Apparant suspend mode

APM/ACPI BIOS questions
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jobo
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Joined: Wed Oct 30, 2002 2:24 am

Ok.
My pc has an AMD-Athlon Thunderbird 1.1ghz processor. After about a year of ownership I started having the following problem:
Monitor blanks out and retains power but no sync to the hard drive. The pc retains its power, but the hard drive appears to stop spinning. Cooling fan is working fine. I changed power cables, monitors, put in a new hard drive, even installed a new higher watt power supply and the problem persists. I checked the temp on the pc and it isn't running too high. Also, checked BIOS settings and couldn't find anything that appeard to be sending it into suspend/hibernation. I decided to try reloading the OS (Windows 98se) and during installation I would get a message "Cannot enter suspend mode because a device or program is preventing it. Please exit all programs and try again." I thought that was interesting, and after completing the OS installation, the PC would enter suspend mode regardless of whether or not I was working on the PC or not. Another weird thing... if I immediately power off and try rebooting I usually can't even get past the startup before it does it again but if I wait about 4 days or so I can work on the pc for about 20 minutes before it starts suspending on me... and yes I made sure the OS power management program was set to "NEVER" send the pc into standby.

So I am now at a loss. I don't really know if this is a BIOS issue or a weird motherboard problem... a virus, or what. I don't even know how to tell the version of the BIOS and have NO idea who the mother board manufacturer is as it is a "home" built pc that I purchased - and no, sadly, no support site or help is given from where I purchased it.
If you have heard of this sort of problem and could offer some advice (other than just throwing the pc out the window) I would really REALLY appreciate it. I have read through some of the other posts, and see that some others have very similar issues, but the offered solutions are not the apparant problem in my case as I have already replaced everything I can think of, and the temperature isn't an issue. Help please!
soupy
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I'd guess a defective motherboard, and with prices for components as cheap as they are, I wouldn't spend too much time troubleshooting.

If you have no warranty from where you bought it, maybe there's a manufacturer's warranty. Read our FAQ, and post the info we need t help you identify it.
Flash your BIOS at your own risk.
jobo
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Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Oct 30, 2002 2:24 am

Ack. Motherboard replacement! *winces*

Ok here is the information I was able to get after looking through your FAQ's.

The BIOS type is Award and the info I found is:
6A6LM VIA VT8363 (KT-133) chipset with Award BIOS v6.00

The manufacturer appears to be:
M4 - Microstar

I went to the web link for them, but either they didn't have my BIOS thing listed or I'm just an idiot *grin*... my money is on the latter hehe.

If you can help me find the one I need, I'd appreciate it. I'll look through your FAQ instructions on how to do a flash of the BIOS... assuming I can keep the pc up long enough to do it :)

Thanks for the quick reply!
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