Several problems

[quartet-man]

I don't know if they are all related to a bigger problem or not. I am running a Widows 98SE 800 meg computer with I believe 256mb of memory. I can check later if needed. I am having some of the freeze up I am talking about and cannot be sure and it is a computer borrowed from work until I can use my regular one again.

At one point this computer would lock on shutting down (intermittently) and all you would see is the black screen and a flashing cursor. You would have to usually unplug or hold down the power switch to get it to turn off. That still happens on occasion both when booting or shutting down, but there are more problems.

More often than not anymore, one of three things happen. Occasionally I can get a successful boot, but then other problems pop up.

When I boot, it either doesn't detect the keyboard or mouse, or I might get the flashing screen. If I get the black screen with the flashing cursor and hit a key, it says keyboard not found. Sometimes it will boot, but not find the mouse. Sometimes when booting it says something like EMM386 not installed and mentions extended memory. If I get it to boot it sometimes says a mouse hasn't been found and to power down and check connections etc. Changing the ps2 ports I plug the keyboard or mouse in doesn't seem to make much difference I don't think. Then, if I get it to boot properly, sometimes the mouse pointer is frozen, but the keyboard will work (at least for a while and then it might freeze up totally.) Sometimes I can shut down with the keyboard and sometimes not. Those times I can do like I am doing now and operate without the mouse as best I can, but sometimes it freezes up eventually. When that happens I have to unplug it (or use the power key) and a lot of times it will crank up again, but almost always has one of the problems (no mouse, keyboard, or emm error.)

I unplugged the mouse and keys and replugged, I unplugged the memory and replugged, but nothing seems to take care of it. What can I do? I still use this computer at work sometimes (non profit), but am using it from home right now and it is the only one I can use right now.

[glc]

Tired hardware. Not too much you can do without a rebuild. You can run diagnostics on the hard drive and ram - you can pull cards out one at a time to see if one of them is killing it - you can try a new power supply. If it can't find the keyboard and mouse, a Windows reinstall won't help, it's hardware, quite likely a bad motherboard. Examine the motherboard for leaking and bulging capacitors.

Having problems with a new build? Try this.

[quartet-man]

It sees them some of the times, but eventually jams. Although the computer is about 8 years old, it never got a lot of use. Usually a few hours a week. I have done some hardware installations of cards and such, but never built a computer. What type of online tests can I do first?

[glc]

The only software diagnostics that would make sense are ram and hard drive tests. EVERYTHING else requires part substitution. Please read the thread I linked to.

[edfair]

Shutdown issues are pretty standard on SE. The power buttton for 5 seconds is the usual fix and it generally will find everything correctly on the next boot.

You might try an "over the top" reinstall. Reinstall it with the OS going to the same place as the original.

Is there an underlying DOS install on the machine? You might want to create empty autoexec.bat and config.sys for the sE to work with. May resolve the EMM issue.

Granted that it may be tired hardware but if you can get into the CMOS setup regularly during POST then the basic keyboard circuits are functional.

[quartet-man]

After I traded ports and used it for a while, the mouse got a lot worse and the keyboard better. I got a usb mouse and things seem pretty good so far. I might reinstall Win98SE down the line too.