Computer worked fine last night....

[wildbilln864]

I shut it down when I went to bed. Now it hangs up and reads drive a: over and over and won't go on to load windows or anything. The monitor doesn't even seem to get activated.
Using my second one to post here. Any ideas? Thanks in advance to anyone with ideas.

ETA: It's a used Gateway I bought with 600 mHz. Upgraded XP, 192 MB ram. I added second 20 gig harddrive when I got it. I have to hold the power button down til it goes off. This time I turned power on and it's stuck with floppy drive light on. Is there another way to access it? Is it junk now? :shrug:

[RC]

1. Go into the BIOS and disable the A drive.

Make the D or CD Rom drive the first boot device and the C drive the second boot device.

If that works, then add the A drive back in BIOS, but as the third boot devise.

[wildbilln864]

4. I can't get into bios or anything.

Thanks for the reply. Screen stays black, doesn't seem to signal the keyboard or anything. Hangs up with HD led stays on and beeps every 5 or 6 seconds.

[RC]

13. Beeping? You didn't say anything about beeping.

Any beeping is important. It is the BIOS trying to tell you something. What is the sequence?

[lpbk2713]

2. Assuming you have checked the floppy drive to see if there is a disc in it ...

Disconnect the grey floppy drive ribbon cable from the mother board at the mother board end and disconnect the power connector from the floppy drive. If it seems to boot up OK after this change out the FDD if you have a known good spare laying around. If it doesn't boot up OK after replacing the FDD you may have a bad FDD controller on your mother board. If that's the case, and if you really must have a floppy drive, you can always leave the cables disconnected and buy a USB floppy drive. Change your BIOS settings accordingly.

Good luck .... :thumbsup:

[canetoad]

3. Yeppers, that is what I would be trying first

FDDs don't last forever.

btw lpbk when in hell did you find the Andy Capp avatar? :)

[lpbk2713]

10. I've had that for an avatar for just about as long as I've been here on DU.

And to be honest it is just a result of my lack of imagination. I thought I should
have an avatar of my own but couldn't come up with anything profoundly clever (:eyes:)
As it happened I was eating some Andy Capp Fries ....



... and thus an avatar was born. :rofl:

[canetoad]

11. Blast from the past for me

Growing up in UK, I remember Andy Capp cartoons from the newspapers when I was a kid.

Edit to add: Had no idea you had even heard of him in US.

[lpbk2713]

12. He was in a comic strip in my local newspaper.

I used to read and enjoy Andy and Flo regularly.


:thumbsup: :hi: :thumbsup:

[wildbilln864]

5. Thanks, I disconnected the FDD power and...

gray data cable. Restarted and nothing. Shouldn't it blink the caps lock and other lights when detecting keyboard. It doesn't. I have a feeling maybe it's something other than FDD. :shrug:
It hangs and continues to beep every 5 or so seconds. Nothing happens on monitor. Thanks again for trying to help.

[canetoad]

6. If you can be bothered, wildbill

here is the list of what the beeps mean. May be of some help.

http://www.computerhope.com/beep.htm

[wildbilln864]

7. I can always be bothered.

:shrug: Thanks for your help canetoad.

[RC]

14. What kind of beeps? What sequence? We need this clue here.

Your computer is trying to tell you what is wrong.

[wildbilln864]

15. The standard beep it makes when it's started up and begins the detections.

It keeps trying to read the FDD over and over. Nothing happens on screen, it stays black.
Thank you. :hi:


ETA: You guys all rock! :patriot:
Okay after listening closer it seems to be a quick double beep. I'll check out the beep codes page posted here and see if I can figure out anything but not optimistic.

[RoccoR5955]

22. Here's what I would do...

First, pull the power cord. Then reseat the cables that come out of the computer. If that fails, and you are comfortable working inside the PC, reseat the memory, hard drive and other ribbon cables, power to devices, cards (if any). Be sure that you mark where each one of those ribbon cables came from. It can be confusing. The RAM only goes in one way. Make a note of it. Sometimes, reseating this stuff will bring it back.

Beep codes are important. Remember the number and duration of these beeps. If there are any numeric codes on the screen, they are telling you something as well.

Also, if you are reseating cables inside the PC, touch the metal on the case, before you touch components/cables. This will ground you, and not fry any of the little components on your computer.

[wildbilln864]

23. thank you...

i will try this.
I actually gave up for a while and then last night I just hit the power and it came on fine. Then it shut itself down as I had it set to do so and forgot to change it. Now it won't start again. The beep is a quick double beep it sounds like but sometimes hangs up and just does nothing.

[RoccoR5955]

25. A quick double beep...

... is generally a keyboard failure, if I remember my beep codes.
FYI -- I have been servicing PCs for over 20 years professionally.

[Duer 157099]

8. Do you have a floppy "start up" disk?

Any chance you've tried that already?

[wildbilln864]

16. don't have....

I bought this thing used a couple weeks back and no disks or anything with it. Thank you dotcosm.

[Duer 157099]

18. You can download something, like here

assuming you're on an XP system that has a floppy drive

http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

http://1gighost.net/la/xpquick.zip

[wildbilln864]

19. thank you! nt

[Duer 157099]

9. Check connections - power cord, keyboard, mouse etc

make sure everything is secure, and reseat the RAM.

Maybe blow out some dust too if you have some canned air.

Oh, and do you have a spare motherboard battery?

[Duer 157099]

17. Here's a really long shot - reseat your video card, if you have one

and then make sure you have the current video drivers - uninstall and reinstall (after you make sure you have them available to reinstall)

What is the video situation anyway? Is there onboard video, or a card, or both?

[wildbilln864]

20. thanks, onboard only I think. nt

[CabalPowered]

21. If it's not the standard beep you hear on startup..

The obvious codes would be no ram or no video and it doesn't sound like that's what you're hearing. I'd say the board is shot. For a hail mary, you could try plugging an el-cheapo pci video card into the expansion slot and see if you get anything but without the no video beep I wouldn't hold out much hope.

You can still salvage the new HD and the xp key but the rest is likely junk.

[wildbilln864]

24. thanks for your help...

You're probably right and it's junk. Just my luck. The one I got free works great so far. The one I buy goes to shit. :crazy:
I'll try another video card if I can figure that out. If that doesn't work I'll probably just salvage the HDs and other parts.
The beep is a quick double beep it sounds like, BTW. Is that a no video beep?
Again, thanks. :hi: