[JCS]

I have an ACER AST180 with 6 gigs of RAM, 64 bit AMD Athlon processor, Win 7 Business installed. Any ideas on why it might fail to enter post some of the time? I might have to hard reset 4 or 5 times to get it to post.

Also, I replaced the RAM and HD, and the problem continued to occur.

This post has been edited by JCS: 11-6-09, 5:40pm

[wmspringer]

Did you try replacing the RAM with 1gb sticks?

[steltek]

I have an ACER AST180 with 6 gigs of RAM, 64 bit AMD Athlon processor, Win 7 Business installed. Any ideas on why it might fail to enter post some of the time? I might have to hard reset 4 or 5 times to get it to post.

Also, I replaced the RAM and HD, and the problem continued to occur.

I presume you have downloaded Malwarebytes and scanned for viruses, trojans, or rootkits.

During the times when it fails to post, are you getting any beep codes and are the system fans and LEDs operating? Does it happen most often on a cold start after sitting all night, or does it fail on restarts after having been up and running for a while?

It also might be worth swapping out the mouse and/or keyboard while using a different set of USB ports (I very dimly recall having worked once on an ACER machine with a similar issue -- it randomly failed to post, but I eventually discovered that it would always post if you unplugged the mouse and waited until after the POST message was displayed on screen to plug it back in - I think that the motherboard eventually died in that system).

One other simple thing you might do is to run it for a while using only 2GB or 4GB of RAM to see if it might be an issue with the power supply not providing enough juice to power the system with 6GB of memory - some of these systems have absolutely anemic cheapo power supplies.

I have a current ASUS Rampage Extreme motherboard with Q9550 that will refuse to do anything (sometimes the fans won't even turn and forget about LEDs) if the wrong brand of paired memory modules is plugged into the wrong set of memory slots (to say it is memory-sensitive is an understatement -- you have to plug the right brand of paired sets into the right slots, and everything works fine).

[JCS]

I presume you have downloaded Malwarebytes and scanned for viruses, trojans, or rootkits.

No, but installed a fresh copy of windows on a newly formatted HD. And installed AVG and all the service updates.

During the times when it fails to post, are you getting any beep codes and are the system fans and LEDs operating? Does it happen most often on a cold start after sitting all night, or does it fail on restarts after having been up and running for a while?

No beep codes, the fans and LEDs all work. It tries to read the dvd r/rw for a minutes, then just sits. No lights come on on the keyboard. It happens randomly on cold starts(25-30% of the time), and frequently on wakeup from sleep (90%).

It also might be worth swapping out the mouse and/or keyboard while using a different set of USB ports (I very dimly recall having worked once on an ACER machine with a similar issue -- it randomly failed to post, but I eventually discovered that it would always post if you unplugged the mouse and waited until after the POST message was displayed on screen to plug it back in - I think that the motherboard eventually died in that system).

One other simple thing you might do is to run it for a while using only 2GB or 4GB of RAM to see if it might be an issue with the power supply not providing enough juice to power the system with 6GB of memory - some of these systems have absolutely anemic cheapo power supplies.

I have a current ASUS Rampage Extreme motherboard with Q9550 that will refuse to do anything (sometimes the fans won't even turn and forget about LEDs) if the wrong brand of paired memory modules is plugged into the wrong set of memory slots (to say it is memory-sensitive is an understatement -- you have to plug the right brand of paired sets into the right slots, and everything works fine).

I'll try swapping the keyboard and mouse tomorrow, I already tried taking the system down to two 2 GB sticks of ram, then two 1GB sticks of ram with no improvement. I thought of trying a 32 bit OS again, but I can't think of any way the OS would be preventing the system from entering POST.

[Alan]

I believe it may be a motherboard issue, with something to do with the USB ports. Or possibly it could be the boot order in the BIOS. Along with using different keyboard & mouse (wired, not wireless) I would disconnect all other USB devices and see if the system will post. If not, try entering the BIOS and changing the boot order so the primary hard drive is first. Also, make sure the primary hard drive is connected to the proper SATA port on the motherboard (should be SATA0). Maybe try using a different sata cable for all sata connected devices.

I had a situation (not an Acer) where one USB port was bad. When any device was connected to it the computer would not post or it blue screend while booting Windows. Connecting any device to the port while Windows was running resulted in an instant blue screen. I've also had situations where other devices were listed before the primary hard drive in the boot order in the BIOS preventing the system from booting. Typically this shouldn't stop the system from booting, but it's easy to change and worth a shot.

[JCS]

Update- I took some of the load off of the ps and reseated all of the expansion cards, and so far it's totally stable. Looks like I need to invest in a bigger power supply.