My pc will not boot up into windows

[hopkinsj]

Hi
I formatted my hard disk and reinstalled windows 98 second edition. It installed ok and let me install office 97 and was working ok when I turned it off. When I turned it back on it just hung after recognising the hard disk and would not go any further. I tried going back to old settings in bios but that didn't work. I can't even get it to boot from a floppy or the cdrom drive. Anyone got any ideas?

[RenegadeKing]

Try clearing the CMOS with the jumper on your motherboard, or removing the battery for 5 minutes (gives the same result). Make sure the computer is off and unplugged when you do this.

[Cricket]

Hi hopkinsj,

Can you boot into Safe Mode? If you can, let us know. If you can't, try replacing the IDE cable.

When you tried booting to another device, did you change the boot order in the BIOS first?

Do you have another power supply you can test with?

What are your system specs?

Cricket

[hopkinsj]

Hi Cricket

I can't boot into safe mode. I can only access bios. When you say replace ide cable do you mean reseat or buy new one? I don't have another power supply. My specs are 500 processor 188 ram and 8 gig hard drive.

Since my last post I got a message that my cmos battery was low, so I tried replacing that but I can't get it to stay in properly. It's in the claws but it's loose and keeps popping out.

Maybe I should stick to knitting huh?

J

[Cricket]

When the computer got stuck after it recognized the hard drive, was there any error message shown on the monitor?

Yes, I meant replace the IDE cable.

You might want to try disconnecting any other drives besides the hard drive and then see if the computer will boot up properly.

After you reinstalled Windows, did you install all the device drivers for the video card, sound card, etc...?

Push down on the battery until it "snaps" into the battery holder.

Cricket

[hopkinsj]

No message at first but afterwards I got the cmos battery low press f1 to setup message. Thats when I changed the battery. I pressed down as hard as I could but I think the contacts arent keeping it in properly. Like maybe the metal bit has been stretched or something. I don't think I installed all the drivers because I couldn't get any sound when I tried to play a cd. I'm getting the cmos battery low message now every time I try and boot up and when I press f1 to go into setup the clock has gone back to 1999. I change it to the current date and time and make first boot device floppy but each time I reboot I get the same message and the date has reverted to 1999. What a mess! Do you think it could be just the place where the battery goes isn't holding it properly?