PC Pals Forum

Technical Help & Discussion => Self Building, Upgrading & General Hardware Help => Topic started by: TR on November 28, 2003, 16:46

Title: Wont open
Post by: TR on November 28, 2003, 16:46
Another problem, but this time not mine.

My eldest son just phoned up and said his pc wont boot up, he says it doesnt get to the post screen and just sits with a blank screen.

OS is ME, yeah I know but that was his choice  ;D
Can anybody give me a clue before I go round to see him,  like Loose leads etc.


Hookstar
Title: Re:Wont open
Post by: measter on November 28, 2003, 16:50
i would say that it's to do with the motherboard. when that happened to me it turned out that mine was fried
Title: Re:Wont open
Post by: TR on November 28, 2003, 16:57
How can I tell if it is?
Title: Re:Wont open
Post by: chorleydave on November 28, 2003, 17:19
Hi, Hook.

I had that problem a couple of weeks' ago.  The problem was that my mobo battery had come slightly loose.  I took it out, wiped it on my teeshirt, put it back firmly, and that did the trick.

Might be the first thing to check.
Title: Re:Wont open
Post by: Sandra on November 28, 2003, 17:19
Is it an old PC Hooky ?
It may just be the battery that has gone flat so that it cant load the retained memory from the bios.
If its that then hit del as he switches on and get into bios if he can and load bios defaults.
If its not that then it could be the ram or as Measter said fried mobo but unless hes had a recent storm or some other cause of a surge, hoepfully its not that  :(
Title: Re:Wont open
Post by: TR on November 28, 2003, 17:33
The Battery Idea sounds good. about my limit that one...Dave I take it there is no charge for that one  ;D

Sandra, I dont know if it will even boot to the bios screen, I will let you know tomorrow.

Hook
Title: Re:Wont open
Post by: Adept on November 29, 2003, 08:49
Does the PC make any beeping noises as it is switched on Hook? If it does beep, there should me one long beep and a number of shorter ones. Can you get your son to count them?

My best guess is that something has come loose inside the PC. Get him to whip the lid off and make sure all of the PCI cards are firmly in place and also that the memory is clipped in place tightly.

Title: Re:Wont open
Post by: TR on November 29, 2003, 10:39
Ok just got back from the lads and here is what I found?

Start pc, screen fires into life, 1 beep from Bios thats good, then the ME splash screen shows up, then onto a black screen with the curser flashing..and that is far as it goes.

some error codes that come up in safe mode.

Error-OD : 0147 : 00005ED5

VMM+12

Hookstar
Title: Re:Wont open
Post by: lobo on November 30, 2003, 00:04
Try restoring a good registry backup. There are 5 backups by default. Once a day on bootup, the registry is backed up. It's important that this is attempted as soon
as possible. If it's been over 5 days, it won't work.

Reboot and hold the CTRL button down, until you get the boot menu. Choose Command
prompt only. At the C:\> type: scanreg /restore and press enter

Choose a date before the problems started. Then type win and hit enter and see whether you can get back into Windows. If that isn't successful, try another
backup.

VMM is referring to Virtual Memory, btw. That's all that error tells us.

I wouldn't recommend reinstalling over the top. That won't help if there are registry problems. In fact, it could make things worse.

Brian ;D