HowToFixComputers.com

Lee Grant · Guest

Hi there,

A friend of mine has a PC which will not boot from 'cold' - after several
resets it eventually boots!

It has:

Twin AMD 1800+
256 MB Ram
Two HDD (Striping)
1 CDRW
1 DVD
1 DVD-RAM

I don't know the motherboard manufacturer but my initial instinct is that
the Power Supply Unit isn't big enough to take all these optical drives (I
think it is a 350w supply) - would that cause this problem?

Any help would really be appreciated!

Cheers

Lee

mcr · Guest

Lee Grant wrote:

Fitz · Guest

From a cold boot try holding down the "Insert" key, or check the motherboard
board manual to see which key will bypass the CPU fan failure protection.
You can also shut this off from within the BIOS. If your CPU heatsink fan
does not spin up to the required RPM quick enough, the protection circuit
will kick in and shut down the computer. It sounds as though from a "cold"
state, the fan isn't spinning up fast enough to tell the protection system
that it's working ok. I've seen this on Soyo motherboards with a couple of
different heatsinks, especially those that have thermal sensors to regulate
fan speed to reduce noise.

Good Luck,
Fitz