Barebones no boot

Have a rig that had 6 HD's of which one developed Major probs and smoke came pouring out, was stood right by it with the side panel off so immediately turned off at the rear PSU Power Button. Consequence was another 2 HD's have now become defunct com not recognising in BIOS. Luckily the OS drive was undamaged and was up and running in a while. Had several/many boots succesfully and was running OK. Not to risk anymore happenings I took the OS HD out ever since then whilst testing the rig, even with just ''BareBones'' it will boot to the Mobo Makers splash screen/ I press delete to enter setup which then goes to entering setup writing then goes NO further. Have reset CMOS jumper/took out battery for 24 hours and pressed start button to discharge. Changed Vid card/Memory/PSU all to no avail ending up as above. If mobo had been damaged why the may succesfull boots ??

ASUS A8N SLI
AMD 64X2 4200
2 GIG CORSAIR
GEFORCE ASUS EN210 512MB
750 WATT PSU
WIN7 ULTRA

 

Hi Toke.
I have seen this sticking startup with either a faulty hard drive, or, memory, when it has appeared- I will ask the obvious- have you checked the hard drive that you are setting up on ? OR, the motherboard sector memory (first 64mb it used to be- just a thought if the later boards are the same) or, (CHKDSK /R)
I like the Asus boards but never had an A8N , so I cannot think of anything else at present

 

Toke,

I ran into a similar issue last Summer on a friend's PC that was nuked during a lightening storm (no surge protection on the cable broadband line; got the modem and a TV in the house as well).

Since I'm not exactly sure of what was (or wasn't) hooked up to the mobo for this, my advice is to try the following:

* Disconnect ALL internal hard drives, CD/DVD drives, floppy drives, etc from both power and SATA/IDE cables.

* Disconnect ALL external devices except for a wired keyboard, mouse and monitor.

* Connect an internal CD/DVD drive that was NOT installed in the PC at the time the problems began with an emergency boot/diagnostics CD.

* Reset the board's BIOS (leaving the PC unplugged and removing the CMOS battery for about 3 minutes should be long enough).

* Restart the PC

If the BIOS gets to the point of either loading the emergency boot disk (or, if you don't have an emergency disk, a "non system disk"-type error message) and lets you enter BIOS setup, the odds are in your favor the motherboard itself isn't damaged.

From there, start reconnecting drives one by one and restarting the system (in the case I described above, a DVD+RW drive was the boot culprit).

I would also seriously consider replacing the PSU as a safety precaution. If the PSU is sending abnormal voltages (even intermittently), it could do more damage.

Any optical drive that causes boot issues should be tossed. If you attempt data recovery off a HDD that fails the boot test, I'd err on the side of caution and only attempt it using an external HDD adapter/case with its own dedicated power supply.

Hope this helps.

 

Hi again and thanks for reply. I followed as suggested but did not have much hope as I could not fully post therefore it would not get as far as reading a disc but undaunted I tried another ROM and we now have full Post. Took out the power lead to Rom and NO post, connect power lead and away we go to a full post. Reinstated OS drive, put back original Rom and now have the full boot, yet inexplicably if I remove power lead from either of the Roms (one at a time) I have NO post, really Bizarre. Computer has now 3 HD's running OK and no hiccups as long as I keep a Rom conneted. Thanks again for your input 'baklogic' and 'gman863'.

 

I fixed a hang issue in the BIOS by resetting the RAM.

Turn off and unplug the PC
Remove the RAM
Turn the PC on (WITHOUT THE RAM) you should hear the BEEP that there is no RAM. (3 sec should get it)
Put in the RAM and do another boot.
If lucky you will be able to get into BIOS Setup

 

Please read my last message/post TheRealGeeek