PC Will Not Soft/Warm Boot

mj12_2

If its integrated then you most likely won't have that setting in any case. Changing the battery in itself will reset the cmos unless the mb was plugged in at the time but if the problem was happening before u did that then again probably isnt the cause....... only other thing I can think to suggest is looking through ur bios settings and trying to find the standby/resume settings - u should have it set to something along the lines of S3/STR i believe, if its set to S1/POS then soft booting will be disabled.

Perhaps use the cmos jumper to manually reset the motherboard? If all that doesnt work then tbh I have a sneaking suspicion your motherboard may be foobar.

If ya tell me the model number of ur motherboard i'll see if i can find anything else about what could be going on but as i said if all ur setting are correct then it sounds like a hardware fault.... have you got all the power connectors plugged in (sounds silly i know) but easy to forget, depending on if its amd/intel you should have one 4 pin and one 16/24/32 pin connector from the power supply to the motherboard....

GlynD

It's finding the BIOS settings in windows to check or modify them I now have issues with. I'm not ruling out the possibility of FUBAR on the MB but my suspicion is that it's something else. BTW I wouldn't put my hands inside a PC if the PSU was connected to the mains. I took it apart in the kitchen and ensured it was longer than 60 seconds from removing the old battery to fitting the new one. That should have reset the bios.

The answer to this is simple. I can feel it in my water. It's finding it that's difficult.

mj12_2

bios settings depending on manufacturer arent always available through windows and if they are its often not all of them, IMO you'd be better off going into the bios during the POST and working with it that way.

to get into the bios during the POST you will probably need to press F2, DEL or ESC during the memory check and initialisisation but again that depends on the boards manufacturer. Windows isn't invoked until well after the graphics chipset should have initialised.

EDIT: also are you trying to resume from standby or hibernation? again some MB's don't like hibernating so if thats what your doing give it a try in standby where the RAM remains powered.

GlynD

I'll try to edit the bios during startup then. I don't use standby or hibernation. My PC is "always on". When not in use it is switched off. It's also tweaked for performance through windows management: no indexing etc etc. It's not used for games so I don't go for high def graphics although I am running it at top spec for a 32bit machine.

mj12_2

GlynD wrote: »

I'll try to edit the bios during startup then. I don't use standby or hibernation. My PC is "always on". When not in use it is switched off. It's also tweaked for performance through windows management: no indexing etc etc. It's not used for games so I don't go for high def graphics although I am running it at top spec for a 32bit machine.

hmm i think i may have misunderstood the issue here... a soft boot is a boot from standby or hibernation or a restart (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booting#Soft_reboot)..... if you're not in either of those then where are you booting from?

GlynD

I class softboot or warmboot as a restart from within windows or from the reset button on the front of the PC, i.e. "under software control" as your wiki article states. I cannot do this. I can only reboot by either a software instructed shutdown or a switch off and letting the PC stand for at least 10 minutes before startup.

mj12_2

ok i get ya, i believe i'm right in saying that the process the comp follows to restart is very similar to that it follows when coming out of standby/hibernation the difference being that the RAM is emptied on restart but not on the other two... if thats the case then what i've been saying should still hold true and i suspect it will be the s1/s3 settings which are causing the strife...

so long as you are restarting then windows won't be involved until after the graphics chipset has initialised so definitely attack the bios via the POST and not from withiin windows.

oh, and the reset button is a hard reboot usually :-) it (on my computer in any case) interrupts the power to the motherboard and doesnt allow a clean shutdown. its a bad idea to use a reset button unless u have one which does cause windows to shut down cleanly, if you have the type whch just interrupts power then every time u press it you run the risk of damaging the hard drive.

GlynD

Mine is a failsafe one. It requires to be held down for 15 seconds before shutting the power off.

mj12_2

awesome :-) let us know how you get on... if its not s1/s3 settings them im competely stumped tbh but still its an interesting problem...... BIOS is so out of date these days its not really fit for purpose with modern hardware hence the unreliability and fiddling thats needed. Thank goodness its being replaced by something modern soon.

spakkker

Sounds like it could be a motherboard or power supply issue.
Try setting bios to failsafe default. If this works you may have to adjust some settings later.
Can you re-flash the bios next time you have it running ? Your current bios is on 1st post screen or you could use cpu-z to id motherboard and bios.
Can you swap out the psu ?