Win ME Uninstall Dilemma

[cliffboy]

I'm workin' on an old Pentium 166 MHz PC with 64MB of RAM. Originally, it was loaded with Win98SE and then the owner updated it to WinME. Right now, he wants it reverted back to Win98SE.

So, what I did was to uninstall WinME in the Add/Remove Programs. After goin' thru the process, the PC was prompted to RESTART.

Once it was in the process of booting up during the RESTART process, the monitor went into STANDBY mode, and what I have left was the NUMLOCK indicator lit and the POWER LED lit. So, I just waited for somethin' like 15 minutes. Then still, nothin' happened. So, I tried the RESTART button and still I get nothin'. Finally, I switched off the CPU [an AT system].

I waited for 5 minutes and booted it up. To my surprise, I get no signal to the monitor, no beeps... what could have happened? What do you think is wrong with the system? What could I do to remedy the problem?

[GaryRouth]

Is the power light staying lit? Or does it flicker on then off? (the power light on your computer's case that is, not on the monitor)

Try a Win98se bootdisk & see if you can boot from that. If so, switch to the Windows directory and type win.

Did you disable anti-virus before uninstalling WinMe?
. . . Gary

[cliffboy]

GaryRouth,

Yes, there is power [the power light in the CPU] indication in the CPU and it stays lit, no flickering on and off.

I am trying to boot it up using Win98SE start-up diskette but then, my problem is, I can't even see the POST of the videocard, more so with the motherboard which comes next.

And then, there is Norton System Works which I think includes the anti-virus which was not disabled.

I'm thinkin' of removing the memory and the videocard and re-seating them. Would this help? Anymore suggestions please...

[GaryRouth]

Hmmm . . . might anything have shaken loose (causing a short somewhere - between the motherboard and the case?). . . It does look like you may need to go all the way back to square one & do the basic no-post troubleshooting. I'd first open the case up a bit & look for anything touching the case (a loose screw can do it). Then you can look for anything else odd & out of the ordinary (like leaky capacitors, or funky smell from the power supply). With the case open, go ahead & try to start it up, and see if the cpu fan is spinning at all (ditto for the power supply fan). You can try reseating things too.

If none of that yields any clues, and still no display on the monitor, you might as well do the no-post routine:
1) Power off.
2) Remove motherboard from case, put it on a cardboard box.
3) With only motherboard, cpu/hs/fan, memory, and video card plugged in (and video attached to monitor) - see if you get through POST and get an error displaying on screen. - then add put those back in the case & see if the result is the same. If so, keep adding back parts & seeing what happens.

Get into the Bios if you can, and see if you can boot to a CD - if so, you'll be able to try a Safe Mode boot & work on things from there [and disable the Norton until things are functioning at a basic level]. Disable the Bios antivirus too, if it's enabled (might be called something like VirusShield).

Here's a link with an out-of-the-box procedure Hal recommends for non-booting systems http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.p...threadid=12753

If you have a motherboard manual for that board around anywhere, you can also try clearing the Bios Settings by momentarily shorting a jumper for that. Removing the bios battery for a few minutes can do the trick as well. You'll need to go back into Bios Setup & reset things once you get the system started again.

Floppy drives and keyboards are two little things that can cause big problems booting - you'll be unhooking these and rehooking them up during this procedure, & you'd be surprised how many systems act up because of a balky keyboard or floppy connector.

Best of luck
. . . Gary

(. . . and, it's late here, so I'm probably forgetting something ---anyone with suggestions, feel free to jump in. . . )

[cliffboy]

Thanks a lot, Gary. You were right, somethin' was shakin' loose. I suspected it to be the metal plate which holds the serial port for the mouse. What I did was just to re-arrange and tighten the ribbon cables inside, remove and re-installed the PCI cards as well the AGP card, and now, it's back to normal.

[GaryRouth]

Good work. Glad that's all it was - much better than frying motherboards and power supplies . . .