Could it a MB battery?

[Craig234]

I have a six year old PC that stopped booting - things power up, but no MB beeps at all and the drives just spin.

I thought I had a bad MB, and got a new one to put in (started pullling wires and accidentally pulled what I thought was one connector and it was a bunch of little ones I have to find out how to reconnect ugh).

Anyway, I realized before I continue this, is there a chance it's the MB battery? I didn't think so but it makes sense to ask before I continue the MB replacement. Could that cause no beeps on boot?

It's a K7S5A, I thougt it'd still beep, at least, if it was the battery.

How would I even check the bettary, if that does match, short of buying a tester?

For bonus points: it's for the conveneince of getting my old HD Win XP to boot that I'm replacing the same MB, I hope it doesn't matter the old KlS5A says 'rev 5' and the one doesn't list a rev.

Since apparently to boot on the same drive it has to be the same model MB, Is there anything tricky to it? Do I have to run a 'repair' if Win boots?

 

[Lemon law]

Yes it could be the comos battery. Just power off the PC completely, pull the cmos battery, it should have writing on the face as an ID number, take old battery to walmart or ratshack, get new battery of same number, pop it in new battery, power on PC, and see if it boot into the bios. And if it boots to the bios, set bios defaults, and then let it boot into windows. ( cost 3-6 bucks.) ( and many bios batteries are Cr-2032 as a most likely number )

Reinstalling windows should not be needed, but you may have to later select different bios settings to match memory and other options.

 

[Craig234]

Argh. In a thread here and asking some reapir people about the symptoms, everyone agreed the MB was bad and no one suggested the battery.

The thing is, I wasn't as careful as I should be removing some cables to the MB, so hooking it back up to test the battery isn't that easy.

I could have just tried the battery from the replacement MB I bought before unplugging them.

But thanks. Off to figure out how to get these cables hooked up. The manual doesn't even seem to match.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

A bad cmos battery will usually not create this type of issue, you will usually just lose all bios settings such as date/time/hard disk parameters etc each time you reboot.

If you replace the board with an identical model, you will not need to do anything with windows. If you change board models you will likely be doing a repair install to fix the HAL.

Being that this is an ECS board, my money is on it being dead. They make some of the most craptastic boards on the planet. I'm sure are people that swear by them, but most people I know just swear AT them

 

[Craig234]

A bad cmos battery will usually not create this type of issue, you will usually just lose all bios settings such as date/time/hard disk parameters etc each time you reboot.

If you replace the board with an identical model, you will not need to do anything with windows. If you change board models you will likely be doing a repair install to fix the HAL.

Being that this is an ECS board, my money is on it being dead. They make some of the most craptastic boards on the planet. I'm sure are people that swear by them, but most people I know just swear AT them

Thanks, upon further looking at this, I think you're right (sorry LL), the AC power would still leave the MB beeping and largely functioning when the CMOS battery wears out.

To be fair, this computer was on for 5 years+ 24/7 with a Sahara-like amount of dust and broken fans before it crashed so I can't complain about ECS.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Thanks, upon further looking at this, I think you're right (sorry LL), the AC power would still leave the MB beeping and largely functioning when the CMOS battery wears out.

To be fair, this computer was on for 5 years+ 24/7 with a Sahara-like amount of dust and broken fans before it crashed so I can't complain about ECS.

You are one of the lucky then, In my career I've seen more of these dead than any other. There is definitely a reason they are so much cheaper than the competition

The explanation behind the cmos thing is this. When you make setting changes to your bios you arent actually changing the bios, you are changing parameters stored within the cmos. The battery serves to provide power to this volitile memory source to keep the clock at the right date and time even when the machine is off as well as store your settings

 

[Craig234]

I hired someone for $60 to swap the motherboard, it was a hassle. Unbelievably, the new MB won't power up at all.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

I hired someone for $60 to swap the motherboard, it was a hassle. Unbelievably, the new MB won't power up at all.

It could be a couple of things. For one, make sure that the case isn't shorting out the MB somewhere. I've had stuff like this happen before and typically resetting the board helped the situation. For example, maybe you have a standoff underneath the board but there isn't a corresponding screw hole or maybe you forgot to screw the board down onto that particular standoff.

If that doesn't work, maybe check your power supply. It might be having issues and that might have caused issues with your other board.

I had a couple of the K7S5As that ran for years. They were somewhat finicky but otherwise, decent boards. I sold them on eBay last year. From your description above of what happened with the old board, my guess is that the BIOS got fried.

 

[daniel49]

I hired someone for $60 to swap the motherboard, it was a hassle. Unbelievably, the new MB won't power up at all.

when you say swap the mb. you mean they replaced the original mb with one exactly like it reusing cpu , memory..etc?
was it a new or used mb you replaced it with?

 

[CoachB]

I like resuccitating things as much as the next guy and I applaud your efforts on this system BUT you are probably going to spend a fair chunk of change saving this system that would be better spent toward an upgrade/update.
Old motherboard, old power supply, old hard drive, fans broken, etc. If this were a car, you would be looking to replace.
If you are worried about getting data off of your current hard drive, just hook it up as a slave on a new system and recover your files.
Something to think about.

 

[Craig234]

when you say swap the mb. you mean they replaced the original mb with one exactly like it reusing cpu , memory..etc?
was it a new or used mb you replaced it with?

Almost. I bought another K7S5A off ebay, assuming the 'rev 5' on the original but not the replacement didn't matter to Win XP; that might have been wrong, as the board was fairly differen, different layout, and we couldn't even find the same chip the guy thought was the one Windows looked at on the new board, but we dn't know since no powerup. It was used, you can't get these ancient ones new as far as I know. The seller 'guaranteed' it had been taken out of a working system.

 

[daniel49]

Almost. I bought another K7S5A off ebay, assuming the 'rev 5' on the original but not the replacement didn't matter to Win XP; that might have been wrong, as the board was fairly differen, different layout, and we couldn't even find the same chip the guy thought was the one Windows looked at on the new board, but we dn't know since no powerup. It was used, you can't get these ancient ones new as far as I know. The seller 'guaranteed' it had been taken out of a working system.

are you sure you got the wiring back right?
got a spare power supply to try?