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OK,
I understand it a bit better now, when you take the case off you do not remove the front...............don't worry there won't be another button.
Now, let's try this:
Push the power button in and HOLD IT IN like for a few minutes. With any luck you should see some of the other lights.
If by some stroke of luck it starts to boot, let it (keep the button pressed in all the time) then <start> and <shutdown> with your mouse. Then let go of the button.
These switches a spring loaded and the little clasp that holds them in the on position sometimes breaks or wears down.
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Sorry I took so long, I was eating dinner.
I tryed this pushing the button and holding it, but there is no power on until I let go of the button. Then when I hold it after that, it is shutting down.
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Hi I am back............I guess I am between 5 and 8 hours ahead of you in the timezones so I sleep at different times :)
If it is a "big" power on button, I am guessing that it goes in a fair bit then pops back out? Try pushing the button in all the way then very gradually let it back out again. Keep an eye on the green light to see if it flickers or comes on.
I guess that this is the point where I would get my multitest meter and check the outlets from the power supply.
I would put a hard drive with a pre-loaded OS into the machine, or attach the current hard drive to another machine as slave and run diagnostics on it.
I would take out the memory strips and insert some that I know work (in another machine)
I would get my desoldering gun and detach the two wires at the back of the I/O switch then twist and tape them together (bypassing the switch)
If it does not boot after that I would say the motherboard was damaged.
I do not think that it is the CMOS, as removing the battery would only clear any boot password and reset other values to the defaults. This would be the clock/calendar and possibly one or two other system settings.
The boot sequence is roughly:
Check memory
Check extended memory
Look for keyboard
Look for mouse
Look for hard drive
Look for floppy
Look for optical devices (ZIP, CD, DVD)
Now, as you are NOT getting any flickering lights on the keyboard, floppy or CD, I don't think that you are getting very far into the boot cycle.
If you have some compatible memory (check the specifications carefully) you might try removing the existing memory and trying with that. If not at least take out the memory sticks, clean the contacts and make sure that they are firmly re-seated.
A question: Does the yellow light at the front come on when you turn the power on at the mains, or when you press the big start button?
Cheers
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I did what you said about the button, but when I did that the same thing happened as the other times, nothing. I cannot try that other stuff, but maybe the slave drive diagnostic, as I do not have any spare parts I can try it with.
An answer to your question about the yellow light is that it would turn on when I powered it up. I think that it would flicker when the hard drive was being writen to.
One more thing, I don't know if this is relevant to this problem or the cmos battery, but before I took out the battery, I would boot the machine. It would boot to where I chose to go into Linux, or Windows. When I chose windows, the machine would reset most of the time, or it would boot a little, then reset.
Sorry for this delay, I was kinda busy today so I just barley had a chance to test this out.
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I'm thinking that this issue has nothing to do with you changing your CMOS battery.
We might want to bring to life again the chance that this is your power supply. Disconnect power from the parts you don't need. Make sure the computer is off, and then disconnect the power connectors to your CD-ROM drives, and extra Hard Drives. Just keep power connected to your Hard Drive that has your OS Loader and Operating System on it. Also, if you have onboard video, take the other video card out and use your computer's "onboard" video card. This should reduce the amount of power your computer's parts consume during boot-up (because they are disconnected and don't boot up) so you might be able to get your computer started.
DO NOT PLUG STUFF IN TO YOUR COMPUTER AFTER IT IS ON! You must remember to power off your computer before plugging hard drives back in, etc. Just a warning. If you can get it started with nothing connected, you may need to look at buying a new power supply, because it could be that your current one has reached the end of its days. A weak power supply can make a computer reset itself when you are booting it up. It can show problems at other times, but in our case booting up is the biggest factor.
If it doesn't work, either your power supply is too dead to power up with very few things, or the problem could be something else... And this has nothing to do with the CMOS battery, BTW...purely concidental...