Toquerrio
asked on
Help me Troubleshoot
I have a packard bell platinum X with 150mhz pentium processor. I recently tried installing a cd burner as a second cd drive in the computer. As you know the is very little work space in these older systems. I seemed to have disconnected a led from the case and I can't find oout where it is supposed to go. On top of that, the system doesn't leave the dos screen on bootup. It shows it recognizes the hard drive. cd drives, and floppy. Then it goes to the windows 98 splash screen. Then it turns back to the Post screen and hangs for a few minutes, then it reboots itself and start the process again. I have tried removing the ide cables for the cd drives from the motherboard. I tried without the floppy , and I replaced the hard drive and get the same thing.
The first time I tried to power up, the system didn't do anything until I unplugged and reconnected the floppy drives, power cable. Then I got a floppy driver error. Then I replaced the floppy drive's ide cable.
Now I am having the problem as described above. This problems needs to be address quickly as possible so I am giving the maximum point value.
The first time I tried to power up, the system didn't do anything until I unplugged and reconnected the floppy drives, power cable. Then I got a floppy driver error. Then I replaced the floppy drive's ide cable.
Now I am having the problem as described above. This problems needs to be address quickly as possible so I am giving the maximum point value.
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rindi
Remove the old CD drive, it could be your system is using more power than the PSU can supply. As you have mentioned, there is only little room in these older systems, and the powersupply may not have been made for extra hardware. With age, and your system is old, the PSU will also deteriorate and will probably not be able supply your system with the original powerlevel. Just removing the floppy probably wouldn't have helped much, as that doesn't use much power anyway. If this resolves your problem and you still need the old drive, you may have to get a new powersupply, only keep in mind that it may be difficult to get for such an old PC.
is it possible you knocked the processor fan loose or accidently unplugged it? Sometimes these things ran hot and if you knock the fan loose can cause to not boot into windows.
Another thing, have you tried booting into safe mode ? You may try booting into safe mode by clicking F8 button just after the bios screen, just click it 3-5 times and pick go into safe mode.
Another thing, have you tried booting into safe mode ? You may try booting into safe mode by clicking F8 button just after the bios screen, just click it 3-5 times and pick go into safe mode.
ASKER
I cannot get past the Bios screen so I cannot boot into safe mode. The computer hangs during the POST test.
Did you take it apart and try with a minimal system, as I described?
Many times, I have found that failure during the POST is due to bad memory. Try what Callandor suggested, and if it won't get past the POST even with a minimal system, try changing the RAM or using fewer sticks of RAM, depending on your configuration.
WP
WP
ASKER
Yes Callandor, I first started by disconnecting both CD-ROM drives and the system booted up. Everything seemed to work fine. Now I just shutdown the computer and connected both drives and the system booted up. May be cd drives. I installed a new IDE cable with the drives. Maybe a faulty MB controller. The computer has worked fine up to this point. I know the ram is good. Prior to all of this I had the hard drive on the primary controller and one CD-rom on the secondary controller. What you think?
>Now I just shutdown the computer and connected both drives and the system booted up.
This is a little ambiguous - do you have it working with both CDROM drives now? Make sure each drive is jumpered properly when connecting both on the same cable. If it works fine w/o the CDROM drives connected, but doesn't work with both connected, test it with each CDROM drive separately, in case a faulty drive is causing the problem. If it doesn't work with anything connected to that cable on the secondary controller, then I think it's the motherboard controller.
This is a little ambiguous - do you have it working with both CDROM drives now? Make sure each drive is jumpered properly when connecting both on the same cable. If it works fine w/o the CDROM drives connected, but doesn't work with both connected, test it with each CDROM drive separately, in case a faulty drive is causing the problem. If it doesn't work with anything connected to that cable on the secondary controller, then I think it's the motherboard controller.
ASKER
Right now it is working with both drives connected. This was a strange problem. I cannot find anything that I found was wrong. After I reconnected the primary CD rom's power cable. Everything seemed to be working so I am going to Assume that the cd-rom may be the culprit. This is a very old system and has brackets all over the place , so it is hard to go in and remove anything. I still don't know what the master CD-ROM is jumpered at . I know I set the second drive to a slave. I think rindi had a good response also about the power. This too could play a part of this scenario. Are there any other suggestions?