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Boot problems

By JamesRL ·
Had some problems with my PC over the weekend.

Abit SL6 motherboard, 700 Mhz PIII.

Win XP as the OS. Fairly new HD.

After father in law used computer for a few days, downloading his favorite shareware games, had problems booting - after DMI check, would go into boot menu. At first sometimes it would successfully boot other times it would reboot during the attempt. Over and over.

Once I did get it to boot, I ran Spyware, Adaware and my anti-virus program. No major issues. Ran PC Doctor - no issues.

For a while it would boot sporadically - sometimes last good menu would work, sometimes not. Once I enabled logging and it said it was missing winsrv.dll. I was never able to get the error again.

Eventually it never worked. Tried another HD with XP loaded(replacing as master), had it working for a few hours but eventually it had the same problem. Could not boot from my XP CD or from diskette - BIOS was set up properly and seemd to accept the changes and write to the BIOS when I reordered the boot order. But it would only try the HD.

I thought maybe my inability to boot from other devices might be CMOS problem so I got a new CMOS battery - no joy.

Anyone have an idea? Initially I thought it was a software issue, but more and more I suspect my motherboard.

James.

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by dmiles In reply to Boot problems

If you have SP2 on the machine it could cause a problem with anti-virus and the fire wall trying to block sites,uninstall SP2 and antivirus to see if this clears up the problem

Sounds like a intermittent problem,but cannot determine that by what you have posted.

Check the cpu and power supply ,see if the fans are working properly,this normally would suggest a motherboard problem
Make sure the memory is inserted in slots correctly.

You may want to check the bios for an update and flash it.

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by JamesRL In reply to

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by sgt_shultz In reply to Boot problems

maybe you have a cd drive going south--?

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by JamesRL In reply to

but its the HD thats going - and the floppy doesn't boot either - seems to acknowledge at startup - reads, but can't boot.

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by w2ktechman In reply to Boot problems

I would suspect the MB as well, but if you can, test the power supply first.

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by JamesRL In reply to

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by pablok In reply to Boot problems

Yip, i agree with dmiles - update the BIOS. get latest motherboard drivers for all the devices.

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by JamesRL In reply to

Can't update the BIOS if I can't boot anything.

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by Skidoggeruk In reply to Boot problems

power is common to all the drives. If you are getting power to drives,IE the irritating floppy check and hard drive spinup at POST, then I would suspect the IO channels. Firmware update might help, but would fear that you are now fighting an uphill battle.

If not then you have a PSU problem.

Good Luck

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by JamesRL In reply to

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