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General discussion

Fails to boot past American Megatrends screen

Feb 26, 2004 9:42PM PST

I have my neighbors computer that is failing to boot past The initial American Megatrends screen. She said that she was having trouble with her dialup and somehow got into the BIOS. She changed two values from "yes" to "no" and now it won't get past the "American Megatrends TVX0619B" screen. It's a Biostar MB-8500TVX-A mother board with a Pentium 200mmx CPU. I have tried clearing the CMOS by strapping JP4 and also removed the clock chip that has the battery in it for a couple hours. Nothing seems to help. Holding keys down on the keyboard won't force a keyboard error either. I have reduced it to nothing but the video card and CPU but no Beeps. It doesn't even get to testing the memory. It acts like the BIOS is wiped. Can this happen? Is there any way to force it into setup this early on in the boot process or is it toast??
There were some thunderstorms just prior to her having this trouble.

Any help would be appreciated.

Steve Roberts

Discussion is locked

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Re:Fails to boot past American Megatrends screen
Feb 26, 2004 10:12PM PST

I have some i200mmx in a box that I can't give away. In short, such old hardware can be found for cheap and you might find a piece here or there to fix it. BUT without spare parts, you will not find the bad part. This is the way it is.

If you are in the new england area, find me and a running i200mmx is yours. This offer is only for Steve Roberts.

bob

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Fails to boot past American Megatrends screen
Feb 26, 2004 11:46PM PST

Thanks Bob, I'm in Florida and don't have that much gas. I have some spare CPU's 60's thru 133's that I could try. I'll let you know.

Steve

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Fails to boot past American Megatrends screen
Feb 27, 2004 12:24AM PST

I tried another CPU, even connected up another PSU and still nothing after the initial American Megatrends screen. The led on the Quantum Bigfoot HD flashes a few times and then nothing.

Steve

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Unplug IDE devices. Get a floppy to boot.
Feb 27, 2004 12:33AM PST

Some machines will hang if an IDE device has gone too far south.

Bob

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Re:Unplug IDE devices. Get a floppy to boot.
Feb 27, 2004 1:05AM PST

I unplugged the HD tried it, replaced the HD and even replaced the ram, each time it still failed. It doesn't even get to testing the ram. Is it possible that the BIOS could be wiped? I've never seen one that wouldn't give some indication of a problem.

Steve

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No RAM test...
Feb 27, 2004 1:31AM PST

That's very odd. Can be a bad sign the motherboard has failed. Only way to know is to change it out.

Bob

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Re:Fails to boot past American Megatrends screen
Feb 29, 2004 7:38PM PST

I would try getting back into the BIOS. (either the F2 key or delete) and use the "load defaults" key. That might change her yes's back to no's.