computer wont start

[Mikel05]

this was in the mother board forum

setup is as follows:

MoBo> Asus A7V8X-X
Cpu > AMD 2500 Barton Core
memory 256MB

I start it and I get the 1 short beep- Post is good.
It detects the IDE primary Master than Slave
The secondary Master detected then locks up.
A little back-Ground. You guys helped me set this little guy up and nothing has changed in the month and a half that Ive had it. I had Win 98se, Win 2K, and WinXP all loaded on this. I know, I know. ALL Three!! ...I needed them to prep on the A+ op-system test (I passed but anyway. I would get lock ups about every week or so. But today It froze and no matter what I couldnt get it going. I tried using a startup disk it went about half way and froze. I went into the setup screen, just navigating looking for something....and it froze there to.

FYI- I did clear the MOBO (ram clear), reseated the memory, reseated the Graphic card, swapped a HDD.

I hope you guys have some Ideas. I just happen to have the exact MoBo handy. but I was going to return it for a A7--- E-deluxe. I guess Im hoping you can narrow it down to a MoBo or a CPU. Hmmm What are the signs of a bad MOBO....and a Bad CPU?? For the record Im betting on the MoBo.....let me know!


Thanks in advance, Mikel05

[Mikel05]

At one point I had disconnected all IDE's and tried to boot w/ a Win 98 start up disk. NO-GO

One more thing- I shut it down for about an hour and tried the Start up disk. It was loading then at some point was saying
"Line -- in config.sys was missing" (or bad I forget) It listed about 4 lines like that....then locked up. The reason I think its the MoBo is that it does POST. A good Post is 1 short beep, which I get, and that should clear my CPU.

Thanks for the quick responce. I'll check in tomorrow.



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[Mikel05]

NO luck guys I swapped out the MOBO and no-go. When I first power up it goes straight to the Bios setup screen. When I exit and save changes the screen goes black and my monitor enters pwer-saver or sleep mode.

I'm all ears. HELP

[elroy]

I'm leaning towards the ram being bad, do you have an extra piece you could try? I've had new ram run fine for a month or 2 and then all of a sudden start causing all kinds of errors, crashes lockups etc. CPU's rarely go bad unless you fried it. Also try running the machine with all drives disconnected, no HD, floppy or cd.

[Mikel05]

I dont have an extra... but I'll order one. Once again thanks, but im still curious what are the signs of a bad CPU?

[Mikel05]

Ok I gave it one more shot. Again I was put immediately into BIOS setup. This time I noticed a message "Freq. set too high". I'm not sure why, I didnt change anything. But I lowered it and it started up. I was running at 1.83GHz now im at 1.75GHz.

I should be back to normal soon. Thanks

[sweeper2]

shouldn't a barton 2500 run 1.80 Ghz?, why lower it. in the bios try setting the bios to fail safe mode (or something like it) and see if it boots up. It shouldn't run lower then 1.8 Ghz.

[Underclocked]

Maybe a bad power supply?