Hardware Question (vanity)

me

[SkiKnee]

I burn incense and spread chicken entrails on the BIOS.

[Tainan]

Intel build yer own bookmark for later reference.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

but I did not hear beep and my screen was blank. What did I do wrong?

Screams 'memory problem' to me. Check the memory type, make sure they match and then remove and reseat them. Worth a shot.

[Corinthian Warrior]

I tried a few things once I got home. First, I disconnected most everything from the motherboard as Viking2002 recommended, and then pulled out all but one of the ram sticks. Rebooted it. Fans came on, no beep, but it did not turn off again.

I then went to bed. I will mess with this later.

[Viking2002]

Most boards have a built-in piezo speaker. Those tinny little internal speakers have been a third teat for the last fifteen years. LOL

[Viking2002]

Yeah, if you stabbed that old RAM into another box and it booted, then little tics in ambient environmental conditions probably caused it to work loose in the bus. No biggie.

[Corinthian Warrior]

aa

[Viking2002]

Remember, I said one bank - some boards won't boot with just a single stick nowadays. If you look close, they'll be labeled DIMM 0, DIMM 1, DIMM 2, DIMM 3, etc. And they're color-coded, generally black/white or blue/white - you'll find that DIMM 0 and DIMM 2 compose the first accessed bank of memory, so make sure they're both populated. Again, your mileage may vary, depending on the manufacturer. Be sure to read the install guide cover to cover - there are always little quirks that manufacturers engineer into their hardware to distinguish themselves from the guy down the block.

Now, having spouted all that gibberish, there's a damn good possibility that you just got a bad board right out of the box. It's happened to me more than once. I'd check and see what sort of consumer geek rating that model has - there are quite a few that spec out nicely and look good on a web page, but aren't worth the cost of the shipping to send them. Give it one more shot - if it still won't boot, return it and get a different brand.

[Corinthian Warrior]

Okay, one bank. I’ll try it.

[Corinthian Warrior]

Tried one bank, in O and 2 spots. Same thing, fans on, no beep, it turns off, turns back on, still no beep.

Tried anouther brand RAM (I bought it for my Dad’s PC) same thing.

So I should return the Motherboard and get my money back?

[Viking2002]

I would. Without having the resources for any sort of more interactive troubleshooting on it, I'd return the board, and go get yourself another one.

[Corinthian Warrior]

Okay, I replaced the board with one made by gig-byte. I don't have it in front of me right now, I am at work. (no internet at home until the PC works!)

This board seems to work! There is no beep, but that is because my case has the speakers and its connector does not fit the one on the new board.

However, something strange happened when it booted. As it goes through its boot phase, the keyboard is dead. I cannot hit F2 or delete or any other prompt to let me reset its Bios.

It then loads up windows xp, with everything intact from the old hard drive! I would like to keep that! That is good. I thought I would need to reload windows.

But the mouse and keyboard are not operating. I tried all the USB connectors on the front and back of the case. The mouse lights up, but it cannot move.

How do I get the mouse and keyboard to wake up? If this is a Bios problem, how can I talk to the bios without a mouse and keyboard?

Thanks for all your advice. :-)

[Viking2002]

Normally, USB emulation should be on in the BIOS. Unplug the power, take out the CMOS battery for about 10 minutes, then put it back in and give it another try.

[Corinthian Warrior]

Do I need to do anything like “flash” the bios or “reset the bios clock” - I don’t want to jack around with this.

[Viking2002]

The BIOS shouldn't need to be flashed unless the board has been sitting on a shelf for five years. If that's the case, someone sold you a technological Edsel. LOL And the 'BIOS clock' is the real-time clock onboard. As long as the battery is good, set it and forget it. If you want to talk about a Jurassic computer, my sister-in-law dropped off the PC she uses at the church she keeps the books for and designs the Sunday service programs on, so my wife could replace the gimpy CD-ROM. She put that fossil on my workbench, booted it up, and it had a whopping 32 MB of RAM. We tithed a spare CD-ROM drive and an extra 32 MB we dug out of my RAM jar. Working 72-pin SIMMS are a rare commodity nowadays. LOL

[Corinthian Warrior]

First, I tried using an older keyboard and mouse (ones with the round hole and the pins in them) and they did not work either.

So I did that thing with the battery, and the keyboard works during the boot!

I went into the BIOS and told it to enable USB keyboard and mouse. After that, the mouse still did not work.

I took the battery out several times, and still the mouse is dead. Also, the keyboard seems dead after the boot - when windows wakes up.

What now?

[Viking2002]

Boot it, leave everything plugged in, walk away, and go have a beer. If you're getting keyboard response to configure the BIOS, you're probably good to go. If it's going dead when Windows starts to load, then it's looking for drivers for everything, and that could take a little while. All new boards do that. Don't worry about the mouse - give Windows time to load and reconfigure everything. You may end up having to install new drivers for a few things that Windows doesn't recognize.