From your description of the PC I would try replacing
the MOBO's BIOS battery.

Then, reboot and restore your PC's BIOS settings.

Reboot, and your woes will most probably have vanished.

HTH,
Tomas Santos
[log in to unmask]

On Thu, 13 May 2004 00:03:51 -0500,In PCBUILD's
Automatic digest processor wrote:

 John Brooks <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: PC not booting properly
>
> I have a Compaq, 1.3 ghz Celeron, computer. Yesterday,
> for a period of time, the computer would not boot up.
> After numerous attempts to get it started I came to
the
> conclusion that the problem was in the hardware
because
> at times it would not go past the first screen with
the
> large red letters that say "Compaq". When it stopped
on
> this "Compaq" screen I could get into setup by hitting
> F10 but upon leaving setup it would show a blank
screen
> with the blinking cursor in the upper left corner and
> go no farther. Input from the keyboard or mouse would
> then have no effect at all.
>
> I have had this computer over two years, use it almost
> every day and never seen anything like this. If any
one
> has an idea what is happening here I would appreciate
> hearing your thoughts on this.
>
> Here are some more details of the time it would not
> boot properly:
> 1] A complete virus scan has been done.
> 2] PC is dual booted with Windows XP. On those starts
> when it would get to the hard drive, on either OS, the
> Windows Logo would be shown with a small bar type
> indicator that is constantly showing a motion from
left
> to right. While this shows that the computer is doing
> something (not hanging up) it would not go beyond this
> point.
> 3] It would not boot from a CD or floppy. When a
> bootable floppy was inserted before turning it on the
> floppy drive light would come on for a few seconds as
> if it was reading the disk but that would be as far as
> it would go.
> 4] On two seperate attempts when I let it sit for a
> long time I was given a screen with options such as
> Safe Mode, Normal Start, Last Good Configuation, etc.
> Selecting one of them did not seem to help. Also these
> messages come from the Windows OS and it seems to me
> that the problem is not within the OS being that some
> times it would not go past the first "Compaq" screen
as
> I explained in my first paragraph.
> 5] After about 40 minutes of trying I did get it to
> work and it seems to be working fine at this time.
> Nothing I did would have repaired it.
>
> My concern is that it will do this again and may not
> cure itself the next time.
> I am baffled and would like to see somebody elses
> opinion on what may be going on with this PC.
>
> John Brooks

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