Rolfie <rokn760@hotmail.com> wrote

> after having skutdown the computer for more than 15 - 30 min it won't boot up at all. The boot up
> does'nt get to bios startup splash screen. The power supply is on - the green LED is on but
> nothing happens. The LCD screen is black and not activated. No error messages like beeps etc.

> If I do a direct power down with the power switch and power on again, the same thing will happen.

> But if I leave it with the power on for 5 - 10 min, power off and then power on, the LCD is
> powered up, the bios splash screen comes up and then the computer goes directly into the bios
> setup screen - Chip configuration.

That bit is important.

> Exiting the bios setup without saving, reboot and the computer boots up fully normal and windows
> starts in a normal way.

> To me it seems to be some kind of either hardware porblem and/or a bios problem. But what???

You can get a result like that from a number
causes, you just have to go thru the possibilitys
systematically, with the easiest to try first etc.

Can be due to the cmos battery going bad, although you
would normally get a cmos checksum error in that case.
Very cheap to try a new battery to be sure.

Can be a bad power supply which has got bad caps
in the startup circuitry. If you have a multimeter and
can use one, you can work out whether its this or a
motherboard gone bad. Otherwise the obvious way
to test that possibility is to try another power supply.

Can be due to bad caps on the motherboard. These
are the usually blue or black plastic covered post like
things which stick up vertically from the motherboard.
The tops should be flat and if any have bulged or have
leaked, that is the problem. In this case you may choose
to just wear the problem and leave the system on all
the time or just hibernate it etc if that starts immediately.

> No recent changes in hardware.

> Any ideas?

> MB ASUS A7M266
> CPU AMD Athlon 1400 MHz
> BIO ACPI Bios Revision 1008 Beta 002-B 08/22/2002S
> RAM 768 MB
> Sound Card Creative Sound Blaster Live 5.1 Platinum
> Video Card GeForce2 GTS
> Monitor LG2010P
> OS Windows XPSP2 Professional
> Norton Systemwork Antivirus 2002