Help: Computer not booting up anymore!

[SuperGroove]

Being out of the whole overclocking loop, I've sorta just left my Athlon 550@800 out to stud. It ran at about 34-36F since I got it, and that was waay back in February. Well, today my computer starts acting up. Actually it's been acting up since I got it.

My athlon does have it's plastic case on, and so the Alpha on it makes it wiggle in it's slot. This only is a problem when the motherboard is lying flat to the desk, and the processor standing upright. When the Case it upright, then all is well, and the computer can boot up.

Instead of just resetting the BIOS and reseating the CPU like I usually do when it doesn't boot up, I had to take out all the RAM, the Video card and see which one was causing the problem. That's where you guys come to the rescue. I AM SOL.

My system specs

Win98
MS K7PRO 1.6 BIOS
AMD 550@800 1/3 cache 1.85 volts(soldered, I can't do anything to alter it) running at now, 30 degrees C
VisionTek GeForce SDR 32MB Nvidia BIOS
TB Montego w/ latest reference Vortex 1 drivers("89" drivers)
D-Link Nic
CL PC-DVD 20x/2x

I don't know what to do! Right now, I'm on the measily 200MMX with a VooDoo Rush 6MB. It's unbearably slow.

Also, could it be my motherboard Battery dying? How long do they normally last? I got an error say low battery on boot up, but that went away right before I was about to step out and buy one.

Well I guess I'll go buy one of those.

Paul

 

[ceraph]

The battery on the motherboard is generally only for mainting BIOS settings. A low battery could cause your problems if you're overclocking and your MB (I don't know MSI) is jumperless. Generally jumperless MB's require BIOS-saved information on the CPU frequency and voltage. If it can't save this information, there may be a fail-safe.

The not-powering-on thing usually only occurs as a result of a couple things:

1. Your power supply is defective or insufficient.
2. The set frequency and voltage for your CPU did not return a successful test on power-up.
3. The dip connector for your power-on switch has become dirty/defective.

The second can also occur if something happens to your chip, ie burnout, inablity to be overclocked at the set speed, etc. If your motherboard is jumperless, it usually reverts to 66FSB and tries to reboot.

Hope this helps at least a little.

--

ceraph

 

[SuperGroove]

Ceraph,

I just picked up an Enermax 350watt power supply from Russ a few weeks ago. Regarding voltage, my computer was unstable at times, so I TRIED bumping it up to 1.90 volts. No go. After resetting the BIOS, it booted up fine. So now it runs at 1.85 volts.

Well about the power-on switch. When I flip off the power supply switch, and turn it back on, it doesn't power up immediately. It only does taht when something's wrong. So...I turn off the power supply turn it back on, and I hit the power switch on the case. All go, but only one green light showing on my MSi-K7PRO.

Any more ideas? Should I go out and buy that battery?

Paul

 

[ceraph]

Well, the battery costs at most $7, so I don't see why you shouldn't.

I don't have nearly the experience with Athlon chips as I do Intel, but the problem you're describing sounds like a frequency problem to me -- which could be related to some wierd thing in the BIOS and the battery.

This assumes of course that your MB is still perfectly fine and isn't defective.

I have this problem occasionally on an older P2B system I still have. Every now and then when I hit the power switch nothing happens. Hitting it repeatedly does nothing either. I've tried doing a couple things with the board, but I've never managed to consistently get rid of the problem. After waiting a while it does power-on, almost as if the electricity didn't initially get to the capacitors.

 

[SuperGroove]

It finally works. I dunno what I did...but it just started to work. Bad K7PRO I guess.

thanks,
Paul