file: ntfs.sys

    PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

    If this is the first time you've seen this stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps:

    Check to make sure any new hardware or software is properly installed. If this is a new installation, ask your hardware or software manufactureer for any windows updates you might need.

    If problems continue, disable or remove any newly installed hardware or software. Disable BIOS memory options such as cahcing or shadowing. If you need to use safe mode to remove or disable components, restart you computer, press F8 to select advanced startup optons, and then select safe Mode.

    Technical information:

    *** STOP: 0x00000050 (0xC2F2BDA0, 0x00000001, 0xF964A007, 0x00000000)

    *** ntfs.sys - Address F964A007 base at F964A000, DateStamp 3d6de5c1
    Except that no new hardware or software has been installed

    I then tried to boot windows once more and this message came up before the winxp loading screen:

    Windows could not start because of an error in the software.
    Please report this problem as :
    load needed DLLs for kernel.
    Please contact your support person to report this problem.
    What would be my next step?

    Why would the video card that i had in it earlier make the BIOS and winxp setup cd freeze?
    Last edited by jrahhali; 09-11-2004 at 08:56 PM.
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  15. #30
    and the hat of int overfl Salem's Avatar
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    Just a thought, but maybe your memory timings are messed up.
    You could enter the BIOS (you seem to be able to now), and check the memory timings
    a) reset back to factory defaults
    b) read the manual pages for your motherboard and RAM to find out what they should be

    If you haven't done so already, undo any overclocking mods which you may have made, at least until its back and running.

    http://www.memtest86.com/
    This runs from bootstrap, which is the next thing to happen once the BIOS POST has run.
    It should tell you whether your memory is really good or not.
    If you dance barefoot on the broken glass of undefined behaviour, you've got to expect the occasional cut.
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