Computer Maintenance

Common motherboard related issues

October 10th, 2009 by admin Leave a reply »

When I turn off my computer and switch it back on again it has lost the time and date settings and has also lost its BIOS settings ,so what could it be?

All motherboards have a battery called the CMOS battery installed on them and power from the battery is used to hold small bits of information when the computer is turned off. Make sure you have Anti-static equipment in place before touching any of the components. Replace the old CMOS battery with a new one of the same rating and your problem should be solved.

My system automatically powers back on after a power failure!

This could be because of a CMOS setup configuration rather than a hardware fault. One of the BIOS setup utility menu controls the ON/OFF state of your PC in case of a power failure or shutdown. Options include Stay-OFF, Last power state or Power-ON. If you inspect the configuration in CMOS, you’ll probably find that it’s set to Power-ON or Last power state. Set this to Stay-OFF and your problem should be solved.

System won’t turn off when i press the power button.

This has to do with your board’s power management system settings. In most cases, you machine will shutdown if you hold the power button pressed for at least 5 seconds. The setting can be altered by configuring the power button to “instant OFF”
in the CMOS setup.

Am upgrading my motherboard. System won’t boot when I use the older CPU again, but it boots fine with the new CPU?

The issue could be with bus speeds. If your processor is of 66-MHz bus speed and motherboard uses 100 or 133 MHz bus speed then the configuration will fail.

I see a yellow exclamation mark over the USB port in the device manager.

It simply means that the proper driver for the USB on your system has not been installed and the OS isn’t able to recognize any USB hardware. Try and update your BIOS to a newer version that supports the USB hardware better. Or right click on the USB port in device manager and update the driver through the net to find the latest version of the driver.

Motherboard is installed, but the system won’t boot.

Could simply be installation problems! Perform all the steps mentioned in the Inspecting the basics section above. Check to see if any pins are broken or inserted in the wrong socket.

PC starts, but it won’t boot from the HDD or even recognize the RAM on my system.

Did you see a message – “CMOS Error; press F1 to run SETUP”. This usually appears if the board is working but CMOS contains incorrect information. Run the CMOS setup again and check each drive and memory settings and reboot the PC.

My system won’t power on!

Do you have to unplug and replug the power each time? Then just clear the CMOS jumper settings and reset BIOS to default settings. Turn off the system, then move the CMOS jumper from it’s default location to the clear position for 5 seconds before moving it back. Turn the system ON and press DEL to enter CMOS setup screen. Set the correct CPU speed and then save and exit the screen.