Had some computer components and decided to put together a working computer. Motherboard battery was dead so lost all CMOS. Cleared CMOS. Computer starts when I turn on when I plug in but wont boot or POST. Soft start button on case won't re-boot or shut off. Can't access BIOS at start. What do I need to do? Can't use FLOPPY or CD until I can access BIOS. Help!Are you using a USB or PS/2 keyboard ?It's a ps2 keyboard. The problem is there are no drivers loaded. The HDD is bare and I lost the CMOS when the battery went dead on the motherboard.Replace the CMOS battery....re-boot.Actually I replaced the battery a while ago. That wasn't the problem. I finally figured it out. The new power supply was set to 230 watts instead of 115 by default. I guess you can't assume anything. Now it boots fine but my older ASUS CUBX motherboard doesn't recognize my new 320 GB HDD. I have the updated BIOS but it's on CD and I only have the floppy working. I see I can get an upgraded ATA Controller Card but everyone says you can't boot from it. Anyone had any experience with this?You could be limited by your OPERATING system.

Which one are you using ?I'm using Win98se right now. I have XP Pro that I was going to upgrade to once I got the HDD capacity issue figured out. Do you think if I upgrade the BIOS that will do it or am I limited to HDD size by the OS?I think an install of XP rather than an upgrade from Windows 98
should help you.

See how much hard drive space is ALLOCATED by XP if you boot with
the disk,format,and install.

Remember you should backup IMPORTANT files and programs.

We rarely recommend BIOS upgrades unless they are very important.
If your BIOS upgrade goes wrong...Bye Bye Motherboard.
I'm really proud of myself. I Flashed the BIOS as per the MOBO book and installed the latest Beta. It than recognized 48 bit LBA and the drive showed up as Ultra DMA mode 5 in Device Mgr. Than I upgraded to XP Pro with a new install and converted to NTFS and the HDD showed up in Disk Mgmnt as an active partition of the original 8.4 GB with an unformated 290GB partition. It's odd that I seem to have lost 20GB from the advertised 320 GB but everything seems to be working smooth now. But now I going to re format and partition so I have 100GB for the OS and programs and the rest for files. Thanks Actual HDD sizes:



Courtesy of Western Digital.Thanks Patio, for the info. I should have known that. Should have done my math, but YEP! it's exactly what it should be..You're Welcome...
And Welcome to CH !