computer problems

On Oct 18, 11:50 am, klem kedidelhopper <captainvideo462...@gmail.com>
wrote:
On Oct 18, 11:16 am, klem kedidelhopper <captainvideo462...@gmail.com
wrote:



On Oct 17, 11:42 am, stratu...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Oct 17, 6:45 am, klem kedidelhopper <captainvideo462...@gmail.com
wrote:
 > On Oct 16, 8:22 pm, "William Sommerwerck"
grizzledgee...@comcast.net> > wrote:

 
 > > I was going to keep my nose out of this, but I'm so thoroughly
confused that
 > > I have to butt in.
 > > > What are you trying to do? Test the drives? If so, this seems
about the
 > > worst possible way. It would make more sense to set these drives
as slaves
 > > and boot them on a known-good computer (as someone else
suggested). Even
 > > better, if they're IDE-ATA drives, you can mount them in a box
with a USB
 > > interface, and simply attach them to a running machine.
 
 > >What is the question you're asking? I suspect it's the wrong one.
 
 > William
 > Thank you for "butting in". I appreciate everyone's input, yours
 > included. I thought that I was being very concise. However I have
to
 > ask seriously did you read the OP? And if I did follow what you
just
 > suggested how would that have prevented a CMOS virus, if that's
what
 > this problem is? But to address another question I have why would
 > these engineers in their infinite wisdom write a bios to anything
 > other than a non writable eprom. It would seem like some things
should
 > be sacred. Lenny

What William suggests is something I and many others have done many
times without problems. I saw a computer (not mine) that was so
infected the processor was 100% busy and would do nothing useful,
including running a virus scan. Of course they needed to salvage the
apps and data and couldn't just re-format and start over. The drive
was first slaved into a good machine and subjected to a virus scan.
Remember those pesky viruses have to execute to become active. The
slave drive executes nothing during boot so activates nothing (unless
the boot drive has its own viruses). That's when I became convinced
about Norton utilities. Norton wouldn't dump a virus because it was
running. AHAH, I'll boot into safe mode and kill it before it's
running. Norton (at least that version) will not run in safe mode. I
don't have Norton.

As far as booting from unknown drives, I wouldn't even attempt that.
The OS installation gets tweaked during install for the hardware on
the machine. Who knows what the original hardware was?

I also had a machine with a BIOS bug that was fixed with an update. It
was FLASH so I didn't have to get a new BIOS chip and install it
though one time I didn't follow the procedure EXACTLY and corrupted
the BIOS. That machine was old enough to still have a socketed chip
and it 'only' took $30 and a few days wait. My current Gigabyte boards
all have dual flash BIOS chips. If you foul up a BIOS update (and I
did THAT once too) it defaults back to the known good one and boots
back up and yes, you can copy the current BIOS to the backup. The
Gigabyte boards will now update the BIOS online while running Windows..
That is about the easiest. I would think that a BIOS virus would be
harder to write as it would be specific to a board model. Or do all
the BIOS writes behave identically?

G˛

I noticed something else now. If I leave the computer off for example
overnight, the next day it will let me get into bios only once. I can
change things and exit and it appears to save the changes. However on
the next attempt to access bios, hitting DEL during the period where
the RAM is counting up will not get me into bios again. It just gives
me a black screen. This "once only" thing has repeated several times
with the same end result. And my changes aren't appearing to work
either. Tthe last time I did this I changed the boot sequence to
floppy then IDE0 and I enabled floppy drive seek. When I exited and
saved, it did seem to do those things, and then on subsequent attempts
it just goes to a black screen again. So it does appear that the bios
is screwed up somehow. Now here is another interesting thing. The
working computer I have with all my important customer files seems to
have the same bios chip in it. Both chips have a yellow and blue label
that covers about 2/3 of the top of  the chip. The label reads: BURN-
IN and under that: 24HRS. There is a smaller white label on the other
side of the top of each chip. The chips read as follows:

Possible corrupted chip:
Chip in working computer:
AMIBIOS
AMIBIOS
586
1985-95
586 1985-95
American
American
Megatrends
Megatrends
D167887
D174223

If I had to guess I would say that these bios's are identical, however
I don't dare  mess with that good one. Does anyone have any
suggestions or perhaps if there was a way to copy the good bios to my
bad machine? I don't know how I would ever install it though. I just
don't want to do anything that could possibly harm my good machine.
Thanks, Lenny

This didn't display as I thought it would. This is how the two chips
should look:

Possible corrupted chip:

AMIBIOS
586 1985-95
American
Megatrends
D167887

Chip in working computer:
AMIBIOS
586 1985-95
American
Megatrends
D174223

Sorry but the system formatted my script. Thanks Lenny
Click to expand...
I just found a third machine sitting here with no hardware in it. It
also has an AMI bios chip in it The chip has similar markings, (date
etc), no blue and yellow label but it bears the number EO56165. Does
anyone know what the differences if any might be in these three bios's
and if perhaps they might be interchangeable? Lenny
 
On Oct 18, 8:16 am, klem kedidelhopper <captainvideo462...@gmail.com>
wrote:
On Oct 17, 11:42 am, stratu...@yahoo.com wrote:
snip
What William suggests is something I and many others have done
many
times without problems. I saw a computer (not mine) that was so
infected the processor was 100% busy and would do nothing useful,
including running a virus scan. Of course they needed to salvage
the
apps and data and couldn't just re-format and start over. The
drive
was first slaved into a good machine and subjected to a virus
scan.
Remember those pesky viruses have to execute to become active.
The
slave drive executes nothing during boot so activates nothing
(unless
the boot drive has its own viruses). That's when I became
convinced
about Norton utilities. Norton wouldn't dump a virus because it
was
running. AHAH, I'll boot into safe mode and kill it before it's
running. Norton (at least that version) will not run in safe
mode. I
don't have Norton.

As far as booting from unknown drives, I wouldn't even attempt
that.
The OS installation gets tweaked during install for the hardware
on
the machine. Who knows what the original hardware was?

I also had a machine with a BIOS bug that was fixed with an
update. It
was FLASH so I didn't have to get a new BIOS chip and install it
though one time I didn't follow the procedure EXACTLY and
corrupted
the BIOS. That machine was old enough to still have a socketed
chip
and it 'only' took $30 and a few days wait. My current Gigabyte
boards
all have dual flash BIOS chips. If you foul up a BIOS update (and
I
did THAT once too) it defaults back to the known good one and
boots
back up and yes, you can copy the current BIOS to the backup. The
Gigabyte boards will now update the BIOS online while running
Windows.
That is about the easiest. I would think that a BIOS virus would
be
harder to write as it would be specific to a board model. Or do
all
the BIOS writes behave identically?

G˛

I noticed something else now. If I leave the computer off for
example
overnight, the next day it will let me get into bios only once. I
can
change things and exit and it appears to save the changes. However
on
the next attempt to access bios, hitting DEL during the period
where
the RAM is counting up will not get me into bios again. It just
gives
me a black screen. This "once only" thing has repeated several
times
with the same end result. And my changes aren't appearing to work
either. Tthe last time I did this I changed the boot sequence to
floppy then IDE0 and I enabled floppy drive seek. When I exited and
saved, it did seem to do those things, and then on subsequent
attempts
it just goes to a black screen again. So it does appear that the
bios
is screwed up somehow. Now here is another interesting thing. The
working computer I have with all my important customer files seems
to
have the same bios chip in it. Both chips have a yellow and blue
label
that covers about 2/3 of the top of  the chip. The label reads:
BURN-
IN and under that: 24HRS. There is a smaller white label on the
other
side of the top of each chip. The chips read as follows:

Possible corrupted chip:
Chip in working computer:
AMIBIOS
AMIBIOS
586
1985-95
586 1985-95
American
American
Megatrends
Megatrends
D167887
D174223

If I had to guess I would say that these bios's are identical,
however
I don't dare  mess with that good one. Does anyone have any
suggestions or perhaps if there was a way to copy the good bios to
my
bad machine? I don't know how I would ever install it though. I
just
don't want to do anything that could possibly harm my good machine.
Thanks, Lenny
Click to expand...
Are those motherboards identical including Rev number? If the chips
are socketed I would remove them and read the data of both with a chip
programmer and save the files. Copy the good one into the faulty one
and try again.Vanilla EPROM programmers my not be able to program
FLASH chips.

G˛
 
klem kedidelhopper wrote:

I just found a third machine sitting here with no hardware in it. It
also has an AMI bios chip in it The chip has similar markings, (date
etc), no blue and yellow label but it bears the number EO56165. Does
anyone know what the differences if any might be in these three bios's
and if perhaps they might be interchangeable? Lenny
Click to expand...
Probably not. They are all simiar products, but customized for different
manufacturers and motherboard models.

BTW, did you try the instructions I posted?

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, N3OWJ/4X1GM
My high blood pressure medicine reduces my midichlorian count. :-(
 
On Oct 18, 4:39 pm, "Geoffrey S. Mendelson" <g...@mendelson.com>
wrote:
klem kedidelhopper wrote:
I just found a third machine sitting here with no hardware in it. It
also has an AMI bios chip in it  The chip has similar markings, (date
etc), no blue and yellow label but it bears the number EO56165. Does
anyone know what the differences if any might be in these three bios's
and if perhaps they might be interchangeable? Lenny

Probably not. They are all simiar products, but customized for different
manufacturers and motherboard models.

BTW, did you try the instructions I posted?

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson,  N3OWJ/4X1GM
My high blood pressure medicine reduces my midichlorian count. :-(
Click to expand...
I couldn't find any information on my mother board but I did try
following the steps you outlined. I was very hopeful that things would
start going better when I pulled the video board and I got the 8 beeps
as you said I might. But it still is doing the same thing. It seems to
be corrupted somehow. So I guess that I would need to have a chip
burned especially for my particular mother board. The chances of that
happening are slim at best. I was hopeful when I saw all the AMI
bios's. Do you suppose it would hurt anything to try the last one I
found in the dead machine? Lenny
 
klem kedidelhopper wrote:
I couldn't find any information on my mother board but I did try
following the steps you outlined. I was very hopeful that things would
start going better when I pulled the video board and I got the 8 beeps
as you said I might. But it still is doing the same thing. It seems to
be corrupted somehow. So I guess that I would need to have a chip
burned especially for my particular mother board. The chances of that
happening are slim at best. I was hopeful when I saw all the AMI
bios's. Do you suppose it would hurt anything to try the last one I
found in the dead machine? Lenny
Click to expand...
Did you check to see if there is a BIOS recovery function on the motherboard?

If not, you could try one of the BIOSes and hope it works. You may end up
with a useless motherboard, but you already have one. :)

IMHO if the old motherboard was close enough to the new one, the BIOS
will work.

Geoff.


--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, N3OWJ/4X1GM
My high blood pressure medicine reduces my midichlorian count. :-(
 
On Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:50:09 -0700 (PDT), klem kedidelhopper
<captainvideo462009@gmail.com> put finger to keyboard and composed:

Possible corrupted chip:

AMIBIOS
586 1985-95
American
Megatrends
D167887

Chip in working computer:
AMIBIOS
586 1985-95
American
Megatrends
D174223
Click to expand...
I suspect that the "D" number may be some kind of serial number. That
was the case with 486 Award and AMI BIOSes, of which I have plenty.

BTW, your BIOS chip needs to be writeable, not only for upgrade
reasons, but because both BIOS and Windows write to the ESCD table and
other structures (DMI Pool ?) when new hardware is discovered (Win9x
has a setting to disable this behaviour).

In fact, the next time you flash your BIOS, use the flash utility to
save a copy of the BIOS at the susbsequent reboot, and then compare
this copy against the downloaded BIOS image. Your own BIOS will have
an ESCD table, whereas the downloaded one will be blank.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.
 
On Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:31:10 -0700 (PDT), klem kedidelhopper
<captainvideo462009@gmail.com> put finger to keyboard and composed:

I couldn't find any information on my mother board ...
Click to expand...
When the BIOS goes through POST, it will display a BIOS ID that
identifies the motherboard.

AMI BIOS motherboards identification:
http://www.wimsbios.com/aminumbers.jsp

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.
 
I'd expect the $5 for 35 drives to be as worthwhile as buying a lottery
ticket.. with very little expectations of finding a good drive.
Entertainment only.
Regardless of what the seller said.. likewise, watch a lottery commercial.

Detective Harry Callahan of the SFPD might suggest that you ask yourself one
question.. Do you feel lucky?

A P1 PC, even if it was working yesterday, is another stroke of luck. When
was the BIOS battery last replaced with a NEW one?

I dunno if there's any harm in checking HDDs with just a PSU (no data cable)
just to see if they spin up without smoke or weird noises, but that may be a
worthwhile first step.

Many years ago, I performed some (486) BIOS hot swaps to get machines
running again, but hardly worth the effort for a motherboard with no
documentation, as there are sometimes jumpers that need to be changed.

If the drives spin up with power applied, then it's probably safe to connect
them to a working, disposable PC as Slave drives, or with an external USB
case.

Even if the drives seem to be working properly, they wouldn't be a good
choice for storing useful data, since they're already probably over a decade
old and their histories are unknown (dropped, previous PSU failures etc).

Any value might be attained from removing the small fasteners and scrapping
the rest.. although some like to save the magnets and other parts.
The heads are obviously very sensitive, and could be useful as inductive
pickups.

--
Cheers,
WB
..............


"klem kedidelhopper" <captainvideo462009@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:490ec675-37d3-494e-b47a-d085f47ecfc9@v28g2000vby.googlegroups.com...
I really hope that someone can help me with this. I have a P233 with
American Megatrends AMI bios.This computer was working perfectly but
has been sitting without drives in it for a couple of months. I just
returned from a Ham Fest yesterday with a box of 35 hard drives which
I bought for 5.00 The drives range in size from 1 to 15 GBTS. My
intention was to try these drives in a known working computer without
a hard drive to see if any of them would come up. What I planned on
doing was to go into bios before post and try to auto detect the
drive.Then I was going to format that good drive and add it to another
working computer which I'm presently using. Then I planned to copy my
pertinent files from the existing C drive to the new D drive. I
reasoned that even if the unknown drive had a virus, it could only
affect the RAM in which case a power cycle on/off would clear that and
so installing it into a stripped down box could not harm the computer
in any way. I've tested drives like this before without any problem it
seems. Afterward formatting would take care of any virus.

Well apparently I was wrong. Things didn't work out the way I had
hoped. The first drive I selected came right up without my first going
into bios and auto detecting it. How it did that without my first auto
detecting it made no sense to me. I would have expected to se some
message along with some beeps telling me that the configuration was
wrong and directing me into bios to correct it. Initially during this
boot up the screen had some logo talking about a server of some kind
and then I saw something about Linux. Then there was miles it seemed
of code displayed on the screen one line after another. It looked like
a program was unpacking or something but I'm not sure. Finally the
computer just hung. I turned it off and then on again. I managed to
access the bios screen and auto detected the drive. I also changed the
date and updated the configuration to show just a master and one 3.5
floppy. Everything seemed as it should be. I then exited bios saving
the configuration however it never completed post. I then tried a
power cycle again and this time the bios screen came up with gibberish
super imposed on it. After this and repeated tries I was not able to
get into bios again. My son suggested a possible "bios virus". I had
no idea that such a thing was possible. Isn't bios ROM? That being the
case how can something "write" to it? I pulled the battery overnight
and this morning re installed it. Everything is pulled except the RAM
and the video board. I then tried it again. The first time it let me
into bios. I noted that the date as well as the configuration was
wrong so I assumed I dumped everything that was not burned into the
chip. I did the re configuration, saved and exited but now its not
letting me back into bios again. And it's not completing post either.
It's really frustrating and discouraging to realize that I have now
apparently damaged a previously good machine by performing a seemingly
innocent act. Does anyone have any ideas what happened and if there
might be a way to correct it? Any help would be most sincerely
appreciated. Lenny
Click to expand...
 
On Thu, 20 Oct 2011 03:56:27 -0400, "Wild_Bill"
<wb_wildbill@XSPAMyahoo.com> put finger to keyboard and composed:

I'd expect the $5 for 35 drives to be as worthwhile as buying a lottery
ticket.. with very little expectations of finding a good drive.
Entertainment only.
Click to expand...
If the OP is ever inclined to discard the drives, I would be very
grateful for the PCBs.

This is the sort of thing I do with them:
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/HDD/Tutorial_SP0411N.html

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.
 
However, I have to ask seriously did you read the OP?
Click to expand...
Yes. That's why I took so long to respond. I was thoroughly confused.


: And if I did follow what you just suggested how would that
have prevented a CMOS virus, if that's what this problem is?
Click to expand...
I don't know. But simply attaching an "infected" hard drive to a running
computer won't necessarily spread the infection.
 
<stratus46@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:f64e3ca2-0e7c-45a4-ae65-774ecd54cf79@v1g2000yqn.googlegroups.com...

What William suggests is something I and many others have done many
times without problems. I saw a computer (not mine) that was so
Click to expand...
infected the processor was 100% busy and would do nothing useful,
including running a virus scan. Of course they needed to salvage the
apps and data and couldn't just re-format and start over. The drive
was first slaved into a good machine and subjected to a virus scan.
Remember those pesky viruses have to execute to become active.

Exactly.

The slave drive executes nothing during boot so activates nothing (unless
the boot drive has its own viruses). That's when I became convinced
Click to expand...
about Norton utilities. Norton wouldn't dump a virus because it was
running. AHAH, I'll boot into safe mode and kill it before it's
running. Norton (at least that version) will not run in safe mode. I
don't have Norton.

I did something similar when my main drive became infected seven years ago.
I bought another drive, installed a vanilla version of the OS on it, from
which I probed to infected drive to clean it up.
 
On Oct 22, 7:09 am, "William Sommerwerck" <grizzledgee...@comcast.net>
wrote:
<snip>
I did something similar when my main drive became infected seven
years ago.
I bought another drive, installed a vanilla version of the OS on
it, from
which I probed to infected drive to clean it up.
Click to expand...
I just had one of those 'DOH' moments. Since the OP just wants to
verify the drives, why not use something like Seagate diagnostics to
boot off of CD and test the drives.If the boot good drive is a Seagate
I don't think it matters what the brand of the test drive is. I expect
WD has something similar. That way he gets a report on the state of
the drive without infecting anything.

G˛
 
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