On 18 Nov 98 at 8:31, Irena Thomas wrote:

> System: dell PII, 64Mb RAM, 300Mhz, 3Gb hard drive, win95B.
> Problem: every few days we are getting a message "operating system not
> found" on cold boot. Usually second boot goes smoothly. Today we had to
> power down four times before we could get on. Once on, the computer
> behaves normally - no slowdowns or freezes.
>
> Why is it that sometimes the PC finds operating system at once and
> sometimes only after several attempts ?

  I've seen problems similar to this when I've had two hard drives on
the same power supply lead.  My guess is that it can be a symptom of
insufficient drive power -- it takes a bit of extra oomph to start
the drive spinning.
  Next time this happens, don't power down -- just press
Ctrl-Alt-Del.  I expect that will work on the first shot, becuase
everything is already powered up at this point.

  If your boot drive is sharing a power lead with another drive (I
would notmally expect to see this with another hard drive, but you
only mention one), try to rearrange things to put each on its own
lead.  In my experience, a hard drive can share a lead with a floppy
or CD-ROM drive without difficulty, because these drives only spin up
as necessary.
  If your boot drive is not sharing its lead with another hard drive
(which seems the likelier case), this may be the first symptom of a
deteriorating power supply.  Replacing a power supply is not too
hard, but (a) there are several choices of size/shape and connectors
out there, and (b) a good UL-certified power supply will run about
$40-60, which tells you a bit about the power supplies that get
included in a $20 case....  [Waitaminnit.  DELL???  I believe their
standards are higher than that -- any chance the machine is still
under warranty?]

David G

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