New pc won't reboot!

[gsgleason]

I just helped my girlfriend part together her first computer. She acquired, for free, used keyboard, monitor, floppy, and CD-rom drives, and new, she got a case, cpu, motherboard, hard drive, and memory. Here's the list of stuff. She was on a very tight budget so it's older stuff...

-Athon XP 2000+
-PC Chips M811LU mainboard with VIA KT266A chipset
-Generic PC2700 memory, 256MB (I ended up buying the wrong memory for her - I somehow thought she was getting a motherboard that supported DDR333 - her board only supports DDR266)
-Windows XP

The problem is that the system will shut down fine, it just won't reboot. It ends up hanging, case fans and all are still on, power LED is on, no HDD activity, just haning there. The reset button will make it reboot at that point.

This happens either if you tell it to reboot in windows, or even if you save a change to the CMOS setup and save and exit.

Any ideas on how to fix it?

 

[MYOB]

I had a similar issue with my MSI motherboard - the latest BIOS update cured it however. In my case, Windows XP would not restart from the restart menu, and did a Windows 95-esque "it is now safe to turn off your computer" message at the end of shutdown. Basically, the ACPI data in the BIOS was incorrect, and thats what the BIOS update repaired.

As its being caused by exiting the CMOS configuration programme, that shows that it is a motherboard issue anyway - hence the BIOS flash being a good idea.

 

[gsgleason]

I went to the manufacurer website and the bios flash program and bios file doesn't work. it gives and error when trying to flash, saying it's not the right type.

 

[MYOB]

Firstly, its *very* unlikely you can flash from Windows XP. It's also not always advisable to use FreeDOS (although I've always used it for BIOS flashing).

So you'll need to get your hands on a set of MS-DOS boot floppies firstly. The "wrong type" error is likely the BIOS flashing complaining that the Windows XP DOS emulator doesn't do what it needs.

BIOS flashing is more of a skill than anything else these days - you need waaay too much co-ordination to do it right.

 

[BrownPaper]

I would rather trust flashing the Bios from Dos via floppy than flashing the Bios from Windows.

Some manufacturer's implementation of Windows Bios flashing is pretty shoddy. I remember a bad Windows Bios flash messed up my board, which resulted me in promptly RMA'ing my board.

Thinks things through and be careful when you flash.

 

[MYOB]

Thats why I told him to get MS-DOS floppies

I just said to be wary of using FreeDOS. Although I've never had any issues with it myself.

 

[Maximillian]

Regarding...new pc won't reboot!

Pop in the Windows CD.
Choose the "R" for repair option and after you type in your Admin password choose C: Drive

Then simply type FIXBOOT.

Forget the BIOS flash stuff. This works 90% of the time. Hope it works for you.

 

[Driver32]

PC Chips Fix

I Have A PC Chips Board too, with the same problem... Goto Bios and Disable Bios Caching. This should work. Did for me.
Good Luck!