System working fine went into bios now it won't post.

[CZJZ]

Hi, I am trying to help a friend with his computer problem. He was installing a new HD and things were going great. He said he wanted to go into the bios to look at some settings and when he hit the delete key to enter the comp froze and now it will not boot up.

The fans,HD's do power on but the monitor light never goes green, nothing on the screen at all (black) and the computer just powers off after 5-10 seconds.

From reading on here I suggested taking the RAM out and trying each one in slot 1, one at a time. He did so and it did not help matters.

I told him to reset the cmos, he did this and still the same problem.

Any idea what may be wrong or where to search for the problem? He had made no hardware or software changes when it was running fine. He simply went into the bios by hitting del.

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[KGB]

How did he clear the CMOS?

Did he use the MB jumper per the manual or did he merely remove the battery?

 

[CZJZ]

He shorted the jumper on the mobo from 1\2 to 2\3 then put the jumper back on 1\2 after 10 secs. The system was off of course.

 

[videogames101]

Take out the HDDs and any cd/dvd drives, try booting

if it boots, you have your problem, if not,

remove any extension cards, try booting, if it doesn't,

try another video card.

(unplug power from all this stuff too, could be a shorting device somewhere)

 

[CZJZ]

Ok, thanks for the suggestions first. My buddy took all the HD's out, dvd drive etc, the sound card and ethernet card. It still has the same problem. He is getting ready to take the video cards out but before he did I thought I would post and say that he has 2 cards in the machine in sli mode.

He did not build this machine btw and purchased it from someone. Can he take 1 of the video cards and try it solo and if it doesnt work take it out and try the other to see if it boots up correctly? Or does the mobo have to have 2 video cards to work correctly?

Thanks

 

[zerocool84]

Originally posted by: CZJZ
Ok, thanks for the suggestions first. My buddy took all the HD's out, dvd drive etc, the sound card and ethernet card. It still has the same problem. He is getting ready to take the video cards out but before he did I thought I would post and say that he has 2 cards in the machine in sli mode.

He did not build this machine btw and purchased it from someone. Can he take 1 of the video cards and try it solo and if it doesnt work take it out and try the other to see if it boots up correctly? Or does the mobo have to have 2 video cards to work correctly?

Thanks

You always want to try with the least amount of stuff when trouble shooting. Try with one video card.

 

[CZJZ]

Still the same problem with one video card and he tried each seperately. How about a bad power supply? However it does start up for 5-10 secs and shuts down so i guess not eh?

 

[zerocool84]

Did he do anything else to his system? Touch something, remove something, adjust something?

 

[CZJZ]

Not a thing. That's what is confusing. While i was waiting to hear something i asked him if the system always runs 5-10 seconds and shuts down or sometimes it may run 15-20 seconds?

He told me: " If I plug it in, first time start as if to have fresh power, it will run 5-10, it slows dramatically if I just try again without switching the power off or unplugging"

 

[BW86]

take the whole motherboard out of the case and place it on a piece of cardboard, then try and post.