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Dead System???

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hylux82

Technical User
Nov 4, 2002
4
AU
I have a pentium 2 system in which i recently installed Windows ME. System worked fine untill my client left it running whilst attending some other bussiness. Upon return it was found that the system went into standby mode, possibly even hybernate mode. I have been unable to reactivate said system. Symtoms are: No Screen activity,No Post Error Codes from Speaker,No Floppy or Hard drive Scan.
It does however scan the keyboard and cd-rom drive.Any help appreciated.
 
Go back to a good copy of the registry .

Toggle F8 ( when , verifying DMI pool message comes on ) or Press
Ctrl during bootup , depends on your computer .

Select , Safe mode Command prompt

After the C prompt , type , scanreg /restore

Follow the prompts and select a registry dated prior to the problems .

This article describes how to restore a backup copy of the Windows 98
or Windows Millennium Edition (Me) registry
scanreg /restore

Start the System Restore Tool from a Command Prompt in Windows XP (Q304449)

Restore Operation Failed (Q220878)
The information in this article applies to:
Microsoft Windows 98
Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition
 
May be a bad ram chip. Remove all ram and replace with a known good chip & see if it boots.
 
RAM chips dont go "bad". THey either work fine, or they don't work at all. It was somekind of software corruption.
 
That's a pretty general statement. RAM does go bad. It can cause all kinds of flakey problems, from BSODs to not booting at all. From one address on one chip to a totally dead stick and every combination in between.

Jim

 
squidman,

If he is not seeing a screen display and there is no disk scan, it is hardware. It sounds like the only thing on is the power supply, the processor and the BIOS.

First try a different keyboard. If the controller chip for the keyboard goes south, or the cable is faulty, the A20 line will stay high and you will not POST.

If that does nothing, and it is a long-shot, open the box (unplugged) and remove and reseat all adapter cards. Remove all RAM chips and reseat them. Remove and reseat any cable connecting the power supply and IDE drive chains to the motherboard. Remove the CMOS battery, wait 1 minute, and replace it.

Try again.



 
bcastner,
Thanks for your info, however still no joy.the only thing that seems to power up is the powersupply and the cpu fan. Nothing else registers.
 
The system is FUBAR.

It is likely that most of the components are fine, such as display, hard disk drives, CD-ROMs etc.

Not good candidates for reuse would be processor, motherboard or RAM.

I am sure this is a small comfort, but this situation has nothing to do with your installation of Windows ME.

It is likely a capacitor that blew somewhere on the motherboard, but there are few options for on-board repairs of this sort.

Time to go shopping.
 
I would test the power supply to make sure, just because the fan works doesn't mean that power is getting to the mobo.
 
You might try pulling all the cards except the video card and see if it boots. I had one yesterday that had the same exact symptoms. The customer had walked away and came back to find the system was dead. Turned out it was a bad NIC card. As soon as I pulled it, the system booted right up.
 
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