Hi Dan,
The first thing you need to do is get the damage to the hard drive
fixed. Try running Scandisk from a DOS prompt and see if that repairs
the damage. If you have Norton Utilities 2.x or above, try using the
DOS version of Norton Disk Doctor on the Emergency Disks that you
hopefully created with Norton.
After you get the hard drive repaired, it's time to open the case.
Get a grounding wrist strap, and secure (duct tape is good) the clip to
a cold water pipe--NOT a natural gas line, which is also cool to the
touch. You can get a grounding wrist strap, for example, from Radio
Shack, for $3 - $4. Note you may need some additional wire to go from
the clip end of the wrist strap to reach the cold water pipe.
Also at the electronics store, you will want to get a can of compressed
air. The Acer is over 3 years old, and there's bound to be lots of dust
and dirt inside.
Now that you are properly grounded, use the compressed air to clean out
the dirt inside the case, particularly on the motherboard and power
supply. Be especially diligent where the SIMM chips are--the Parity
error may indicate the RAM is going bad, but may just be a buildup of
dust on the SIMMs preventing proper contact. You may want to remove the
SIMMs to clean out the SIMMs and SIMM slots better. Remember that if
you are not properly grounded, you can toast the SIMMs (along with
peripherals and the motherboard itself).
After all that, physically remove the internal modem. Unfortunately,
the Acer Aspire P75 shipped with a Com Port conflict. Removing the
modem should eliminate the conflict.
Now, try booting up and see if the machine boots into Windows.
If so, then go to Start--Settings--Control Panel--System--Device
Manager, and see if any Conflicts (yellow exclamation points or red "no
signs") show up. If there are Conflicts and you need help, let us know.
If there are no conflicts, and the machine is working properly, then
Start--Shut Down--Shut Down. Now put the modem back in. If all goes
well, the modem will be auto-detected on bootup and Windows will assign
it a different Com Port.
The Serial Port Conflict, on the Acer, if I recall correctly, is due to
the memory address used by the Serial Port combined with the Com Port
used by the internal modem. If you continue to have that error, try
changing the memory address for the Com Port in the CMOS settings.
Now the bad news: Yes, I used to have an Acer. The symptoms you
describe are similar to what I encountered. What I encountered was that
the motherboard had died. Yes it would (at the end) boot up, sometimes
even run for a few hours after I had reinstalled Windows etc.. Then it
would die again. To check out this possibility, PCBUILD has some good
diagnostic utilities available:
http://nospin.com/pc/files.html#Hardware
Particularly useful in your situation is BurnIn, which would be good to
let run continuously for 48 - 72 hours. That should tell you if your
motherboard has passed on.
For more on the Parity error and memory problems, Microsoft has some
helpful information (hoping you have Registered with Microsoft and
accepted their "Cookies"):
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q134/5/03.asp
If you decide to Reinstall Windows, note that you do not first need to
install Win 3.x. Caveat: You may first need to delete the Windows
Folder or Directory, and that will take with it alot of .ini and other
system files, meaning you will have alot of data salvaging and program
reinstallation to do. Instead, the Win95 Upgrade disk just wants proof
that you have ownership of a prior version of Windows. All you have to
do is put the Win 3.x Disk 1 in your floppy drive, and direct the Win95
Upgrade/installation program to that floppy. I do recall there were
alot of problems with a "Upgrade Installation" from Win 3.x to Win95.
Terry L. Clark
[log in to unmask]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Hughes wrote:
> I have an Acer P75 that suddenly decided not to boot.
> I installed Windows 3.1, [since Win95 refused to reinstall directly]
> now, when I boot I get this screen:
> On Board Serial Port 1 Conflict
> Equipment Configuration Error
> I rebooted, [snip] got this message:
> Data Error Reading Drive C
> Abort/Retry/Ignore
> I chose [snip] Ignore a third time and got this message:
> While initializing device PARITY: Windows protection error. You need
> to restart your computer.
> So I did. This time it offered me SAFE mode, which I chose. Again it
> took me to the Data Error Reading Drive C note,
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