PC fails to boot

[Johnny]

gigabyte GA-6BA (rev. 2.9) using bios version 2.9 now - tried F1 but no
different, it did the same thing.
P2 350
128Mb pc100 sdram
graphics, network & sound card

This is the strangest thing - I can't figure out what's happening to cause
this.

The board will not fire up into the bios - it fails to initialise at the
point where it should beep and the BIOS begin.
However it's not dead. If I reset the BIOS via JP9 when hard power is off
(obviously) the next hard power on will fire up the board and everything
works fine every time I do this.
However a hard power off and back on again, without doing the BIOS reset,
fails every time and continues to fail until I reset the BIOS.

The board was working perfectly - an old hard drive developed bad sectors so
I swapped out for a 40gig 7200rpm new one - this required a bios update -
the previous bios didn't recognise the 40gig drive. Since flashing the BIOS
this nonsense has started.

Any advice, pointers, clues anything. I've swapped out the BIOS chips to
other boards (I have 3 6BA's) and they appear to be fine. I've swapped out
Bios backup batteries, I'm hoping there's something obvious I need to do.

flummoxed!!

TIA

[John7]

Are you sure you picked the right BIOS update ?

Try clearing the CMOS ?
You need to unplug the mains.

HTH,
John7

"Johnny" <repr...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
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