Power down during POST

[kammy]

I was asked to troubleshoot a PC with an ECS K7SEM mainboard. After powering up for 8 seconds it would shut off. There is one beep, the monitor gets a signal for a sec but instantly shuts off. I cannot get to the CMOS config.

Here's what I've tried:

Pulled the memory and put it into my work PC. My PC booted and worked fine.

Swapped my known good power supply and the DOA. It still shuts down.

I checked all the jumper settings.

I pulled all cards during testing.

Jumped JP1 to reset the CMOS.

Reseated the AMD K7 Duron.

Tried an AGP video card rather than the onboard...no change



TIA

Jeff (kammy)

 

[ceh4702]

Try it with an emergency boot disk for win 98 or the XP boot disk in the cdrom and see what happens.

This could be some corrupt files on the hard drive or something wrong with the hard drive.

You might try using the jumper to reset the BIOS. The old way is to take the battery out for 20 minutes.

Then there is reseating the ram and the video card and the drive cables and try it again.

Then you get drastic. You have to take it apart to the bare bones. Remove all I/0 cards and hard drive and cdrom and sound cards. Use only a floppy and boot with emergency boot disk and see what happens. If that doesnt work either the motherboad/cpu IS BAD, has been damaged, or is shorting out to the case. You can take the memory and cpu out and boot it and see if it gives you a boot code.

If the hard drive is damaged it might boot off of an XP boot disk or a floppy. A nasty virus or trojan sometimes either corrupts the files so it will not boot off the hard drive or the hard drive fails and is useless.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[kammy]

I've unsuccessfully tried booting up barebones just with the CPU. Booting with the CPU and memory only gave a longer beeeep...hehe.

I'll try booting without the CPU attached.

 

[Comtech]

One long beeeeeep is a CPU problem, or no video card present.
Repeated long beeps is usually a memory problem.
Although it may not be the cpu or memory that's faulty, but BIOS settings. It's also possible the fan is not plugged into the correct spot on the motherboard, and some systems will not power up if it's not.

Cheers,
Jim

http://members.cnx.net/reboot/

 

[kammy]

Problem fixed. Well, at least found.

The power switch on the front of the case is bad. Thank you for all that helped. I got the tip to pull the connector to the switch and jump starting the PC with a screwdriver from "

http://www.tek-tips.com/faqs.cfm?spid=602&rat1=10&sfid=2731">

I confirmed it by removing the switch and doing an Ohm-check. It was stuck in the closed position.

Now to find a replacement switch here on the Big Island.

Again a BIG THANK YOU