PC not starting up but with green power light on 2

[Joel]

Hi,

I'm running Win95 and lately I've been having problem starting up my PC. Everytime I turn it on it won't start and the green power light is on. I used to be able to boot it up by pressing the Reset buton but today even that doesn't work. Could this be the power supply or something else. I have 2 harddrives, one CD-ROM installed on the PC. The PC is a little bit more than one year old.

Any suggestion will be appreciated.

Thanks.
Joe.

 

[dm7941]

I'd start with a base diagnostic. . disconnect all ide devices, remove any pci or isa cards other than video. power on and see if it posts (power on self test). if it does, add devices one at a time until they are all added back in. If you have a modern ATX motherboard and power supply, it COULD be the power supply, but i'd look other places first. David Moore
dm7941@sbc.com

 

[ray436]

David is right, and here's something else to check.

You may find that your CMOS battery is on its last legs, and the PC is not getting the set-up data from CMOS, and when you start up it trys to re-discover everything, not always being successfull.

Get any setup info from it you can, write it down, then try a new battery.

 

[seagor]

Have you tried reseating either or both the cpu and video card?, I assume you have an AGP Card, these are notorious for creeping out of their socket and more often than not there will be no audible indication (beeps) A badly seated cpu can also cause similar probs, but usually the PC also cannot be turned off either. If you have no luck with either of these it might be worthwhile substituting the PSU

 

[Joel]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I've tried all of the above except for the CMOS battery which I'm going to try tonight. I've replaced the power supply and it didn't help. Investigation continues...could the power/reset switch itself be the problem?

 

[lexx]

As the above post recommended checking the video card. or your monitor is malfunctioning. I have a loose cable to the back of my monitor which causes it to not display when booting some times. if you get 1 beep and you hear the hard drive spinning, suspect video problems . also does the red led hard drive light come on when booting.

 

[Joel]

Thanks lexx. I've checked the cable also and it's plugged in OK. I've also made sure that all the cards are plugged in tightly. There was no beep. The harddrive green light came on for a short while and off after a very short while (not long enough for the normal start up). The monitor is working OK, I tested with another computer. I don't know what to check next. sigh.

 

[mbaranski]

Blow out the dust, dust can cause shorts, too, and this could be a problem. Blow it out of the machine and the Power Supply. As always, I hope that helped!

Disclaimer:
Beware: Studies have shown that research causes cancer in lab rats.

 

[Ezek]

Ok Joel,

I have had the same problem in some of the computers i have worked on, the problem when you do not have nothing on the screen (or the screen will not project anything).

I have noticed that yes all of you guys are right on all of the possible causes above but there is one cause that i have not read.

RAM Memory could be bad or uncompatible and the system will do the same thing. change your RAM Memory chips and try it again.

Hope this helps,

 

[dimlek]

Have you recently experienced an electricity black-out?
At electricity black outs, when the power comes back it has a greater voltage than usual(220 or 110V), thus there is a slight possibility that the electricity wasn't blocked by the power supplier's security, so high-voltage electricity passed through your motherboard. I would suggest you to interchange your motherboard with another and see if that works. This is indeed a very slight possibility, yet is has happened to me.
I hope that helped, bye!!
dimlek

 

I have found out that if your MBR is corrupt it will do the same thing. Try re-installing the MBR and see what happens.

Malik
king_malik@hotmail.com

http://www.underworldsounds.com

 

[lexx]

If you have no beep on boot up, than something is stopping the boot process. a bad ram module, a defective power supply, a hard drive going out.

with win95 on the machine, it must be much older than a year.

or is this a multi boot machine and you have other op's sys on the machine.

suspect also you have installed a program that causes the boot process to become corrupted. this will cause the boot to hang and stall, sometimes ctrl,alt,del makes it work and some times reset will do the same.

if you still have not found the solution, let us know. also what make computer is this and if you can remember, did this happen after a program was installed or new hardware..

 

[Joel]

Thanks for all the suggestion I've been receivin but I'm still stuck with the problem. My PC is about 2 years old, a PC clone running Windows95 (version c? the one after b). I've been having the start up problem for a while (no beep no nothing but just the green light on, I could hear the C drive turn for less than 10 seconds and then the whole thing becomes dead silence, green light still on though) and yes the reset button did reboot the system (sometimes need a few tries). I've upgraded the memory from 64m to 128m but that was way before I had this problem. Yes I did have a power out but also that happened after I had the problem. I don't remember if I had installed any software just before the problem (somethines I download sharewares to try them out). I've replaced the power supply but that didn't help. I've cleaned the dust inside the PC and on the powere supply and it didn't help. I've also added a second harddrive (30G Quantum, ATA33, 5400rpm) but again that was long before I had the problem. I don't know whatelse to try. Any suggestion is appreciated. Thanks.

 

[edfair]

Do you have access to any tools. Particularly a logic probe.
This type of problem generally is a processor run type error. Flaky crystal, bad power good signal, bios chip, or processor chip. Since you've replaced the PS the power good is probably not the culprit.
A logic probe would allow you to probe address and data lines to see if they were cycling.
The drive spinup is normal if +12 and +5 are up. The power supply fan works if +12 is up. The power on light usually is +5 off the M/B.
The fact that the reset switch would let it come up sometimes kind of points to the crystal. If it came up everytime after using it I would suspect the power good. But bad memory can also give these same symptoms.


Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[14344]

Hi Joel,

I have encountered some similarity with your problem.
Have you tried to go to the cmos setup and check the power management, try to disable it and see if the problem still occurs. I hope this will help.

 

[zefir]

In my case the plug-in...plug-out of the RAM card (Power OFF !)
has been the remedy. -----G.Hoffmann

 

[madian]

Even if you changed the power supply I am very sure that this is the problem. I've seen lots of pc's giving the same error. The problem is that the power supply does not provide a constant output. Wether it is a 200W 230W or higher many PS do not provide constant output, anyway I recommend a 250 W PS. You may try to exchange the case (the whole case) because something there is not allowing your system to receive either the correct amount of power or the constant current it requires. Maybe you have a very consuming component such as a QUantum Bigfoot hdd or the leds on your case (I've seen thi a lot of times, the system would power up only after removing the power and the hdd led connectors from the motherboard. If your hardisk stops after 10 seconds this means it doesn't get enough power. So try exchanging the hole case or ask for a power supply with a very constant output. If this doesn't work email me at madian1@usa.net and I'll walk you through another problem solver technique.
Hope it works.
MADIAN disconnected.

 

[ray436]

Maybe the main harddrive is a goner. When HD's pack-up they sometimes do it in stages till one day it just won't come up

Have you tried to run the beast stripped out to just a floppy and video? Then add all the extras till you get the problem back.

If you changed the power supply that's probly OK, but the mainboard may not be returning a 'power=good' signal' and the supply kills the 12 volts.

Ray

 

[lgebhart]

Joel,

You say you have 2 hard drives. Since the hard drive spins for about 10 seconds and then stops it could be that hard drive. Have you tried to make the other hard drive the bootable one? Even if it doesn't have an operating system on it, it will try to boot and then say there is no operating system, at least it would let you know if it is the first hard drive having the problem. Just a thought!
By the way, you should always have a green light if the power is on whether it boots or not.

All of the other suggestions are great and will help you with your diagnostic troubleshooting! Do you have a pc diagnostic's bootable disk? Testing with that would let you know if your ram is reading correctly, it would also test your hard drive, etc. Since I don't want to try and sell you anything, do a search for pc diagnostic software and you should be able to find one for under $30.00 if you don't already have one.