shows Win98 boot screen, then loads black screen

[rcmcghee]

This is about a friends computer, I don't know what his PC's specs are except that he is running Win98 on an Asus motherboard.

When you turn on his PC the Win98 boot screen pops up like normal, but then a black screen comes up with nothing but the hour glass cursor, then after a second the hour glass disappears. When I press "ctrl alt delete", the window pops up with no programs running in it.

I tried inserting a win98 boot disk (that is a good disk) but then the bios boot screen loads and then stops with just the cursor blinking at the left. I then tried inserting my Win98 cd into his cd-rom drive but it just ignores it. I went into the PCs bios and made sure it was set to boot from the floppy, but it still wont boot from it. Any ideas?

Thanks!

[Murf]

Must be a hardware conflict, or the CMOS battery is going dead and losing settings.

Take out the CMOS battery and leave out for about 3 minutes. Or use the motherboard jumper to short it. This will reset CMOS to default.

Now boot.

[x01]

Originally Posted by rcmcghee

This is about a friends computer, I don't know what his PC's specs are except that he is running Win98 on an Asus motherboard.

When you turn on his PC the Win98 boot screen pops up like normal, but then a black screen comes up with nothing but the hour glass cursor, then after a second the hour glass disappears. When I press "ctrl alt delete", the window pops up with no programs running in it.

I tried inserting a win98 boot disk (that is a good disk) but then the bios boot screen loads and then stops with just the cursor blinking at the left. I then tried inserting my Win98 cd into his cd-rom drive but it just ignores it. I went into the PCs bios and made sure it was set to boot from the floppy, but it still wont boot from it. Any ideas?

Thanks!

Unplug the hard drive and then try to use the floppy drive see if it boots up with that floppy or not. If not try creating a new floppy, it just might be bad trust me I have seen it plenty of times. Or put win98 boot files on the CD and use that CD as a boot disk. Remember you will have to keep a few things in mind to troubleshoot this
1-Is my floppy drive bad
2-Is my floppy disk bad
3-Is my hard drive bad
4-Is my hard drive controller bad
5-Is my hard drive cable bad.
Please POST back your results for all of us. We will greatly appreciate it as some one once said
"knowledge is power" and it is an endless river too.
cheers

[Murf]

rcmcghee had indicated that he tried inserting my Win 98 CD into the cdrom drive, but it just ignores it.

Now either the boot sequence was not set to boot from the CD, in one of the sequence spots, or the Win 98 CD he has is not bootable. So don't understand someone saying: "Or put win98 boot files on the CD and use that CD as a boot disk." - How would one do this, unless you have a burner and burn a Win 98 boot disk??

He also indicated that "tried inserting a win98 boot disk (that is a good disk) but then the bios boot screen loads and then stops with just the cursor blinking at the left"

Now in this case either the boot sequence again is not set to boot from a floppy or the boot floppy itself is corrupt. If it recognizes the boot floppy and tries to load and hangs, then the boot floppy is corrupt.

Since it appears this problem just started, and if there is no floppy in the drive it is ignored during the boot sequence. So that rules out the floppy, as far as the problem stated. It could be bad, but has nothing to do with the boot sequence.

The first thing that needs to be done is get the computer to recognize the hard drive. Once it recognizes it as a device, then you would make sure the master boot record is Ok, and that the drive ios bootable.

The problem indicated shows that it is probably a hardware conflict as it does not make it past loading the operating system. Therefore the troubleshooting sequence would be.

1. Get into CMOS and auto detect the hard drive.
2. Boot with a good boot disk
3. Fix Master Boot Record
4. Ensure the HDD is bootable

[rcmcghee]

I really appreciate all your help guys! This problem was very strange, my buddy said that his PC was working just fine, then he shut it down, took a shower, and when he tried to boot his PC this problem started.

I have remedied the problem though. Although his cd drive works fine in Windows, it would not boot the Win98 cd. So I took out his BRAND NEW cd drive, and stuck in an old hunk of junk drive I had laying around and it booted from my Win98 cd just fine. So I used the cd to boot into dos, strangly enough the floppy works in dos but wont boot (yes I had it enabled as 1st boot device). Anyway, he said he did'nt care about the info on the drive, he just wanted a working PC. So I did the old fdisk and format routine, and reinstalled Windows. Still no clue what caused this problem in the first place. Maybe a virus?

:rock: Thanks again guys! :rocker: I'll be hanging around the site and try to help out other folks if I can.

[Murf]

Thx for letting us know. Could of been anything. Since the floppy works in DOS but not windows, then Windows somehow got corrupted and would not load the real mode drivers for the cd or floppy. What is baffling is your old cdrom worked, but the new one didn't. Could be the new one is not so new or just bad. If it is working now with the reload then the problem is gone.