dmoldovan

Did you try the "Clear CMOS" thing ?

Dark Jedi

Yes, I did, if you mean taking the battery out for a few minutes. I did that a couple of times on different days. No effect, but thanks for the reply. Is there another way to clear CMOS?

dmoldovan

Well, usually, a clear CMOS means, changing the Realtime cluck jumper from position 1-2 to position 2-3, while the PC is disconnected from the wall outlet.

You can avoid moving the jumper abovementioned, and instead taking out the battery. But, in this case I suggest that you put in shortcircuit the two metallic poles within the battery socket, which are visible after you remove the battery.

__________________
Regards,

Dan

dai

turn the computer off
remove the power lead from the back
take the side off
remove the cmos battery
move the cmos jumper from pins 1 and 2 to pin 2 and 3 and the back to pins 1 and 2
replace the battery
put the side on
replug in the power lead
boot the computer

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dmoldovan

After re-reading the entire post, something just popped into my mind:
It could be the BIOS itself. You just might need to re-flash the BIOS.
The fact that the PC does check the floppy if inserted at boot time, points me to that direction.
There are several ways to flash the BIOS in such cases, depending on the BIOS manufacturer.

If you had an AWARD BIOS, the procedure is pretty simple:
1. identify the BIOS image on the PC manufacturer's site
2. make a system floppy disk
3. find the flasher utility for the BIOS
4. edit or create the file a:\autoexec.bat to contain a line like this:
flash_program /[switches] bios_image

the switches are different from a flashing program to another, BUT, what you should try to accomplish is that:
make the utility to auto-answer "YES" to any questions it might ask the user. That is because in these situations, you don't see the screen (it's blank) and you usually cannot use the keyboard.

the switches should be found in the readme.txt that accompanies the flasher program.

Good luck

However, I don't know exactly how to perform the flashing of the BIOS in these circumstances if it is not an AWARD/Phoenix BIOS

PS: if you need further guidance, i'll try to provide it for you

__________________
Regards,

Dan

Dark Jedi

I actually did think about flashing the BIOS, but I don't know how to do that without anything on the monitor and with unresponsive drives.

dmoldovan

Look into my previous post, and there you will fint the steps for "blindly" flashing the BIOS, IF it is AWARD/PHOENIX BIOS
For more info, look here: http://www.wimsbios.com/faq/howtorecoveracorruptbios.jsp

__________________
Regards,

Dan

Dark Jedi

Sorry I take so long to answer here. I do this part time, so I don't have access to the machine all the time and I have other duties as well.

That said, I did the whole CMOS thing - took out battery, moved the jumper and put it back again, etc. The same things happened (fans run, etc.) BUT now the keyboard lights flash - they were dark before.

As for blindly flashing the BIOS, I have not yet attempted it. I don't know what BIOS it has, although I think it is Phoenix. I will research that, but keep in mind the drives do not respond.

Dark Jedi

Actually, I have no idea how this got marked "solved." Indeed it is not solved, but I don't believe I can get any more help here on the subject. However, if there is something someone else might offer that has not been offered, I do check back.