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  • #2099122

    PC won’t boot!?

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    by xaqfox ·

    I just installed WinME, now my computer will not boot up. It goes through POST and detects my drives, but then when it’s done there, the screen goes blank accept a small cursor in the upper left corner and nothing else happens.

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    • #3669877

      PC won’t boot!?

      by ped ·

      In reply to PC won’t boot!?

      if sounds like a irq problem.

      have you tried pressing the f8 key to bootup in safe mode?

      if that doesn’t work then i would remove all device (ie. sound card, modem, nic, etc..) and only boot with the video card

      if that work then i would add each device one at a time after rebooting each time.

      if none of these work then check you bios.

      • #3669826

        PC won’t boot!?

        by xaqfox ·

        In reply to PC won’t boot!?

        Did all of that,removed everything, changed power supply,etc, just now got done switching out the motherboard still nothing, the computer doesn’t even get to the point where I can press F8 unfortunatly. The only thing I can think of now is the boot sector on the hard drive, I’ll go ahead and test that one now. Oh well, at least I’ve got plenty of spare parts to try literally everything, much better than having to go out and buy the stuff now.

    • #3669876

      PC won’t boot!?

      by xaqfox ·

      In reply to PC won’t boot!?

      …and yes everything is firmly mounted inside, now i’m checking P/S. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

    • #3669856

      PC won’t boot!?

      by roland63 ·

      In reply to PC won’t boot!?

      Assuming your pc meets WinME minimum system requirements, I’d say the next thing to do is remove everything from inside and leave only the HD, floppy drive, ram, and video card.

      Reinstall ME and boot up from that point. Add additional toys (sound, modem, etc) one at the time REBOOTING between installs to make sure you tackle the problem as soon as you experiece the problem again.

      Make sure you have the very latest drivers for all your toys before you begin this whole process.

      Good luck.

      • #3669827

        PC won’t boot!?

        by xaqfox ·

        In reply to PC won’t boot!?

        As just mentioned unfortunately I can’t even get it to boot from floppy, to get a command prompt. I miss DOS so badly!

    • #3669723

      PC won’t boot!?

      by roland63 ·

      In reply to PC won’t boot!?

      If your pc detects your drives on bootup, you should still be able to get into your bios.

      I have a suspicion the boot sequence is out of whack.

      Check and make sure its set to A,C meaning check in the A drive first then the C (hard drive).

      Good luck.

      • #3797246

        PC won’t boot!?

        by xaqfox ·

        In reply to PC won’t boot!?

        The question was auto-closed by TechRepublic

    • #3669703

      PC won’t boot!?

      by buffalodan ·

      In reply to PC won’t boot!?

      Willing to bet it is not a defective hardware problem, I will assume that this machine was working before WinME was installed…..

      First, simplify simplify simplify

      Reduce the installed hardware to it’s simplest configuration.

      If possible, verify that your hardware is compatible with WinME at:
      “Windowsupdate.microsoft.com”

      Verify that the harddrive is Virus free,

      Avoid HDD Bios overlay utilities, such as MaxBlast or EZBios (these affect the boot sector)

      Update the system board Bios if possible.
      (Assuming you have verified that your bios supports WInME, not all bios does…)

      The problem as described, indicates that something is interfering with the reading of the boot sector, WinME is far less tolerant than Win9x, thus greater attention needs to be paid to “Hardware,Firmware,Software” compatibility.

      When all else fails, return the computer to it’s last known good configuration, and when troubleshooting perplexing problems such as this, try to keep extensive notes of your progress.

      Good Luck,

      Dan

      • #3797247

        PC won’t boot!?

        by xaqfox ·

        In reply to PC won’t boot!?

        The question was auto-closed by TechRepublic

    • #3701215

      PC won’t boot!?

      by cdobbin ·

      In reply to PC won’t boot!?

      I am having the same problem with my PC at work, I know I have bad sectors on my drive and I beleive this to be the cause. I am getting the exact same symptom as you, cursor up in the top left corner.If I trun it off and on a few times it will eventually boot.
      I would say you have a hardware problem with the drive or your partition and/or master boot record got corrupted somehow.
      Are you able to boot off a floppy and access the drive, if so try running scandisk, maybe even run f-disk and viewthe partition information to make sure nothing hooky went on, you could also run fdisk /mbr to reinitialize the master boot record.
      As the other posts said to, it could’nt hurt to run a virus scan but given that this happened after install I would be surprised if that was the problem.
      Hope this helps.

      • #3701211

        PC won’t boot!?

        by cdobbin ·

        In reply to PC won’t boot!?

        Woops, did’nt see your comment about not being able to boot off a floppy, if you have stripped this thing down to the bare bones and even went as far as replacing the mother board and still have the same problem chances are it has nothing to do withyour drive itself,disconnect it altogether(harddrive) and try the floppy. I would also look to the IDE cables and the floppy drive itself, if you used the original cables with the new mainboard I would try new ones.
        Good luck!

      • #3797248

        PC won’t boot!?

        by xaqfox ·

        In reply to PC won’t boot!?

        The question was auto-closed by TechRepublic

    • #3684685

      PC won’t boot!?

      by jimjennings ·

      In reply to PC won’t boot!?

      If it goes through the Post Routine you should be able to get into the BIOS. There should be a selection for choosing the boot sequence, and this sounds like where your problem is. If you have not tried booting from a CD (your WINMe should be bootable) put the CD in the drive and start the machine. If you can boot from the CD then you need to find the correct settings for the boot sequence. Some larger IDE hard drives require newer controllers that you may need to select “boot from SCSI device”in the boot sequence, so check for this possibility also.

      • #3797249

        PC won’t boot!?

        by xaqfox ·

        In reply to PC won’t boot!?

        The question was auto-closed by TechRepublic

    • #3701716

      PC won’t boot!?

      by pokester45 ·

      In reply to PC won’t boot!?

      Had a similar problem with WinME on a Via board. Corrected the problem by shorting out the BIOS jumpers and setting BIOS to default settings. It then booted and let me into windows. Worth a try.

      • #3797250

        PC won’t boot!?

        by xaqfox ·

        In reply to PC won’t boot!?

        The question was auto-closed by TechRepublic

    • #3802792

      PC won’t boot!?

      by rolandf ·

      In reply to PC won’t boot!?

      i have seen this problem loads of times before if you can get hold of a winME boot disk try booting from this disk and then doing a SYS to C:. as the It may work with a Win98 boot disk. This happens due a corrupt Syststem files during an upgrade, although most common with win95 realese 2

      • #3797251

        PC won’t boot!?

        by xaqfox ·

        In reply to PC won’t boot!?

        The question was auto-closed by TechRepublic

    • #3797245

      PC won’t boot!?

      by xaqfox ·

      In reply to PC won’t boot!?

      This question was auto closed due to inactivity

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