My barber - knowing that I'm a retired IS manager -poses the following problem(expecting me to solve it): His "nearly new" Compaq Deskpro tower running Win98SE was working fine. (The machine came from an office that was going out of business and has no documentation.) He recently attempted to install an internal modem and reports that when he rebooted he no longer had any video. He says he shut down, removed the modem, restarted, same result. He then tried another monitor and says he saw Win98 logo screen at startup. Shut down, reinstalled modem card, then again had no video with the new monitor. Now he's dead in the water. He also says that the reboot "didn't sound normal" but he can't see anything so can't tell whther he's getting any startup error messages. I suggested reseating the video card and checking connectors to monitor(s) for bent pins but same result. Now for the kicker: from his description, I'm almost positive that the modem card's edge connector was never seated in a slot! It sounds like it was just hanging from its mounting screw in front. If so, that seems to rule out the modem's influence on the issue.
Someone else (another customer) had him try some combinations of CTRL-ALT-DEL along with ALT-R and ALT-S. I'm not clear what sequences he used, but still no video. Any ideas, or do I need a new barber?
Someone else (another customer) had him try some combinations of CTRL-ALT-DEL along with ALT-R and ALT-S. I'm not clear what sequences he used, but still no video. Any ideas, or do I need a new barber?