Please Help: OS will not load

[Michaell]

A friend asked to come over to take a look at his "new" (donated to him) computer. Its a socket 7 (133Mhz), with 8MB of SIMM ram. I offered to dig into my stash and found 2 more sticks of 8MB RAM (total of 24). I came over installed the two sticks, the system won't boot. So I figure, not a big deal pull them back out and now the system will not boot again. The trouble for me is, the system hangs before loading the OS. It goes through POST fine, scrolls all the info on screen and then just stops. Doesn't even show Loading Windows 98. Just stops and hangs... anyone can offer any suggestions ? Thank you in advance,
Mike

[edge345]

Check the ram timing in the bios.
was it booting be for you added the ram....

[GaryRouth]

Will it boot from a floppy bootdisk? - or from a CD?

_____
edge's idea about Ram types and timings in the Bios is a good one. If you're not sure what to use, you can always try "Save Defaults and Exit" - this will let the Bios of the motherboard detect what hardware you have & load fail-safe settings. You can always tune for performance later.

I'll assume you had everything unplugged when you put in the 2 ancient SIMMS? You can try booting up with a different SIMM in each time (that would give you 3 strikes to try for a boot).

Then try checking the IDE cable to the hard drive & motherboard. Might have been jostled a bit loose while trying to get those old Simms into the slots [I used to hate 45-degree angle, then snap to 90 degrees - ugh. And having to install them in matching pairs was a pain]

If still no go, try some diagnostics: http://www.simmtester.com (DocMemory) for the memory, and the disk diagnostics for the hard drive (Powermax for Maxtors, SeaTools for Seagates, DataLifeGuard for Western Digitals, etc -- available as free downloads).

Best of luck
. . . Gary