Heres one that has me at a complete loss, no idea, no clue, nada, zip, nothing.
The Symptoms:
My personal PC (specs below) is exibiting some erratic behavior the past week and it has gotten to the point where i cant even boot it now. When i power it up, the power, cd and hd light come on and then the PC just sits there. No start-up beep, no video signal to the monitor (yes it works), nothing, it just sits there with the lights on. Previously when this happened, i could hit the reset switch and most (not all) of the time it would reboot. Today, i've had to turn off the power in the back of the (atx) power supply and then back on and it would boot occasionally. This is the main problem but before it got to this point, i did experience some other random problems. Once it spontanieously rebooted, once it froze up while i was in the BIOS menu. Once it hung while trying to go into windows with the message "While trying to initialize device lmouse... Windows protection error,... you need to restart" (not word-for-word). I have an ABIT BH6 MB with the CPU SoftMenu feature (you can config your cpu speed, clock multiplier, ect from a menu in the BIOS instead of hardware jumpers on the MB) and once during powerup it told me that it didnt have any info about my CPU and i needed to go into the BIOS and reset it. I reset it and got it to boot the main problem still existed.
What I've Tried:
I suspected the CMOS battery may be causing problems so i replaced it but the problem still exists. Full virus scan, came up clean. Ran Disk Doctor and Win Doctor (Nortons). Both came up clean.
What I'm Going To Try:
I'm going to pull out both 32M DIMMS and clean the contacts then put them back in one at a time, attempting to boot after each one is installed. I also suspect the power supply but other than replacing it, i have no idea how to test it.
System Specs:
Windows 98SE
ABIT BH6 MB
Celeron 400
2 X 32M PC66 DIMMS
SoundBlaster Live!
ATI Rage Fury 128
USR Sporster 56k fax/voice/data
8 GIG HD
Sony Spressa CDU928E CDR
Panasonic (i think) DVD
Logitec Marble PS/2 Mouse
Standard PS/2 Keyboard (Memorex TS1000)
Random Notes:
I install/uninstall A LOT of software usually but nothing within the past week or so. This was previously a very stable system (as stable as Windows can be). The problem started occuring about a week ago and has gradually gotten worse. Like i said earlier, the machine wont boot at all now so i dont have access to anything on the machine software-wise. However, after one of the last successful boots, i pulled up the bootlog.txt file and it didnt look complete to me. Heres a copy/paste:
[000C9B86] Loading Device = C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
(Logo disabled)
[000C9BC7] LoadSuccess = C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
[000C9BD4] Loading Device = C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE
[000C9BDE] LoadSuccess = C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE
[000C9BEF] Loading Device = C:\WINDOWS\DBLBUFF.SYS
[000C9BF1] LoadSuccess = C:\WINDOWS\DBLBUFF.SYS
[000C9BFB] Loading Device = C:\WINDOWS\IFSHLP.SYS
[000C9BFB] LoadSuccess = C:\WINDOWS\IFSHLP.SYS
[000C9CAE] c:\PROGRA~1\UTILIT~1\CREAT
IVE\DOSDRV
\SBEINIT.C
OM[000C9CA
E] starting
[000C9E51] C:\WINDOWS\WIN.COM[000C9E5
1] starting
And thats all, it ends there, no Terminate= lines, nothing.
I'm writing this on a PC that i just repaired and it goes back tomorrow which will leave me without a PC. Because of this, i may not be able to check in for responses every day so please be patient with me and thanks in advance for any help anyone can provide (Dew, Smeebud you guys out there?)
