Mental mobo, only boots without battery ?!:@{} ??

[Deluks]

I've been troubleshooting my mates Athlon system.

specs:
Asus A8V-E Deluxe
Athlon 64 3000+
Various other bits n bobs


He had a random problem come out of nowhere last week, the machine wouldn't boot up, hanging on splash screen.

We tried everything, including:

disconnect surplus drives
change vid card
changed memory
update bios to latest version
new (well not new but spare) hard drive, formatted and fresh XP installation
changed ide cables?? (desperation)
changed PSU

In spite of all this the machine wouldn't get past the Asus splash screen, or hangs when it starts listing the drives and specs (before Windows XP splash screen starts)

Somewhere amongst all this we discovered that removing the battery and replacing would enable the machine to boot as normal, but subsequent restarts would not with out removing the battery again. (This was when we decided to update the bios)

We replaced battery with identical from another working mobo. Same problem.

We only discovered tonight (after 4 days) that removing the battery completely enabled the machine to boot and restart normally, I say normally but obviously all bios settings are reset each time, and clock/date etc


So I'm thinking it can only be the mobo, right?


The machine was put together by me a couple of years ago and had been working flawlessly, without having even been opened. The only additions have been a usb printer and TFT monitor, both were several months back.

I've never heard of this problem/solution before, is the CMOS chip fubar? has something connected with the battery burned out?

 

[Igorian]

I've seen this happen on a couple of ASUS boards. When you manage to boot, do you try and reset any of the BIOS settings? I have found that if you attempt to access any of the BIOS settings relating to the CPU (even if you don't change anything), it won't reboot. I ended up by changing settings one at a time and then rebooting until I found the particular one that caused the problem. Once you know that, you can avoid it.

The other possibility is that the CMOS batter is dead or near so, but as you have changed this already, it would seem unlikely.

 

[Deluks]

Thanks for the tip, I've tried changing a few settings, and other times just tried a plain reboot, no joy.
Anyway, I've put far too much energy into this problem now, he's ordered a whole new system, based on another Asus (M2N)

I've almost always had Asus boards and used to swear by them, now I just seem to swear at them.

Do you find that some manufacturers are better than others? What components would you recommend for trouble free computing? Do you know any websites where people vote for their fave hardware, I sometimes use the reviews on eBuyer when choosing gear but half of them are written by noobs who head for their wardrobes when told to 'change jumpers'

 

[Estrella]

What components would you recommend for trouble free computing?

Trouble free components don't exist I'm afraid.

I use ASUS and ASRock mainly due to cost. The problem with this is if you asked ten different PC Tech's for their favourite component manufacturer you'd probably get ten different answers.
PCChips for example are generally scorned , but I've had two with SKT A CPU's chugging away 24/7 in the corner of my office for the last 6 years.

Personally I am not a fan of MSI , but again I am sure someone will be along later who will tell you they are the 'dogs danglies'.

Horses for courses

 

[Deluks]

I've had an iffy msi in the past. Had a gigabyte which was trouble free, I'm thinking of getting another to replace my asrock. I've 2 enermax psu's, which are supposed to be fab, however one randomly reboots and the other blew up last night

I guess the definitive answer would be 'get an Apple' but you can't really upgrade them, unless you spend ££££ plus the technology is behind, Mac users wet their pants at the thought of getting a Radeon 9800pro