Good Day Everyone, a friend of mine is having problems with a pc he bought @
2 years ago.  Unlucky for him the warranty has since expired (funny how
these things happen at the most undesirable times!).  It's an IBM Netvista
A21i desktop pc. The pc's specs: 1.1 ghz Celeron, 128mb ram, 60gb drive, cd
drive,etc. It's not a monster performance pc but it's not a slouch either.
It was running WinXP Home edition.  Apparently the pc experienced some
severe power surges which caused it to stop functioning properly.  It went
from operating for a couple of hours to not operating at all.  I can get it
a dos screen to perform some hardware diagnostics using the pc-doctor 2.0
software boot disk that ibm provided with the system but it doesn't report
any hardware errors.  At first I thought it was a hard drive problem so I
reformatted the drive and reinstalled Win XP Home on it but the same problem
still exists, it freezes just as the Win XP screen loads up.  I have
reformatted and attempted to reinstall Win2k Pro but the same thing happens,
while at the command prompt/dos mode, the system runs fine, allows you to
format the hd, perform diagnostics, install the os and runs for hours
without fail, etc.  However when you try to start an OS as soon as it hits a
screen with graphics, ie. The Win2k or WinXP startup screen with the
scrolling indicator bar at the bottom, it either freezes entirely or causes
the pc to spontaneously reboot.  I have scanned the harddrive with a
Logicube Solitaire Turbo 2000 cloning device I use at work which allows you
to clone drives and scan & repair drives but nothing showed up.  I also
swapped drives from another pc that I know is working and the same problem
exists, the pc locks up during the bootup process at the same point each
time even with a new drive so I don't think it's a hd problem.  I don't have
any equipment for testing power supplies or motherboards for component
failure but I'm thinking it's one or both of these areas that may be the
source of the problem.  Have any of you ever seen a similar problem and if
so what did you find to be the cause of the problem?  If you have any
comments or any suggestions, please reply back on this list.  TIA... rob,wpg

         PCBUILD maintains hundreds of useful files for download
                     visit our download web page at:
                  http://freepctech.com/downloads.shtml