Posted: 12/9/2005 4:51:49 AM EDT
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I swapped out the mother board on a friends computer yesterday. It boots up, windoze loads with no problems. However when I try and turn the computer off..it won't. It goes through the windoze is shutting down screen, the monitor goes black but the cpu doesn't turn off. Is this a bios setting messed up? |
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is it running windows 98 SE?? that was a know problem, they released a patch for it. the patch didn't always work check the bios and see if power savings was turned off(i couldn't imagine that it was). sometimes that can screw up the shutdown process. unplugg all external devices scanner printers, etc and see if that helps |
552 posts and hes tellin you what to do
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could be a couple things: (these tips all assume you are running windows xp) it sounds like you might have some kind of ACPI power management problem which can be a driver issue. if you only swapped out the mobo, different from the original mobo that was in there, and nothing else, you need to export the enum key from the registry (open registry editor, HKLM->system->controlset001->enum right-click, export) , delete it and restart the computer. this has the effect of "refreshing" the detected hardware on the system. have your driver cd's ready. other problem might be bios. check under the "power" settings in bios and make sure acpi is enabled and "after power failure" is set to "stay off." these menu options will have different names depending on the mobo mfger. try these out and let us know what happens. |
own3d...  yes..it's running xp and I chanced the m/b, processor and ram. It's a mercury m/b. Thanks for the tips guys. One thing the manual for the board mentioned was clearing the cmos. Is this another place to look, consider? |
Always a good idea to do a fresh install of Windows whenever you change motherboards. (unless it's an IDENTICAL replacement). Some folk claim you can change/delete certain files and be good to go, but I have heard repeatedly that it can result in a less than stable system. Never heard of "Mercury" motherboard. Must be a small player in the motherboard market. OEM only? |
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I used to repair a lot of machines and I could never get a motherboard swap to work AND be stable because all of the sytem registers and all of that crap just got all screwed up, this was all with Win95 and Win98. After trying it a few times I just gave up and it is better to do a fresh install anyway. Recently I was crunched for time and had to get the inlaws computer up and running so I swapped their HD into one of my working machines and it booted right up without a problem so the WinXP seems to handle a MB swap a lot better than before but I still would do a clean install. The shutdown problem I have always been able to fix with the ACPI and other power management settings either within Windows or within the BIOS. |
ok. so it was early, and i didnt check to see who the original poster was, and since i recently had a computer prob and the "urban camandos" fixed it in about 5 mins, i thought that might help. and i was getting my early morning arfcom fix [cofee] |
ask here: [email protected] 
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Well I went in and checked the bios settings. Didn't see anything strange..not that I would recognize them..anyway I used the load optimal settings option and now it won't boot past the flash screen for the mb. All I get is a black screen with a cursor flashing in the upper left corner! 
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do you have a cd or dvd in the drive? if so, take it out. if not, make sure the bios still has your hard drive listed in the "boot order" option. might have to fixmbr. |
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Two problems, first you should remove the HAL keys in the system registry prior to a MB upgrade in XP, if you don't know where this is, you should not do it. If you do not remove these keys then you must go into the BIOS on the new board and disable "Quick Boot" this will make it scan ALL of the hardware at boot and build a proper HAL. If after this is done it does not shut down with the OS then one of 3 things have happend. 1. This machine was origianlly installed as Win98 on a non ACPI compliant MB. 2. ACPI is not enabled in the BIOS or 3. APM is not enabled under power management/advanced There can be a million reasons that the machine will not boot after "defaulting" the BIOS. Most of them will be boot order related but also can be other hardware, in particular Memory settings. Defaults usually won't stop it from working but can. In any case, check your boot order if it is as stated IDE0 as first, double check that your hard drive is on the PRI IDE connector and set as master. This can be done quickly by going to the BIOS screen that will offer the drive settings and set all of them to AUTO and see where the drive is detected. If it is not the first on the Primary chain then increment the IDE number 1 for Pri Slave 2 for Secondary master....... You can also test for boot by changing to CD as primary boot device and put a bootable CD in there and see if it boots. If it does than its not a Problem other than Boot order. I hope this helps |
Bad memory/overclocked. Pick "Safe Settings" in BIOS "Optimal" slightly overclocks things or runs them on the edge of specs. For the shutdown, make sure ACPI is enabled in BIOS. |
do a repair install then do the same steps as if your reinstalling windows. when its gets to a a certain point it will ask to do a repair. do the repair. you will have to reinstall all the service packs and critical updates but it could fix it |
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don't do a clean wipe! try these steps first: using the windows cd that was used to load the current o/s boot into recovery console. this can be accomplished by booting from the windows cd and at the first "blue" screen selecting option 'r' for repair. you will get to a command prompt. perform the following commands: fixboot fixmbr chkdsk /r then type 'exit' the machine will restart. see if it boots. if it doesn't boot you will have to perform a repair install. don't worry, your data will not be lost if you follow these instructions. boot from the windows cd again at the first screen follow the prompts to install windows. i think the steps are: enter f8 at this point it should say 'detecting previous versions of windows' or something like that when it detects your previous install it will give you the option to repair the existing install or to continue with a fresh install... obviously you should select the repair option. it will then go through the process of recopying and rebuilding the registry. it will basically look like you are reinstalling windows. then you are done. depending on if the cd you used was a sp1 or sp2 cd you may have to re-install/download service pack 2 and jump through a few hoops to get your copy of windows activated. if you have to call microsoft to activate just tell the indian guy/woman on the other side that "yes" this is the only computer this copy of windows is on. |
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Thanks for all the help guys. I e-mailed [email protected]. They replied and told me to delete my cookies and they reset my password to abcdef. 
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If resetting the cookies doesn't work, maybe this thread will help. |
hes right, if you uninstall the aol software on the computer. i bet it will work after that |
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Home or Pro? Somebody here can rip an .iso of their install CD, then you burn the .iso and you have a bootable CD. Otherwise I have some bootable ones, just not Windows. |
Nope. I tried cd-0,cd-1, cd-2 and cd-3. Nothing. I tried IDE-0,IDE-1,IDE-2 and IDE-3. Nothing. I did manage to get the prompt to "press any key to boot from cd" when I had it on cd-1 but when I did..nothing happened. *sigh* |
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if you got to the "press any key to boot from cd" then the computer is indeed booting off the cd... however your cd might be damaged or scratched if it is not booting after you press any key.... maybe your reaction time was too slow? try to press any key before 5 elipses show on the screen. you have less than 4 seconds to react to that message. if you are fed up with trying to fix the o/s just do a data backup and perform a clean install. there is still the issue of being able to use that windows cd to perform the wipe and clean install however. to get the data off the disk simply remove it and slave it to a different computer. most of the time the majority of people's data can be found under 'documents and settings' and under the appropriate username. |
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I won...sorta. I got it to boot from the cd but it wanted to install windows. So I aborted it, tried changing the boot sequence again..no love. In the middle of all this..I remembered what federalist suggested about the drive settings. I wasn't sure where to find that but when I went into the bios page..I saw pri master with "user" beside it. So I went through the selections and voila..auto. I hit esq, f10 and didn't it boot up..sort of. I had to finish the install which was no big deal because it wasn't that long ago I formatted it for her anyway. So I'm updating the thread on her computer.  Thanks again everyone for your advice |
4:30pm: "I'm going to leave it alone for tonight" 10:30pm: "Got it working! Thanks!" Have you spoken to a Mental Health Specialist about your Obsessive Compulsive Disorder lately? |
LOL..I hate being beaten by a hunk of metal and silicone chips...I installed a few programs for her, tweaked a few things, set up a disk clean up and defrag schedules, installed spyware for her..couldn't get my norton to install for some reason though. I d/loaded the AVG freeware for her for now. That way I know she is protected for 30 days. That will give me time to sort things out. For being an admin type in the infantry she isn't great when it comes to computer maintenance. Or she knows I'll do it for her! 
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Were you thinking of breasts when you made the post? AVG beats Norton in every category, Especially "footprint". Norton will use up 10% of your resources and you can't uninstall it easily. Stay with AVG. |
Na..silicone valley..computers...  I have Norton on my system..used it forever and never had any issues. I d/loaded AVG on hers because it offered a trial version but damn..they want $39.95 US for the full service program.
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Ahhhhh, Silicon Valley. 
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