boot - reset button versus power on ?

I have a PC which does not boot when you turn it on.
There is just a blinking underscore in the top left corner.
If I press the reset button, then it will boot okay.
I went to BIOS and did "load failsafe defaults" but that
has no effect.
I was under the impression that both reset and power on
will cause a hard-cold boot. There only difference I can
see is that when powering up, capacitors would be discharged,
but when pressing reset, they are charged.

wrote:
I have a PC which does not boot when you turn it on.
There is just a blinking underscore in the top left corner.
If I press the reset button, then it will boot okay.
I went to BIOS and did "load failsafe defaults" but that
has no effect.
I was under the impression that both reset and power on
will cause a hard-cold boot. There only difference I can
see is that when powering up, capacitors would be discharged,
but when pressing reset, they are charged.

Hitachi/IBM disk drives ? Some of those were slow
to complete startup.

A BIOS may have a 35 second timeout, for disk drives
to become ready. If the drive is not ready in time,
the BIOS may not be able to boot.

Pressing the reset button after that time has
passed, the hard drive is already up to speed.

I'd also be checking the SMART stats for the
drive, in case the hard drive just isn't healthy.
The free version of HDTune can list them.

http://www.hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe

*******

Do you have a USB card reader ? Try disconnecting it.

*******

You can also look at the actual USB settings in the
BIOS. Legacy USB support, port 60/64, maybe something
there is holding it up.

*******

If you had a PCI Port 80 POST display card, you could
look at the value (two hex digits) showing on that.
But with the blinking cursor in the upper left hand
corner, the code would likely be "now booting operating
system". So buying a Port 80 card would likely be a
waste of time. I doubt some other code would be showing,
when the cursor is sitting in the upper left hand corner.

Paul

On Jan 13, 12:28 am, wrote:
I have a PC which does not boot when you turn it on.
There is just a blinking underscore in the top left corner.
If I press the reset button, then it will boot okay.
I went to BIOS and did "load failsafe defaults" but that
has no effect.
I was under the impression that both reset and power on
will cause a hard-cold boot. There only difference I can
see is that when powering up, capacitors would be discharged,
but when pressing reset, they are charged.

Sort of the default video's functional output prior to sequenced
mapping of BIOS to ASCII tables. Reset switch is a little different
and not what's referred to as an actual cold boot after generally
chipping out an ancient PC frozen into an iceblock from the Arctic
tundra.

Before all that, though, try removing or rerouting when possible the
inside components. You may have a DVD unit or memory stick, once
removed, that will cause the problem to change. That's what you want
to know (and preferably before "testing" swapped-out PS units).

Take out your video board if using one and clean both sides the
contacts with an ink eraser, brush it off for any rubber debris, and
wipe them down before reinsertion with a cloth that's had a touch of
contact cleaner sprayed on it. Might treat your memory and other
boards while you're at it.

Look it over carefully for a good assembly, with all your connections
are firmly seated making good contacts.

If you're getting that behavior only from a unit which has been
unplugged or the toggle on the PS turned off, it could be just a logic
thing involving some older timing strobe issues, and nothing much to
worry about.