Tom said:
The machine i am having the problem with use to have Win 98. I
upgraded to XP Pro quite some time ago and have been using XP on this
machine ever since. It has never been a dual boot system. I do have 2
hard drives on this machine. One drive has all my software on it. The
2nd drive has all my files, pictures, mp3's and other files.
I do have a machine that has Win98 on it, which is on the netork,
however the Win98 machine wasn't booted up when this problem occured.
I am contacting you using my Win98 machine.
When i bootup the XP machine, it will flash the spash screen that says
Windows XP for brief second, then go to the command prompt. I can not
show any directories, nor can i change drives. The machine has been
running fine. Is there a way to restore through the command prompt?
Although i am not sure it will see any files on the drive.
I hope i made myself a little clearer, sorry about that....thanks
tom
OK, the Win98 machine on the network has nothing to do with the issue so
we can forget about it. If this machine - which used to be a Win98 box
and has now been upgraded to XP - was built for Win98, it is fairly old
in computer years. It sounds like you may be having hardware issues.
With such an old machine, that's the first thing I'd check. Get your
data backed up off the second hard drive if you haven't already done
so. There are ways of backing up data without booting into Windows.
Since the data is on a second hard drive, the easiest way will be to
slave that drive in a working XP box.
Here are general hardware troubleshooting steps. With such an old box,
you may just want to replace it though.
1) Open the computer and run it open, cleaning out all dust bunnies and
observing all fans (overheating will cause system freezing). Obviously
you can't do this with a laptop, but you can hear if the fan is running
and feel if the laptop is getting too hot.
2) Test the RAM - I like Memtest86+ from
www.memtest.org. Obviously, you
have to get the program from a working machine. You will either
download the precompiled Windows binary to make a bootable floppy or
the .iso to make a bootable cd. If you want to use the latter, you'll
need to have third-party burning software on the machine where you
download the file - XP's built-in burning capability won't do the job.
In either case, boot with the media you made. The test will run
immediately. Let the test run for an hour or two - unless errors are
seen immediately. If you get any errors, replace the RAM.
3) Test the hard drive with a diagnostic utility from the mftr. Download
the file and make a bootable floppy or cd with it. Boot with the media
and do a thorough test. If the drive has physical errors, replace it.
4) The power supply may be going bad or be inadequate for the devices
you have in the system. The adequacy issue doesn't really apply to a
laptop, although of course the power supply can be faulty.
5) Test the motherboard with something like TuffTest from
www.tufftest.com. Sometimes this is useful, and sometimes it isn't.
Testing hardware failures often involves swapping out suspected parts
with known-good parts. If you can't do the testing yourself and/or are
uncomfortable opening your computer, take the machine to a professional
computer repair shop (not your local equivalent of BigStoreUSA).
Malke
