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Boot up error on a Win98 OS

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What is the most probable cause of a windows 98 system not booting pass memory check, cdrw/dvd - drives check - (no Hdd check). This system was left running for approximately 12 hours. It turned itself off, since then, I cannot get it to boot.

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by mike o

It sounds to me like you may have a bad hard drive or your BIOS is halting on another error.

First step I would take is go into the BIOS and make sure the hard drives are detected there. If not, there's your problem. May not hurt to open the caseand make sure the IDE and power cables are connected properly, but if you were already running for 12 hours that's probably not the case...

Look for the "Halt on..." or similar setting as well. There might be settings like No HDD, No Keyboard, and so forth that you can play with.

Good luck.

by nosliw247

upon my troubleshooting - hdd has gone bad, however wasn't able to go into BIOS. Found that out by hooking it up to my system, which showed the drive as missing.

by opatzg9

To diagnose start going back to a basic system, boot with only video,memory in place, if it goes through the checks ok then add the hard drive back in, ... until you find the offending piece of hardware. If it is the hard drive try a boot disk and see if the drive is accessible,If not check uot the tech republic 200 ways to revive a harddrive.
Otherwise try giving us more info where it is failing at as you add the parts back in.
When you have it open and apart its a good time to check and make sure your fans are working properly, hear the hard drives fire up,...
reseat cards/ribbon cables/power cables and get a can of compressed air to blow them dust bunnies out.
Good luck

by nosliw247

U should have seen the amount of gunk in this sucker! Probably had something to do with the HDD failure ?

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