Thread: Startup Problems - Help!

Couple of things to check...
1. Is it full of dust.
2. Is the humidity higher in the shed?

Rip the lid off & give it a blast of compressed air to get all the dust/dirt/spiders out of it & try again.

While you have the lid off, have a close look at the mother board for signs of popped caps.
If any of your caps look like the crook ones in the pics below, the mother board is buggered.
(The cans on the left are good, the cans on the right are crook)

Few thinkgs you could try

While you got the cover off, make sure all the chips are securely in place. Apply a firm pressure to them to make sure they are sitting properly. Check the RAM to make sure it is also seated properly, pull it out and re seat it.
Check that there is an airflow coming from the back of the Power supply. There should be just a gentle breeze coming from the back. If there is no breeze then the power supply fan has packed in and you will need to replace the fan in the power supply. Check the processor fan to see if that is spinning. If it isn't working you will have to replace the CPU fan.
If either one of these fans are not working the computer will overheat very quickly and could be causing your problem.
Are there any beeps when you boot up the computer, you should get just one short beep if everything is okay. Any other beep code indicates that you have a problem. In this case you need to know the identity of the BIOS to find out what the beeps mean. It could be that your hard drive has packed up. You could try another drive if you have one handy.

You could go into the BIOS and reset everything to "Default" settings just in case something in there has gone awry.

In the case of an old computer it is hardly worth spending any money on them unless it is something simple like I have mentioned above and then if you are not able to do the work yourself it is probably not worth it anyway.

You can buy an older computer very cheaply so they are not really worth repairing.

PS. If any of the caps look like the ones in Cliffs' pictures, you can scrap the computer. It means its stuffed.

Originally Posted by Cliff Rogers

Rip the lid off & give it a blast of compressed air to get all the dust/dirt/spiders out of it & try again.

Just watch you don't squeeze too hard on the trigger of your air gun as the air pressure can do more harm than good. Best to buy a can of compressed air from dick smiths or simular as it doesn't have the pressure like an air compressor does. Seen a mate use his air compressor on his hardware 'n snuffed it completely.
Another word of caution, don't use a household\workshop vacumn cleaner to suck up the dust because of the static electricity they create.
Good luck,
woodyknot

I've been using compressed air to clean out electronics for for nearly 30 years & the only problem I have struck is sometimes the air isn't dry & drops of water spit out.

Hey,

You say it was an 'old computer lying around' - had it been sitting around unused for sometime?

If so, you'll find its most likely the BIOS battery. In most fairly modern computers its just a button cell that you can replace easily. If its a solder job its a different battery and needs a bit of accurate handy work.

Thanks guys, I will give all that a try. It has been sitting around for a while but like I say it was working OK. It just seems like the Windows program doesn't want to kick in. Tried the boot disc but no go. This thing has two hard drives in it so it could be that?

I'd be inclined to go with the CMOS clock (not BIOS) battery if you had it working one day and it won't the next.

BIOS is a chip with permanent code that tests individual components and controls the machine startup. One of it's functions is to provide a group of setup functions to the user, and store the setup data for future use in memory built into the CMOS clock chip. It is BIOS that runs the memory check that is completing properly for you.

The CMOS clock chip provides a realtime clock so that you don't need to reset the Windows clock each time the computer is started. It has a backup battery to allow it to run while the computer is off. Way back when, someone decided that it was intellegent to include a small amount of memory in the clock chip so that the setup information could be stored with battery backup. If the battery dies, the setup information is lost, and the computer does not know about type of video card or hard disk controller is installed so it does not start.

I have come accross three types of backup battery in computers of that era (worked with systems from original IBM PC to XP). They are;

Off board battery pack containing nicad or alkaline cells (AA or AAA) with a flylead connecting to the motherboard (MB) via a 3 pin connector. Replace cells, reconfigure and save in setup.

Onboard nicad pack (3 circular or oval button cells) with spot welded terminals at each end which is soldered onto MB. At this age the battery may have leaked and have a grey fuzzy coating. If this is the case it is likely that the corrosion has destroyed some tracks in the multilayer circuit board making the MB junk.

As previously mentioned, a watch battery in a holder mounted on the MB. The battery can be slid out of the holder and replaced, and then reconfigure computer and save in Setup.

Hope this helps you, and explains why this s*** happens and how to work around it.

I used to have a PC at work that was off the arc, it had a buggered CMOS battery. It stayed on most of the time to run the on hold message for the phone system but whenever it needed a restart it gave a message on startup before it got to the memory test, something like CMOS battery failed, press F5 to continue. So you press F5 (or whatever it was) and it would start up with a strange date and time.
This happened for at least 3 years till I junked it with the phone system.

Do you have or can you get an original win95 boot disk on floppy? You may have a corrupt file in the OS or a buggered hard drive so it will boot up ok till it wants to start looking for the OS on the hard drive and can't find the file or files it needs.

Bear in mind that even if you have a boot disk, the PC has had to be configured to search the floppy at start up and that time in usually unkind to floppy disks and floppy drives. That is the reason why so few old PC survive, too many problems, especially in a business that pays for IT support.

Got around to pulling the cover off the computer today. It was relativley clean. After a long search through a bunch of flat cables I found a battery. Turns out this is a lithium battery the size of a 5 cent piece ( CR2032 3volt) I will buy a new one tomorrow and see how it will go. Question - do I put in the boot disc or the Win95 disc to get this thing going again?

If it was the battery that caused the problem, you won't need the boot disk.

The battery is so the Main Board remembers the Date/Time & settings like what sort of HDD etc is installed.

If the BIOS has Auto detect, all the battery was doing was keeping the Date/Time.

Thanks Cliff,
I'll pick up a battery tomorrow and see how it goes.

Originally Posted by abitfishy

Hey,

You say it was an 'old computer lying around' - had it been sitting around unused for sometime?

If so, you'll find its most likely the BIOS battery. In most fairly modern computers its just a button cell that you can replace easily. If its a solder job its a different battery and needs a bit of accurate handy work.

abitfishy
You were right on the money. Put the new lithium battery in and the 'puter fired up OK. Thanks for your advice and all others who contributed. I suppose if I had taken it in the local hackers shop they would have sold me a new mother board and hard drive. Thanks again fellows.

No probs. I'll send you the bill.

Originally Posted by malb

I'd be inclined to go with the CMOS clock (not BIOS) battery

Crikey mate, CMOS clock battery/BIOS battery, same diff, lets not get too technical, theres only one battery in the things.
You say tom-ar-toe, I say tom-ate-toe