For quite some time I rebooting my computer with the reset button because I was trying to boot up XP with an unlocked Xbox hard drive, which takes a while sometimes. Anyway.. was working fine all day and all of a sudden when I rebooted with the reset button like I've done a hundred other times today.. The BIOS froze right before the drive detection.. so I reset again. This time nothing happened at all.. no BIOS beep and nothing on screen. Well I was a little worried so I kept on restarting my computer like a thousand times.. still no luck. So I flicked the switch on my PSU and left it for an hour. When I came back and turned it on there was a BIOS beep like normal.. but still nothing on screen. So I tried that for a while.. with the same result.. Again I left for a while.. this time when I came back. There was still a BIOS beep and this time it seems power actually made it to my video card. But.. the BIOS still froze right before drive detection. I decided to leave it for a while and about two minutes later drive detection appeared.. but showed none of my drives no matter how long I waited. I tried that for a while and it just seems to be random now.. sometimes power gets to card.. sometimes power doesn't get to board at all, therefore no BIOS beep. I tried unplugging all my drives and even changed the PSU, same result. So.. is it fried is the question? I hope not.. that would suck greatly :(
Well did you just keep pressing the rest button for the hell of it?
as when i was younger i did that also..and it kills the PC so i got told ONLY reset the PC if you have no other choice as in if its frozen or blue screen of death im not sure how it got fixed as i was about 8 or so and didn't know much about PC's and still im not so much into the hardware side of things but yeah..
1, Disconnect all drives including floppy if you have one, remove all cards apart fom the video card (if not on board)and memory, and any external devices, then see if you can boot into the BIOS set up by tapping the default key which is usualy shown at the bottom of your screen when booting (F2, DEL are common), then set the Bios set up defaults option. If you can do this succesfully try connecting your hard drive up first and see if you can then boot, if so connect the other devices up one at a time.
2, If that does not work i would try a replacement stick of memory if you can get hold of one, or if you have more than one allready in, try using just one making sure it is located in the bank nearest the CPU (incase one of the sticks is faulty).
Could try resetting the BIOS via the jumper if you have not already, but it looks like you may be right in your assumption. Sorry could not help any further.
You can't break a board just by pressing the reset button. It is possible that doing so continuously could cause problems with the BIOS, but you can fix that by performing a CMOS reset, and it sounds like you've already tried that.
Alright I've managed to get into the BIOS setup, but no matter what I change it changes nothing. I found out what is wrong though my mobo can't detect any devices anymore at all. The device detection comes up a little faster now, only takes about 30 seconds, and if I try to enter the BIOS setup then it takes about 10 minutes for the mobo to finish scanning for devices.. and it doesn't find them. I've even tried scanning for devices in the BIOS setup, again takes like 10 minutes or longer and finds nothing. I've checked out my IDE headers on the mobo and they are fine.. I've also checked my SATA headers and there is nothing wrong with them as well. I can't do a BIOS flash because my mobo won't even detect a floppy drive, nothing... I have no clue what happened and I don't think I'll ever be able to fix it.
Good to see you managed to access the BIOS. I can only suggest from this point that you set BIOS default options in the BIOS (or flip the battery with power cord unplugged) and then test each drive (CD\DVD, Floppy, hard drive\s) one at a time by itself with no other drives connected, and see if the BIOS detects them (using AUTO detection), ensure jumpered devices are set to master.
Make sure you are using known good working cables and pin 1 is orientated correctly on any ribbon cables.
