I have had the same problem as Rick.  The system hangs during bootup and never gets to the beep on POST.

Original computer with problem was a Pent 166 with 96 mg of ram and a Sony 17" monitor. The motherboard was an ASUS P/I-P55TVP4.  This computer had 2 hard drives - a 13.6gb ATA/66 Western Digital & a 8.4gb Western Digital.

My computer would start to boot and then the monitor would go into standby.  On reboot it usually would work.  My initial idea was that the monitor was going bad.  I think that the hard drive would start to spin up but then it seemed to not have enough power to come up to the right speed.  This computer along with the monitor was plugged into a power strip.
 
In April I built a new system.  I now have a Abit BE6-2 motherboard with a Pentium III 600e processor.  I have 128 mb of ram and the 13.6gb ATA66 Western Digital hard drive from the other computer.  I also am using the Sony monitor from the Pentium 166.  This computer is in a new ATX case and has a 300W power supply in it.  I started to have the same problem with the new computer which was plugged into the original power bar. 
I then switched to a different monitor and that made no difference.  I also ran my old Pentium 166 and it was still having the same problem.  
 
The only thing I could figure out was that this was some type of power problem.  Probably not getting enough power through the power strip that it was on.  I moved the new computer to another power strip and it seemed to solve my problem for a while.  Now occasionally I have the same problem on this power strip.  Could this be a problem with the power  coming into this room?  Could I be suffering from a low power problem?  Is there some way to check the amount of power coming through the plug in the wall?

Another thing, the 13.6 gb hard drive was just replaced by Western Digital because it developed bad sectors.  This drive was bought in November of last year.  Do you think that the problem I'm having could have had anything to do with the bad sectors on the drive.  I was thinking that maybe the slow incomplete start up might have damaged the drive.


I have a friend who experienced the exact same problem with the incomplete bootup.  When she switched to another power bar, the problem disappeared.

Does anyone have any ideas?  I would apprecite any help I can get from the experts on this list.

Thanks
Adele Sapilewski in Sterling Heights, MI
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I've been having an intermittent problem lately that occurs at bootup:

The system hangs while doing the POST; whatever is going on happens before
the video is initialized as there is no video out. The access lights for
the CDROM drive and the HD are on steady and stay that way, and there are
no beeps. I haven't noticed whether the keyboard lights have flashed or
not. Also, I do not hear the hard drives (of which there are two) spin up.

At this point, the system is totally hung- the reset and power buttons do
not work (ATX mobo), and I have to cycle the power at the power strip to
get the machine to respond, after which it generally starts normally and
runs fine once booted.

What I suspect is that one of the two hard drives has a failing bearing on
the platter and is not spinning up, but I don't know enough about the POST
sequence to judge whether spinup should be happening at this particular point.

Anyone have ideas on this?

Thanks-

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rick Lindstrom
<[log in to unmask]>
Tallahassee, FL.

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