boot problems

[goaccess]

A friend of mine asked me to look at her family's computer. They had some upgrades done before moving here. It was working fine but hasn't been able to boot since the move. When I first got the machine it would start to load win95 then lock up. I noticed I was not able to enter the bios setup while booting. I had a similar problem on a work computer, and it was the motherboard so I suspected this might have a motherboard problem too. I've been searching for days to find a manual for the motherboard. I am hoping to find a diagram that shows me where to set the pin so I can boot directly to the bios. I finally found a manual but there were no pin settings. Does anyone know of a good web site that might have what I need?

I've also searched for a bios update to flash over this bios but from what I read 95 doesn't support flash, is that right? This is a Pentium 133 with Award Bios v4.5pg and from what I can tell it's a PH5E ABIT motherboard. At present I'm not even able to start loading 95 I get this message: "CMOS checksum error-default loaded" and I'm still not able to get to the set up. Any other advice would be very helpful!

 

[canix]

Well... not every board has a "boot direct to Bios" option.. I honestly havn't come by more than 1 in my lifetime that actually does (this doesn't say much though.

Now.. If this were me.. I would make sure all my ide cables are pulled and all but the video card is pulled. if it refused to post for ya... then my next idea would be to clear the CMOS.

Now there SHOULD be a set of jumpers next to the ni-cad battery on the board.. a set of 3 prongs. Set the jumper over one, power on the machine, (it shouldn't get past post), turn it off, and switch it back.. that should clear the Bios. if all else fails.. pull the stinkin battery out and let it set. you may need to let it set for about an hour so that the board looses the charge as well.

If This doesn't help... then a new bios version or a new bios chip would be in order... In which case.. itz time to replace the entire machine.

To answer the question about flashes... I never run a flash outside of a dos prompt.

Good Luck
~CaNiX~ Those who seek me, must first seek the storm and the wolf who lerks within it.

 

[cj75s]

I had a board that wouldn't boot and it stumped me for days. Then I decided to try a win98 boot disk to access the dos prompt. It worked fine to there. It could be you have a master boot record problem or a corrupt disk area due to a bang while it was in transit. Try doing FDISK /mbr from the dos prompt (A:\ with the boot disk still in). Remove the disk and then restart the machine. It might work. If it still stubborn then try sys A: C: Again remove the disk and restart.
If its a disk problem then run Scandisk C: if C is the main boot disk. This could take ages if its a large disk but it should repair the damage. I'm not sure though if scandisk from a dos prompt will overwrite areas containing data or not. In windows you have the option not to, so it may damage data needed to boot. If this is the case you would then have to salvage as much as possible to disks and reformat and reinstall I'm afraid. %-)

cj75s