Friend has major problems after accidentally putting his PC into hibernation.
Unfortunately he lives 200 miles away so I am trying to fix over the phone!!

Here is what's happening --



Power applied to tower, both the power and HDD LED's flash without any
buttons pressed (?) and the fans appear to spin. He presses the power
button and the fans speed up and the LED's flash faster. At one stage
when he held the power button in, the power led stayed on, the hdd
went off and the cd and dvd lights came on as if it was going to boot
but nothing on screen at all. When he released the button it went back
to flashing again?

Any ideas please? All was working perfectly before hibernation.

Reset the CMOS jumper. Unplug the power supply and remove the battery when you reset the jumper. Instructions are in the MB manual.

He has already tried taking the battery out with no power o the tower. Does the jumper do something extra then?

You might try simply unplugging the power supply from the wall for a few seconds and plug it back in from the wall and see if that has any effect. If not, reset the CMOS jumper to default the BIOS.

Yeah, sometimes just taking the battery out alone will not default the BIOS. I think unplugging the power supply, remove the battery and reset the jumper would be a sure way to reset the BIOS to default.

A couple of things, it is possible some OS files like boot files became corrupted. You could boot to the windows CD (if possible) and do a repair install to repair the boot file if that is the case. Also, I suppose it is possible some hardware like the video card has failed in some way. If that is the case, you would need to try a different video card. Hopefully a reset of the CMOS jumper will solve the problem.

As per badge, unplug the PSU and default the BIOS. On boot up press the key to get into BIOS, delete or whatever. Change appropriate settings in BIOS and attempt to boot to Windows. Then turn off the GD standby/ hibernate feature and never turn it on again.

Ok next problem!! I've identified the board as a Gigabyte GA-8GEMT4. Managed to d/l the manual but it doesn't show a clear CMOS 3 pin jumper? Only pin I can see is CLR_PWD which is only 2 pins!

Any ideas as to where it might be?

Where the CMOS jumper might be? Usually located near the battery. The manual doesn't have a 'heading' entitled 'Clear or reset CMOS?

I downloaded your MB manual. I have to admit I have built with Gigabyte MBs, but not with the one you have so I am not accutely familiar. The CLR-PWD jumper is to clear the password should you 'forget' a password initiated in BIOS. Now, if clearing a password would initiate a 'clear' and rest of the BIOS, I just don't know. Well, anyway...take the battery out for at leat 5 minutes and leave the power supply unplugged for the same time. 10-15 minutes might be a good idea. I read over the manual and I don't see a specific CMOS jumper either.

Link to your MB manual if anyone else wants to have a look at the MB layout and specs.

http://america.giga-byte.com/FileL [...] emt4_e.pdf

I think that should completely reset the BIOS. I scanned the whole manual, and if that doesn't do it then there are no shorting pins to do so. As per badge, pull the battery for 5 min and short those clr_pwd pins. Post what you get.

Agreed. Manual should state CLR_PWD will default BIOS.

Many thanks for all the help on this one! Very difficult to troubleshoot at 200 miles but you guys have really helped me
and I guess you are a bit further away than that !!

Seems there is a CMOS clear after all! It's next to the PWR_LED! Problem is that the pins aren't marked? He's tried shorting both pairs but still the same. There is NO jumper in this set of pins so surely that's wrong? There should be s jumper in the 'Normal' position.

The normal two pins should be just a parking position. It is the shorting of the other two pins that resets it. Maybe he had a failure that was unrelated to the hibernation, stranger things have happened.

It's really annoying when people don't tell you the full story!! It now seems that with everything connected up and those lights flashing, there is a 'clicking' noise coming from behind the front panel!! I've got hime to take the power off the disks and cd's AND also take out the ribbon cables to them. Noise now gone and just the green light flashing. Fans still on low with power applied, all speed up when the power button is pressed but no beeps, no boot. Using on baord video so can't check if thats bad. He also tells me that a guy at the local Maplins used a 'gizzmo' to connect to his PSU and he reckoned that it showed good so are we looking at a fried mobo/cpu here?

Can't be sure, as you have just witnessed it's very hard to troubleshoot third hand, especially when the hands on person has absolutely no experience.

It could even be that the monitor is bad and the clicking is the HD loading the OS, there's just no way to know from the data.

From another forum, they reckon that the flashing power led means it's in sleep mode? But how do you get to wake up? tried all I can think of and it still asleep -- maybe it's very tired

You got me, a CMOS reset should have cleared everything. We don't even know what the noise inside the front panel was. He is going to have to send the machine to you, or you are going to have to take a road trip.