Re: Computer won't start
It sounds like a strange ATX problem to me. I had similar things happen before. For
whatever reason the switch on my computer doesn't work to power it up. The switch
DOES work, I have check that via multimeter, but I need to manually short the jumpers
to get the computer to start. So, try this. Open up your machine, locate the two
powerswitch pin's (they have the power switch currently plugged into them) remove the
plug, and touch a screwdriver to those two pins, CAREFULLY. Now, realistically, on
my motherboard, the two pins next to the power switch pins are not hooked up to
anything, but its not the sort of chance you want to take. Touching a screwdriver to
those pins will tell you whether or not the switch is bad.
Btw, you said that it didn't boot a floppy, was the machine on at that point? Did
the floppy drive seek? Did the power LED stay on for more than a few seconds? If
the answer to any of these is yes, than it is probably a bigger problem.
-Aaron Solochek
leko@cmu.edu
Bart Szyszka wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've been having problems in both Debian and Windows,
> so I'm not sure which one could be causing this (probably
> Windows?), but when I turn on my computer right now, it
> doesn't start. I get absolutely nothing on my screen except
> the default thing that shows up on the monitor if the computer
> is turned off and on the older monitor I tried it with it's
> just a blank blank space. I hear a little ticking like it's
> doing something, but that doesn't last long because when I
> put a boot disk in it doesn't go far enough to be trying to
> boot of the harddrive/floppy/cdrom. I've tried replacing the
> graphics card with a different one so it doesn't look like that's
> the problem. My guess is that this is a BIOS problem. Any ideas?
> Could a (Windows?) virus have caused this? Is the bios (I have
> an AMIBIOS in that computer) replacable? Easily? Inexpenssively?
> I'd appreciate some help with this. I'm using a very old computer
> right now with a 486 that can barely handle this telnet prompt
> in Win95 (I install Debian off the harddrive and don't have
> anything downloaded for it in this computer for me to be able to
> set it up easily), BTW. I'd appreciate some advice (in private
> since this might not be specific to Debian?).
>
> - Bart
>
> --
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