PC Booting issues

sancho

I have a PC running Windows Home Server, it has been running fine for quite a while now, today nothing would stream, couldn't remote access. I hooked up a monitor and it seems to be stuck on the post screen.

I just get the name/spec of the processor and then it hangs, doesn't appear to be responding to keyboard presses (have only tried a wireless one, need to try a wired one)

There's no 'beeps', have made sure all of the power connections are flush, taken the RAM out and put it back in.

I had noticed one of the hard drives was whirring slightly more than usual, but when I looked in the console it said they were all healthy so thought nothing of it.

I have removed the power/data cables from all of the drives, still exactly the same. I have cleared the CMOS and replaced the PSU
Any ideas? Broken CPU?



Thanks in advance

scheming_gypsy

knackered hard drive... from there it should find your hard drives / CD's. Try going into the BIOS and set the hard drives to 'not installed' (take note of the settings though if they were manually entered) and it should boot past there.

S0litaire

Agree!

Go into BIOS Setup and see what devices it can see.

sancho

At the moment there are no hard drives attached, surely it should say boot error?

Am struggling to find a keyboard so I can try to enter the BIOS, there's 5 in the house somewhere, but I can't find them!! Only the wireless one from my desktop

scheming_gypsy

it probably will if you leave it long enough. How old is the PC? i know the BIOS date is 84 - 2010 but i've not seen a startup screen like that since the 90's.

sancho

I built it around last October. I really hope all of my data is ok :S - Hopefully just the OS drive is faulty. Seems odd that there's no motherboard beeps, no errors, just hanging on that screen, even with the 'possibly' faulty drive attached

S0litaire

Depends on the BIOS!

ON mine it hangs or takes 30 mins on the BIOS screen to give up and admit the Drive attached is faulty (Does the same for any Device that's not working!).

If there's nothing attached then the BIOS is quick to tell me it's missing, but with a faulty device it can take a while for the BIOS to time out.


Also check the cables! a loose STAT /IDE cable can cause the drive to act like it's broken, and the BIOS will have problems seeing it!


Did you have the server to auto update the windows updates?
Their was a problem with some updates a couple of months ago...

fwor

As above, probably HDD fault, but don't rule out RAM failure either. I've seen damaged RAM where only part of the memory is faulty, so it can appear to work for a short while. It would be worth running Memtest on it if you have another PC that will take that spec.

sancho

Have found a PS/2 keyboard, first of all nothing happened when pressing del (lights on keyboard flashed when I pressed power so I know it's working) - After twiddling and hammering del while pressing the power button it now shows the same screen, but 'prepare to enter setup' along the bottom, as if it's trying to enter the BIOS, been like it for 10 mins or so.

All out of ideas now, if it won't post and I can't enter Bios i'm pretty screwed right?

pcombo

Put a hard drive that works in the machine if it gets to post 2 screen then hardware is fine,

Try the hard drive as a secondary in another machine.

sancho

Is it worth trying the boot drive in a machine I know works?

Unfortunately the RAM is different so I can't try another stick that I know works, or it in another machine

Edit - Didn't see that last post, will try that