Florence

You said to go into the Bios and change the start up. well I have tried to go there, but when I hit the DEL key nothing happens, is there another way to get into the Bios. When I first bootup and it comes up, it says to hit the del key, I sure wanted to try your way.

Florence

AMD_SEMPRON

I think theres diffrent bottons, Try F8 or F10 worked for me.

whardman

Or F2, that is the most common one.

gamerman0203

Then hit the delete key. It won't delete anything, just get you into the BIOS. Delete and F1 are the most common hotkeys for BIOS

Florence

OK I have tried all F2 F8 F10 nothing, so one more try, It goes so fast when it first comes up so hope I can get the F1 and del in time. Oh yes have tried the Del too.
Florence

MoralTerror

esc sometimes does it

Florence

Well I found a place where it gives you different ways, I guess I am going to have to try them all.I have tried the last two,

CTRL-ALT-S
CTRL-ALT-Enter
CTRL-ALT-Insert
CTRL-ALT-Esc
F1
F10

Florence

I give up nothing works, I guess I am going to have to call the guy who put this computer together, I didn't want to because he might want me to bring it in and I want to fix it my self.
Florence

koala

Some more BIOS key combinations http://www.techsupportforum.com/show...73&postcount=8

You need to start tapping the key/s as soon as your PC starts and keep tapping until the BIOS screen appears. It should appear within about 10 seconds.

Florence

OK I found why this don't work, I went into the INTERNET and put my BIOS information in there and it came up that you have to turn off the computer to use the DEL key, Well I can't do that, I would have trouble again getting it back on, last time it took about fifteen minutes just pushing the on switch and the reset button, so just hope I don't have any outages.
Florence

MoralTerror

and do a cold start ie shutdown then wait about 30 seconds before booting up

Bartender

Hi, Florence -
Sorry, I was gone for a coupla days. Hmm, let's see, how can we get around this? You understand that you have to tap repeatedly on whichever key it is that gets you into your BIOS (as mentioned by other folks, there are very few variations for 98% of the BIOS'es out there) as the PC is starting up, right? You can't get there once Windows has started. It doesn't hurt anything to just keep tapping on the key as soon as you hear the fans start to spin, because you don't know when it's going to take the command.

Now, if turning the PC off and getting it to come back on is a real ordeal, then about the only other thing I can think of is going after that "On" button on the front of your PC.

Hey, anyone else looking at this thread - doesn't the Reset button do the same thing as the "On" button? It's spring-loaded and just provides a momentary closed circuit when you push on it, right? If that's the case, and Florence has already familiarized herself with those little tiny wires going from the front of the case to the motherboard, couldn't she unplug the "On" button wires at the motherboard, move the Reset wires over to the "On" pins, then try to start the PC with the Reset button? That way we could find out if it's just a burned out "On" button. That would work, wouldn't it?

I want to hear from someone else before you go charging into that, but if you do this make sure to draw yourself a little map of the pinset on the motherboard, and draw exactly where the wires are now and which colors they are. Take it from me, it's very easy to lose track of where those darn wires went. If they weren't so tiny and so close together, I'd say just find some thin wire and make yourself a jumper, but it's too easy to touch other pins and I don't know what that would do.

As I mentioned before, those of us who spend far too much time with their computers have spares laying around. I've got a couple of start buttons I could just swap out. If I didn't have any spares and was getting really fed up with the problem, I might even cut the two "On" wires, strip them back a little bit, then hold the two ends coming off the motherboard together for a second to see if the PC started. When done, a person could solder the wires back together and either tape them up or slip some heat shrink tubing over the damaged area. But you may not want to do that because you're not sure about fixing the damage.

Florence, the other thing you could do is just mash down on the "On" button, push it dfrom side to side, wiggle it some, you know what I mean, do anything you can think of to get it to make contact. It could be full of dirt, the contacts could be corroded, etc. Most of them are pretty cheesy little units.

Good luck. Once you get it fixed, you might want to try the "Restart after AC Power Loss" thing I told you about. I've had my PC set up that way for quite a while, and really like it. But I always turn my PC off after using it - I don't leave it running for days or weeks like many people do.

Bartender

I don't know why it takes me a coupla days to think of the obvious - are you (or someone you can lay hands on) at all competent with a multimeter? The obvious thing to do here is pull the 2 "On" wires off the motherboard, set your multimeter to "Ohms", and push a couple of pins or whatever you can find into the plastic plugs at the end of the wires so you can make contact with the copper inside. Push the PC's "On" button and watch the multimeter. If it doesn't see a closed circuit, try wriggling the button, pushing a little bit sideways on it, whatever you've gotta do to make the multimeter jump.
If you just can't get a closed circuit, then you know the button is shot. Oops, almost forgot - make sure the multimeter is working. Hold the multimeter leads to each other, creating a short circuit, and see if the multimeter reacts. Multimeters rely on a battery to read ohms - if the battery's dead, it won't do anything.

Florence

Hi My husband has all these meters, he said the same thing, he rewired this house his truck, and all kinds of things around here, so Maybe he can do computers too. lol. That guy amasses me, He had a bad chainsaw and took it apart and rebuild it, never seen one inside before, He does things like this all the time, Oh yes it does work.
Thanks for your help, we will have to do just what you said with the meter.
Florence