Power-Up Problems

[stickasaurus]

Hey everybody! I built my current PC a couple of years ago. It's been fine but recently it has started to act up. I think that I'm going to have to buy a replacement component but can't figure out which is faulty.

The problems I have been having is that the computer never wants to start up when I first turn it on. All the fans come to life but I don't hear any beeps for the post, and the monitor isn't receiving any signal. It can sometimes take about 20 minutes of turning it off and on again to make it come to life. When it does come back, it always says that it has had a problem with the BIOS settings and makes me change them back to defaults. Then on the next reboot, it will start Windows (sometimes doing a disk check on the way) and then everything seems dandy. Although the machine is VERY sensitive to the slightest knock and will give a blue screen of death or constant beep and then corrupt my hard drive so I have to reinstall my disk image again.

My very uneducated guess would say it is either a dodgy PSU or motherboard? Or perhaps not? Could someone please be so kind as to shed a little knowledge on my situation.

My setup is- MSI P35 Neo 2 FR

Intel Core2 Q6600

2GB RAM

ATI Radeon 4850

2 x Samsung SATA Hard drives

powered by a 700w powersupply.

I'd be so grateful is somebody could help!

Thanks!

 

[price_th]

I would first start by checking all the various connections for something loose. The fact that a slight bump may mean you need to wiggle or tighten connects. Reseat the RAM as well. If that doesn't improve things you may be looking at a new system board soon.

 

[americanbrian]

Corrupt hard drive sounds bad. you can't just keep restoring your disk image and expect it to work. replacing that for a start is numero uno.

As for the bios not being saved, replace the CMOS battery.

 

[stickasaurus]

Thanks for replying both of you.

I've checked every connection inside the tower and I've reseated the RAM. Still to no avail.

I have replaced the CMOS battery about a week ago as I thought this might have been the cause for loosing the BIOS settings, but that didn't help either.

When I started up a moment ago, I looked up what that the LED code that is showing when it hangs, it says it is when it is initializing RAM. I have tried re-seating both sticks again, but it is still the same. When I turned it off and on again, it gave a long continuous beep and then started as normal. If you could offer any more light, I would be very appreciative.

 

[americanbrian]

well you can always try to crank the voltage settings in the BIOS. I had some RAM that wanted 2.1V (DDR2, that would be way excessive for DDR3) but my mobo defaulted to 1.9, couldn't boot.

You may find you are near the threshold of stability so that initially the volts cause issues but maybe build up to "just enough" to boot after several attempts.

If your bios keeps resetting then obviously this is not that helpful. Did you also check the "CLR_CMOS" jumper is set to the correct position (i.e. not constantly set to clear the bios)?