| Forum Home | ||||
| Press F1 | ||||
| Thread ID: 35231 | 2003-07-06 03:20:00 | wake up in Dos | Ron Bakker (356) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 157794 | 2003-07-06 03:20:00 | Hey I,ve got this 486vp to sort out for a friend. It has win95 installed but when the pc is first turned on it starts in dos mode & asks if I want to accept hard drive configurations along with a few other yes & no's then finally it boots up in win95. I was wondering how to get this machine to just get stuck into startup without hanging at this dos prompt each time I press the on button. | Ron Bakker (356) | ||
| 157795 | 2003-07-06 03:59:00 | You will need to look at the autoexec.bat and maybe the config.sys files, they will tell you hopefully what is happening. If they dont mean much to you, copy and paste them into this thread and maybe some light can be thrown on the problem. MSDOS.SYS also has a bearing on the way Windows starts, that is a read only, hidden file, and would need to be unattributed with the command: attrib -r -h -s msdos.sys then it can be copied and pasted. Afterwards issue the command attrib +r +h +s msdos.sys to protect it again. |
Terry Porritt (14) | ||
| 157796 | 2003-07-06 04:22:00 | I think it's actually the BIOS, rather than DOS. After the questions, does it ask whether you want to "save and exit"? If so, and you are skipping the save action, you will get this performance each time, because it will always "never know" the configuration until it has been saved. If you are saving the configuration, the small battery which keeps the config memory alive has croaked. It will be either a small cylinder NiCd (often blue) about 12 mm diameter and 30 mm long soldered to the motherboard, or a black "matchbox" lithium battery attached with a strip of Velcro, or, if you are lucky a "coin" shaped lithium cell in a clip on the motherboard. Anotrher indicator of a dead battery is that the Os doesn't know the date and time when it does boot. It will usually have a date of Jan 1 1980. Let us know if it's this battery problem, and we'll suggest the replacement strategies you can choose from. |
Graham L (2) | ||
| 157797 | 2003-07-06 05:09:00 | Yes when I first got the thing going it said somthing about battery level low which is really no suprise considering it is about eight years old. | Ron Bakker (356) | ||
| 157798 | 2003-07-06 05:17:00 | Yes, Grahams suggestion is the most likely reason. You do get that sort of thing when the BIOS has lost its settings. The next thing to do is to see what sort of battery is on the motherboard, if it's a CR2302 disc cell, which it most likely will be if the M/B has PCI slots then that's easy to replace. If its soldered on, not quite so easy. Best with those to snip them off with side cutters, then a new one can be soldered onto the stub ends. Some boards of that era also had external batteries that plugged onto the board near to the keyboard connector, they are easy to replace too. |
Terry Porritt (14) | ||
| 157799 | 2003-07-07 09:57:00 | Well I got the thing to start without stopping at the bios first. THanks to you guys. But yes the Battery is a bit dicky. |
Ron Bakker (356) | ||
| 157800 | 2003-07-08 04:55:00 | Once you have saved the settings, the BIOS will retain them for a while after you've been running with the power on. You might even put a bit of charge into a dead NiCd. The memory retention needs absolutely tiny amounts of energy to keep the few locations alive. It need a bit more to run the clock so the computer will know the time when it is restarted. | Graham L (2) | ||
| 1 | |||||