Thanks John I'll try that. Side note, if i replace the Bios battery, do i lose anythin, have to reset anything.???? I'll get one in the am
Dave On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 9:38 PM, John Sessoms <jsessoms...@nc.rr.com> wrote: > David J Brooks >> >> Well, it looks like its time to do something about my 8 year old MDG >> P4 computer. >> >> Its been acting up again the last few weeks, not booting. It does >> after a number of reboots. I get a boot fail, system halted, or a full >> DOS screen with all my memory numbers and a few other things, and at >> the bottom i get press f12 to boot form network or f1 to enter set up. >> I enter set up, scroll over to exit and it boots. >> >> Its an old machine, slow and USB 1.1 to boot, but its calibrated well >> for my Epson 2400 prints, so i'm leaning on fixing it one more time. >> Going in Saturday for a look see. Hopefully adding a new HD and >> mapping my stuff off the old one will work. The HD was upgraded 3 >> years ago and never really worked well after. Many boot problems, but >> it would work, eventually. >> > > It's been a while since I have had to troubleshoot a computer, but these are > some things I remember. > > If you've got everything you need to keep from the HDD backed up onto > another drive, try booting to a command prompt and run "chkdsk" to see if it > reports any errors on the HDD. > > Or if you haven't backed up everything you need, boot it however you have to > get it up and copy everything you need to keep before you run "chkdsk". > "Chkdsk" shouldn't hurt anything, but why take chances. > > If it's a FAT32 system, try "scandisk". > > I'd also look to replacing the CMOS battery. It may be just losing the > settings when shut down. That would account for it booting after you exit > setup. > > If "chkdsk" reports errors, you can use it with the /f switch to "fix" > errors. > > It may also have corrupted the boot sector on the HDD. Use "fdisk /mbr" with > Windows 95, 98, 2000 or NT and "fixmbr" (have to boot from the installation > CD and choose recovery) for XP or Vista. > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and > follow the directions. > -- Documenting Life in Rural Ontario. www.caughtinmotion.com http://brooksinthecountry.blogspot.com/ York Region, Ontario, Canada -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
