Booting problems

[Abraxas]

After the forum swallowed everything I try again in short.

I often have no boot when I restart (either OS or full). Often, not always. Another reboot usually works. When the PC doesn't boot, most of the time I have no screen as well. I'm talking about a yellow LED, not just a black screen. The thing doesn't even turn back on again during reboot. If I turn it on myself, there is either nothing or "signal not found".

Today I turned the CPU (Athlon 1800+) to the minimum to decrease heat temporarily. The reboot wouldn't work and leave me hanging with nothing - no beeps, no hard drives, no display. So far that's not too much of a surprise.
I tried another one and again nothing. I left the screen on, tried again - nothing. Turned the PC off. Back on. Nothing. I checked all the cables, everything in place, it should work, but didn't. By that time I thought it's about the clocking. I tried a couple times with and w/o the screen turned on.

Then I turned the PSU as well as the power strip off and back on. Suddenly the machine booted fine, with the screen turned off. Back in WinXP I turned the screen on - display returning to full glory - and tried a reboot. I almost knew it wouldn't work and guess what it didn't.
I repeated a few times with no success. Turned the PSU off again. Screen still turned on. And now it DIDN'T work. Everything off again including the screen, another reboot and it worked fine. Huh? Am I missing something?

I didn't try again after this, comp still on since this time, but I'm afraid it might happen again the next time.
2 things for sure:
- until this day a reboot won't work sometimes, but a complete shutdown would work in every case, no longer true
- the screen wouldn't switch on when reboot doesn't work, but would never stop my PC from booting out COLD in the first place!

Is it just the clocking (6x133, min setting) that produces such craziness or is something different seriously wrong with my machine? Any suggestions?
Thx in return.

PS: Wasn't that short after all...

 

[JSR]

6x133 min setting?

on a 266 fsb.............i'm no math major ........but, isnt 2x133=266?

 

[Abraxas]

I'm sorry, but there are only 6+ ratio in my BIOS, nothing below.
I'm an amateur on clocking procedures, but I'm sure there's no 2x multiplier for this CPU and BIOS.
It's Award 6.00 PG.
Shutdown now, I hope it will turn on again easier tomorrow!

It didn't. Same problem. With screen turned on the machine wouldn't boot. And once again, turning off the PSU is the only way to get it to boot again.

6/5
Well, I guess I get some new nice problems everyday now.
Basic fact: My PC doesn't boot the first time around any more. I HAVE to start it, turn it off, turn the PSU/power strip off and try again. And then the screen MUST NOT be turned on, otherwise it still won't boot.
New problem:
My screen changes colors. The colors which worked before now produce a red-tinted display, had to apply some user color scheme. Seems to run stable now. I'm afraid I damaged the screen with the whole turn on/turn off procedures. But perhaps it's just getting old, plain coinicidence, don't know, but I don't believe so.

Could suddenly be something wrong with the PSU? Maybe it can't provide enough power for the screen and the machine together on boot? I can't think of a reason why, but the fact that turning off the PSU enables the boot makes me wonder. Of course, then there is still the little problem of the first-time boot never working. Seems the machine for whatever reason now MUST boot out warm.

 

[Abraxas]

The heavy booting problems are over, they were caused by the clocking changes.

But the general problem is still going on. Restart doesn't work the first time, always a second try needed. Screen doesn't turn back on after restart. What's up with that?

 

[acidosmosis]

I've seen a problem kind of like that, though I didn't have the guys computer in the office long enough to really figure out what the problem is. I hope you find out what's going, because I would also like to know why this kind of problem occurs.

With this specific person's PC his monitor wouldnt come on unless you turned the monitor on IMMEDIATELY after the POST process with the single beep. A few seconds before or after and the monitor would never come on. I know this guy didnt touch his CMOS settings or anything (at least I'm 99.9% sure, but anything is possible).

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Have you plugged your monitor power cord to computer's PSU? If so, test by plugging it directly to the wall socket. If it is a large monitor, it might be drawing too much current from it.

 

[Nic]

A monitor runs directly from the line voltage, even if it connects to the PSU. It does not draw any power from the PSU, as the connection is simply for convenience.

 

[Abraxas]

No, I haven't connected the plug to the PSU. More than that, screen and PC sit on two different power strips cause I produced (external) shorts on a regularly basis.
Wait...could that be the source of the problem? Monitor and PC are not on the same power strip? I don't think so, but I'm not sure either.

Currently the problem seems have solved itself as I managed to have a working restart out of XP. Strange. After it didn't work for the last months it does now, apparently.

Note: I disabled the Kaspersky Anti Virus monitor. This is the only change I made yesterday. Could it be caused by this tool? I don't believe that. Although I'm quite sure that I didn't have this problem back when I got the new computer. It occured sometime later.

PS:
I had a different problem with the booting procedure, but it mysteriously vanished. I have to mention it cause I get the feeling that it was replaced by the various symptoms I currently experience.
Again from time to time - not always - after booting, beeps and self test the Win XP logo and loading screen did shortly appear, but after the XP kind of blue screen (which I've never seen at any other place) pops up and tells me about a "boot volume error" or something, I can't remember.
As I said this one seems gone. I haven't seen it for a long time. I remember that I had this one and the screen-logon problem at the same time for a while and the blue screen was before the screen issue as well.

Sometime after the screen turned mad at me while the blue screen enjoyed the party for a while and finally decided to leave me alone with the angry monitor.

 

[Abraxas]

There were some questionable lines in the registry for startup which seem to have caused those problems. I see no connection whatsoever to the monitor, but now it's working fine, either restart or reboot.