Windows 98 Not Booting Up

[Rpbertxyz]

My daughter has a Windows98 machine that I built and she is 300 miles away and I'm trying to fix this over the telephone.

When she attempts to boot up, a flashing cursor comes on when she's into the second screen on startup. It's the screen that lists the devices and at the bottom is where the cursor is flashing.I had her try and start up using the Windows98 start up disk. It gets that far and she can hear the machine reading the disk, but the screen never changes and the flashing cursor is still there.I had her recheck all connections for mouse,keyboard,and monitor.

This machine is for games only, and it doesn't have a modem, so it has never been on the internet. That's to rule out spyware and viruses.

This machine had been running fine for the last 8 months with no problems.

Any Ideas are appreciated.

Thank You Bob H.

[Vigo]

Might be possible that one of the optical or hard drives failed and is causing the hang.

Try going into the bios and setting the values by using the "default settings" option for the heck of it I guess.

How many post beeps and what lengths of them are you getting? (if any)

If she can open the machine up she can unplug the hard drive, optical drives and floppy to try to get a succesful post test, one beep (unless you already get one beep). From there plug in the Hdd only and see if it boots to windows.

[Rpbertxyz]

I had her set the BIOS to the default settings. The machine is giving her the 1 beep post.The part I'm having a problem with, is that it will read the floppy, but won't change the screen, to say Windows98 is starting up, and giving the option to boot with a CD. It just stay at thew device screen with the cursor sitting near the bottom of the screen. If I try to boot off the C drive. I just get the flashing cursor, and don't believe it's even going to the C drive to load Windows98.

[rjfvillarosa]

It sounds like hard drive failure or MBR problem, if you know the make of the hard drive you could download the diagnostic tools from the manufacturers website and create a boot floppy.
You could then send her the floppy by post and get her to run diagnostics from the floppy, all she has to do is put the floppy in the drive and start the machine.
It could also be a memory problem, does it get past the memtest in boot up?

Just a thought, you said "daughter, 300 miles" are we talking college or something? has she put a floppy in the machine that someone may have been using in the college, could it be a virus?

[Rpbertxyz]

The part I'm having a problem with, is that it will read the floppy, but won't change the screen, to say Windows98 is starting up, and giving the option to boot with a CD. It just stays at the device screen with the cursor sitting near the bottom of the screen.

The monitor screen never changes, so I can not get into the machine with a floppy to see if the hard drive is bad.

[rjfvillarosa]

Seems to me that you are going to have to get your hands on the machine and try resetting it "hands on". Would she be able to reset the bios if you explained it to her over the phone?

[Rpbertxyz]

She decided to bring the machine this Sunday. The BIOS, I had her do the F5 to restore the BIOS to its default settings. I don't know if it could be the CMOS or battery. I've been building machines since 1995 and haven't heard of anything like this.

[rjfvillarosa]

If you can reach a satisfactory result please come back and let me know what you did to resolve the issue.
Tell me all the nitty gritty from start to end, it's only by reading about things like this we get to recognise it in the future.

Richard.

[Rpbertxyz]

The PC got here on Sunday, and the first thing I tried was to bootup. It hung with the flashing cursor at the spot where it would read the floppy. I tried reading a floppy, I could hear it read the floppy, but the flashing cursor was still there. I just left the machine there for about a half an hour, and all of sudden the HD light start flashing. It brought up the Windows98 screen and stayed there for about another 15 minutes. It then brought up the desktop. I then hit start and restarted the machine and it booted up in about 2 minutes, which is normal. I did this pecedure a couple of more times and the machine seems to be working alright now. Never saw anything like this before. Any comments are welcome.

Thank You Bob H.

[rjfvillarosa]

I think I would be inclined to start looking at hard drive and memory diagnostic tools, maybe the bios was waiting for something and this is only a temporary clear.
What make of hard drive is it?

[Rpbertxyz]

Western Digital 60 GB BB series, not too much milage on it.

The other thing my grandson said is when all the trouble began was that when he was booting up, it asked him if wanted to be in safe mode. He said the option was yes or no. He said no and the same screen came back up. After saying no a few times he said yes. The machine must have booted up in safe mode and he played his games till he was done. When he went to sign off, he noticed that the safe mode was in the 4 corners. He shut down the machine, and then when he booted up the next day was when it wouldn't boot up.

[rjfvillarosa]

Sounds like some minor glitch caused it to want to start in safe mode and after he was playing he didn't shut it down correctly. I think I would do a quick bios reset via the motherboard jumper and keep an eye on it. Does it have to go back straight away or can you monitor it for a week just to be sure?
Click this link and a download box will appear, it is the diagnostic tool for the hard drive from Western Digital http://support.wdc.com/download/dlg/DlgDiagv504c.exe

Download it, then double click the file to run it, run it with a blank floppy in the floppy drive. It will make a bootable floppy, boot with it, and it will test the drive.

[Rpbertxyz]

The machine went back yesterday already.

I will have my daughter download the diagnostic disk and have her run it. She probably won't set the machine up again until Wednesday. They do have 2 other computers that I built for them.

Thank You Bob H.

[Rpbertxyz]

She ran the quick diagnostic test this morning. It was running less than 1 minute and it came up with an error. Tried to run scan disk in safe mode, and she got the error saying an illegal operation occured. I'm going out there in the middle of December and see if I can clone that disk using Ghost.