PC post screen for about 1 min

[Nibor99]

I'm just trying to get my dad's PC (Packard Bell iMedia S3850, Sandy Bridge i3, Win 7) working properly again. It has been extremely slow for about two years (a bit after there was a virus on it and I had to reinstall windows) and now I've reinstalled Win 7. I have already tried Ubuntu from a thumb drive to see if the problem is Software or Hardware based. It worked like a charm (this is the reason that I thought the problem was software based and did the reinstall). 

 

My problem now is, that it works a bit better than before but not good at all. The thing that really puzzles/worries me is actually the boot up, which looks like this:

1. I press the power button, the PC's fans and power led turn on for about one to two seconds.

2. Everything is off again for about three - five seconds.

3. It turn back on again and stays on the POST screen for 40-50 seconds and then the mainboard speaker beeps (which as far as I know indicates that all hardware seems to work OK)

4. (Only happend on one time) between POST and windows boot up the PC's fans turned up to full speed twice for two or three seconds

5. Then the screen is black for a few seconds after which the normal (but rather long) windows boot up process starts.

 

I really don't get why it seems to turn on and off again and why the POST screen takes so extremely long to go through.

 

I hope you can help me (my only guess would be, that the mainboard is broken somewhat - can't really get any information from the UEFI as it is one of the BIOS style ones)

 

Thanks for your help in advance!

 

[Poohl]

Is the hdd first boot device?

Try unplugging any USB devices.

[Nibor99]

1 hour ago, Poohl said:

Is the hdd first boot device?

Try unplugging any USB devices.

Thanks! As I was unplugging all USB devices I just found a (128 MB) SD card in the PC's SD card reader which I removed. This actually decreased the POST time to about 10 seconds which imo is quite OK.

 

But the weird behavior where it starts and shuts off and restarts at first is still there. Also now the fan (I now think that it could also be the AMD GPU judging by the sound - will have to open the PC and look which fan it is) turns up to 100% during boot a couple of times

 

But really thanks for your help! This is already a great improvement (typical that I forgot to try such an easy thing as unplugging USB)

[Poohl]

7 minutes ago, Nibor99 said:

Thanks! As I was unplugging all USB devices I just found a (128 MB) SD card in the PC's SD card reader which I removed. This actually decreased the POST time to about 10 seconds which imo is quite OK.

 

But the weird behavior where it starts and shuts off and restarts at first is still there. Also now the fan (I now think that it could also be the AMD GPU judging by the sound - will have to open the PC and look which fan it is) turns up to 100% during boot a couple of times

 

But really thanks for your help! This is already a great improvement (typical that I forgot to try such an easy thing as unplugging USB)

The Fans spinning at 100% during boot is normal, some Mobos do this to get rid of dust, that might have appeared there during off-time.

Did you check the Boot order? That could be the shut of : Maybe the Bios is waiting for the CD Drive or something.

Is there any other setting, that could prevent it from booting? Maybe the Bios tries to boot with bad settings and boots with default after 5 secs.

[Nibor99]

2 minutes ago, Poohl said:

The Fans spinning at 100% during boot is normal, some Mobos do this to get rid of dust, that might have appeared there during off-time.

Did you check the Boot order? That could be the shut of : Maybe the Bios is waiting for the CD Drive or something.

Is there any other setting, that could prevent it from booting? Maybe the Bios tries to boot with bad settings and boots with default after 5 secs.

OK didn't know that, but as far as I know the fans didn't spin like that before (not 100% sure though).

 

The HDD is first in boot order and all the other settings seem to be normal as well, will play around with some of them tomorrow (if it doesn't work I could also try to reset the BIOS by removing the CMOS battery)

 

Thanks for your help!

[ServerSide_Drew]

Try resetting the BIOS settings to computer default

[Nibor99]

8 hours ago, ServerSide_Drew said:

Try resetting the BIOS settings to computer default

Just did, but unfortunately it changed nothing (as was to be expected honestly, as I don't think I've ever changed a BIOS setting on this thing and am sure my dad did neither)