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| Thread ID: 93858 | 2008-10-03 07:34:00 | Old Faithful has turned up its toes....... | Billy T (70) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 709592 | 2008-10-03 07:34:00 | After 10+ years service my P166/W98 box has finally quit on me. It froze last night while displaying the desktop and I only found out when I went to shut it down. When turned on, you hear the hard drive ramp up and read the disk, the CD Rom runs its checks and also runs up with the W98 disk inserted, but the monitor doesn't come out of standby and it won't even try to boot from a floppy disk. There are no post noises either, no beeps no nuthin! It is a proper Sarah Palin case, the lights are on but there's nobody home. No worries about data, that is all on two separate drives, so I am going to retire it gracefully, however I'm curious to know where the stoppage is occurring. The inability to post or to boot from a floppy is curious, and I would have thought that even if it couldn't boot I'd get the monitor screen up. The biggest problem it causes right now is that my kids can't print until I make other arrangements because it was my network print server. Any possibility it is the video card, or maybe the motherboard? Cheers Billy 8-{) :badpc: |
Billy T (70) | ||
| 709593 | 2008-10-03 07:52:00 | Have you tried it on another monitor to see if the vidcard is the prob? If you were in Auckland somewhere I could give you a loan of a 64 mb card (AGP), if thats what its using |
Speedy Gonzales (78) | ||
| 709594 | 2008-10-03 09:26:00 | It is on a monitor switch Speedy, and the monitor is fine (as I type this!). I am in Auckland, I'll PM you my address in the morning. Mrs T is giving me a hard time for typing when I should be attending to her needs, whatever they may be! Cheers Billy 8-{) |
Billy T (70) | ||
| 709595 | 2008-10-03 17:26:00 | Cool, ok, its a Geforce 4 MX-440 8x, by the looks of it, it should still go. Its been in the drawer for a while. If it works you can have it. Its got one VGA and s-video on it Depending on WHERE you are in Auckland, you may have to come here to get it (Mt Eden), as I dont drive. So, cant come to you. Wherever you are If you do decide to come over sometime, bring the case here, and I'll install it and see if it goes (I've got 2 spare monitors, so can test it on one of these) |
Speedy Gonzales (78) | ||
| 709596 | 2008-10-03 18:38:00 | BillyT. Why don't you just give your poor old computer an honary burial? SpeedyG you're a real gentleman. |
JJJJJ (528) | ||
| 709597 | 2008-10-04 00:02:00 | BillyT. Why don't you just give your poor old computer an honary burial? SpeedyG you're a real gentleman. I will Jack, but at this moment I have too much work on to procure and start setting up a new print server and I also want to check and see what legacy programs are on it that I might need as I have a lot of technical programs for instruments that are not supported any more. If I can wake it up again for a short while it will be helpful, but if not, no great tragedy, just a hell of a lot of inconvenience. I have a real neat program that I bought years ago which can shift a windows program from one computer to another with all registry setting etc intact. I used it to transfer MS Word onto a laptop a few years back and it worked perfectly. I'll PM you Speedy, thanks. Cheers Billy 8-{) |
Billy T (70) | ||
| 709598 | 2008-10-04 11:38:00 | Could be hardware failure in video or RAM etc... or could be just something is loose (chip creep) - maybe BIOS chip is loose/bad contact *might* be a case of a dead BIOS battery. I've seen PCs that refuse to POST at all or do very very strange things when the battery is flat In something that old, it might pay to check your PSU and motherboard for bad capacitors as well... |
Agent_24 (57) | ||
| 709599 | 2008-10-04 19:12:00 | I think it is quite cruel to keep beating old faithfull into the ground. | Cicero (40) | ||
| 709600 | 2008-10-04 19:37:00 | *might* be a case of a dead BIOS battery. I've seen PCs that refuse to POST at all or do very very strange things when the battery is flat I have experienced this as well a few times. It would be worth trying a new battery. |
CI Sue (14168) | ||
| 709601 | 2008-10-04 21:52:00 | I had a faithful old Win98se machine a few years ago that pulled exactly the same trick. :( I never did find the exact cause, but I could fire it up using wife’s hairdryer and heating the BIOS chip. The BIOS chip was a plug in one and I never could find a similar Motherboard I could pinch a replacement out of. :D Eventually it was sent off to Computer Heaven, sad really. :badpc: |
B.M. (505) | ||
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