Actually, I just had a similar problem at work yesterday.  The culprit was a
bad zip drive.  The machine would go through a normal post, but as soon as
it got to the point where it would normally load the operating system, it
froze with a blinking cursor in the upper left-hand corner.  As soon as I
disconnected the zip drive the system would boot.

The wierd thing was, I shut the system down and reconnected the drive, and
it would boot fine after that.  The zip was definitely the culprit.
Stranger things have happened.

Regards,

Kyle Elmblade
[log in to unmask]

From: "Dick Carroll" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2000 10:17 PM
Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] PCBUILD Digest - 31 Oct 2000 to 1 Nov 2000
(#2000-307)


> Date:    Tue, 31 Oct 2000 20:05:57 -0600
> From:    "Paul A. Valentine" <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Computer Start-up Problem
>
> My computer has developed what I suspect is a hardware problem. When I
> push
> the power button to turn it on, the power light comes on, the hard drive
> light comes on, it immediately emits one long beeb, and two fast short
> beeps, the cd-rom lights briefly as does the A drive and the cdrw drive.
> The
> hard drive light stays on for about a minute, then goes off, but nothing
> more happens. The display does not come on. If I turn it on manually, it
> is
> not getting a signal. The only way to power it down is to pull the plug.
> Sometimes if I hit reset it will start normally, and run normally. Today
> that didn't work. I opened and closed both cd drives, then hit reset,
> and it
> started????
> Need help????
> Thanks, Paul
>
>
>  Last time I saw this type of problem it turned out that the CD drive
> was keeping the machine from booting or even completing POST.  By
> process of elimination,  unhooking one drive at a time, I determined
> that the CD was at fault and replaced it, after which the machine ran
> just fine, and is still running.
>    I later decided to try the "defective" CD drive in another machine,
> to see if the symptom transferred to that machine. It did not, the thing
> worked fine and is still working. I suspect the problem may have been an
> interemittant or  poorly seated cable rather than a defective CD drive.
>
> Dick Carroll

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