Start up problems. Fans running, no post

T

Thomasj

New Member
I have been having a problem lately with startup. When I push the power button the PSU and CPU fans come on but nothing else (CPU fan runs full speed during this time). I have to push the reset button and it will start up perfectly from there.

Once the computer is running it works great and. CPU fan slows down to about 1050rpm and everything loads up and runs perfectly. This happens almost every time I try to turn on my computer. Ive gotten to the point now where I just hit the power button and then the reset button everytime.


Specs on the system are

Biostar NF61s AM2 SE
AMD 4600+ x2
1GB Kingston DDR2 800
Western digital 250GB HD (SATA)
OCZ Powerstream 520w PSU
XP PRO
 
If you have been running the system there with the same board for some time now the first that will cause some boot problems with no hardware faults discovered is simply a need to change the battery on the board itself. The one that comes with the board could easily be getting weak causing havoc with the cmos and bios settings.

Most boards take the Duracell DL 20332 while the Energizer would be the CR 2032 number for the $3+ lithium watch/calculator battery there. That would be one immediate thought there since one old board was seeing all kinds of problems even listing the wrong model cpu when it was first thought the cpu was cooked. Recently when restoring that old build again a fresh saw a strong running cpu in the sharp contrast! I guess that board ate batteries for breakfast! :P

A pair of other tips however I can pass along here is a possible need to do what is called recycling the power supply itself. First switch the breaker on the supply while the system is off and then unplug the ac cord. Once that is done simply press the power button like you were planning to start the system up in order to see the caps in the supply totally discharge themselves.

The second tip requires a quick trip into the bios in order to load the optimized factory defaults. Once done you then perform any setting changes you did when first putting the system together like selecting which hard drive would be the default boot drive and other things like setting "yes" to plug and play support or running OS 2 or greater.
 
Sounds like a board fault. To find out, switch out the PSU and see if the problem persists. If it does, it's the board, doesn't it's the PSU (obviously)

Those Biostars are terrible boards. It wouldn't surprise me if that's the problem.

A couple of other things to try:

Reset the CMOS
Unplug the reset switch and try just the power switch.
Unplug the power switch as well and short the pins with a screwdriver or harddrive shunt.
 
That old XP3200+ never cooked and backclocked to an XP2500+ when the board wouldn't run with the fsb at 200 but only 166mhz. What happened lately when going to try and set it up again? A fresh battery now sees a normal running XP3200+ again since that board has batteries for meals apparently.

The old case now long aside would see a share of problems with restarts, sluggish boot times, and stalling sometimes tight after the posts. The assumption was a failing board maybe bad cap as well as the cpu reaching 85C after running at 74C just before seeing a new cpu cooler inplace with the thermal paste still fresh.

Two totally error free sets of memory saw memtest reports unexplained large numbers of errors. When tested on the next build 0% errors found with both sets. A weak battery is far less costly then a board or supply if found to be the problem where information stored like personal bios settings is stored in the cmos and maintained by the battery.

But a need to update the bios, bad caps or bios eprom even failing chipset or bad cap in the supply itself still need to be looked at. Recycling the supply is just another thing on he list for one test of the supply itself.
 
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