CPU powers up not the 1st but the 2nd time

[Electro]

My computer has trouble starting up when I first push the power button. The light goes on and no hard drive startup sound or motherboard beep. Then I push and hold the power button for about five seconds to turn it off. Then I push the power button again and my computer starts up. This started to happen at the end of November of 2001. I think this happen after a brown out. My computer kept going with out turning off from the brown out. Whats wierd is when I push the reset button and nothing happens. I did disconnect and reconnect hoping that fixes my reset button problems but it didn't. I did install three DIMM modules (total 4 DIMM modules) recently but I test each seperatly. All my DIMM modules are the same model and the same serial numbers marked on the memory chips. I did another and intense test. I disconnected all my fans including the CPU fans. This didn't have any effect but it did boot up just find and data is still intact. I'm going to take out all the four DIMM modules and keep only one in the socket. Then exchange each one for another memory test. I think it is the power supply on the motherboard. However, my computer still runs perfectly after the brown out. Data is still intact and the old power supply that I replaced with a better one still works.

ABIT KA7-100
AMD Athlon 'Classic' 800 Mhz
512 MB PC-133 SDRAM (KingMAX)
IBM Deskstar 60GXP 40 Gigabytes
ATI Radeon VIVO 64MB DDR
Linksys LNE100TX
US Robotics 56Kbit Winmodem (ISA)
Creative Labs LIVE! 5.1 +MP3
ASUS 8X DVD (E608)
TEAC 1.44MB floppy disk drive
Iomega ZIP100

I did flashed my BIOS and it worked fine. I also have another hard drive no listed in the list. The hard drive (75GXP with 20 GB) is an old one and was in the list but has problems writing to the partition table. I'm using that for a Linux drive. Linux is doing a good job on that drive.

I'm confused why my computer can't start up on the first try from not being one for a few hours although it starts up fine from being shutdown for a few minutes.

 

[dexmanone]

Does it only boot up after it's been shut off by holding the power button? If so it sounds to me like something with the boot up it self, not the power supply. What about restarts? Can it handle those? Have you done a thorough scan disk lately?

 

[Electro]

Yes, it can handle restarts. Every week or two I run scan disk or Norton Disk Doctor. I also defrag using Norton Speed Disk because Microsoft's Defrag is slow.

 

[turnonvol]

Electro, this is going to sound weird - but give it a try. From the description of your problem I had something very similar happen to me and this is how I "fixed" it. Try a different power cord from the computer to the outlet. Even if you switch the monitor and pc power cord. Give it a try and please post back to let me know if it worked.

Good luck!!!!

 

[Electro]

<< ...Try a different power cord from the computer to the outlet... >>


Did that and it didn't work.

I re-flashed my BIOS from TY to TY. Still it didn't help.

I was thinking on getting an diagnostic board from Ultra-X. I found one at Jameco Electronics for under $200.

 

[Gustavus]

The problem is known to be associated with the spinup times of the IBM large capacity hard drives. In some BIOS it is possible to increase the delay during bootup which sometimes solves the problem -- and sometimes it doesn't. If you were to keep everything exactly the same in your system, except for substituting another HD for the C drive, I will bet the problem goes away.

 

[Electro]

I change the hard drive delay time from 0 to 13 seconds. It helped very little. I was going to get two 20 gigabyte Western Digital hard drives. One will have Windows and other will have Linux connected to Romtec Trio hard drive selector. My big capacity IBM hard drive will be used for video capturing. The other IBM hard drive will be used for testing other OS or a test bed for writing drivers connect to the hard drive selector.

After I buy two WD hard drives, I'm going to change the jumpers on the IBM hard drives to disable auto spinning. This might help.

Maybe if I take out my floppy drive and drop it a few stories. Then inserted it in to the computer and see if it works better.

I forgot to include the case in the list. It is an IWIN Q500.

Any other helpful information is welcome.