PC shuts down on start

C

Charlie Bress

Guest
A neighbor has a Gateway Celeron based system running WIN98. This box is
about four years old.
When he turns it on it will sometimes shut down before the desk top appears.
Repeated attempts to start it may meet with success. He just sent me a note
that this morning it took 6 tries before it finally came up running.

Any suggestions. Power supply is suspect, of course, but what else might be
telling it to shut down?

Charlie
 
Charlie Bress wrote:
A neighbor has a Gateway Celeron based system running WIN98. This box is
about four years old.
When he turns it on it will sometimes shut down before the desk top appears.
Repeated attempts to start it may meet with success. He just sent me a note
that this morning it took 6 tries before it finally came up running.

Any suggestions. Power supply is suspect, of course, but what else might be
telling it to shut down?

Charlie


I would try to use a win98 bootdisk just to see if this is the PC
Click to expand...
or WIN98. The bootdisk should run intil u see the a:> prompt.
If u get to that point then WIN(* is suspect.
rw..
 
On Sat, 19 Jul 2003 16:31:34 GMT, rw <rw@netscape.net> wrote:
Charlie Bress wrote:
A neighbor has a Gateway Celeron based system running WIN98. This box is
about four years old.
When he turns it on it will sometimes shut down before the desk top appears.
Repeated attempts to start it may meet with success. He just sent me a note
that this morning it took 6 tries before it finally came up running.

Any suggestions. Power supply is suspect, of course, but what else might be
telling it to shut down?

Charlie


I would try to use a win98 bootdisk just to see if this is the PC
or WIN98. The bootdisk should run intil u see the a:> prompt.
If u get to that point then WIN(* is suspect.
Click to expand...

Booting dos won't test any cards other than the video board.

If it boots dos, try windows with just the video board and then reinstall
the other boards one at a time.

If it doesn't boot dos, minimize the system to just the motherboard,
cpu, memory, and video board. Disconnect all the drives. Leave the
bios screens running and there are any spontanious reboots.
 
One troubleshooting technique for Windows 98 is to press F8 as the system is
booting (that is, just after the initial Bios information scrolls up the
screen, but before Windows starts to load.) You may have to keep hitting the
F8 key, since timing is critical.

You should see a menu with several choices. Select 'Safe Mode', which loads
Windows without any special drivers. If Windows then loads, the problem may
be a corrupted or incorrect driver. The display driver would be a good
place to start checking. He'll probably have to get a Windows knowledgeable
person to help at that point.
-Ron
(email: replace 'abuse' with 'cyberguy3k')


"Charlie Bress" <cbress@comcast.net> wrote:
A neighbor has a Gateway Celeron based system running WIN98. This box is
about four years old.
When he turns it on it will sometimes shut down before the desk top
appears.
Repeated attempts to start it may meet with success. He just sent me a
note
that this morning it took 6 tries before it finally came up running.

Any suggestions. Power supply is suspect, of course, but what else might
be
telling it to shut down?

Charlie
Click to expand...
 
Just did that whole procedure to find a corrupted vid driver in my server.
BTW, the Windoze troubleshooter had a procedure which was effective in
checking for corrupted drivers (Start--Help--click--scroll down to
troubleshooting, Win 98 troubleshooters, Startup and Shutdown).

It suggests going into System Info, and disabling *all* drivers by clicking
on their tabs and clicking the property box: 'disable in this profile;'
restarting and unclicking them one by one--rebooting each time--until the
machine fails to boot. In practice, you can re-enable an easily-remembered
group (three or four in a row) of devices each time, which limits the wasted
reboot time.

Pretty slick...accomplishes the same thing as 'safe mode' and is more
selective. Unfortunately, my video card didn't have the appropriate check
box...but when nothing else worked, I reloaded it's driver, and that did it.

I could have accomplished the same thing by deleting it and using one of the
default Windows drivers, but I skipped that step, since disabling the rest
didn't do the trick...Occam's Razor.

jak

"Ron" <abuse@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:pWfSa.25451$6a5.887470@twister.socal.rr.com...
One troubleshooting technique for Windows 98 is to press F8 as the system
is
booting (that is, just after the initial Bios information scrolls up the
screen, but before Windows starts to load.) You may have to keep hitting
the
F8 key, since timing is critical.

You should see a menu with several choices. Select 'Safe Mode', which
loads
Windows without any special drivers. If Windows then loads, the problem
may
be a corrupted or incorrect driver. The display driver would be a good
place to start checking. He'll probably have to get a Windows
knowledgeable
person to help at that point.
-Ron
(email: replace 'abuse' with 'cyberguy3k')


"Charlie Bress" <cbress@comcast.net> wrote:
A neighbor has a Gateway Celeron based system running WIN98. This box is
about four years old.
When he turns it on it will sometimes shut down before the desk top
appears.
Repeated attempts to start it may meet with success. He just sent me a
note
that this morning it took 6 tries before it finally came up running.

Any suggestions. Power supply is suspect, of course, but what else might
be
telling it to shut down?

Charlie
Click to expand...
 
Pretty slick...accomplishes the same thing as 'safe mode' and is more
selective. Unfortunately, my video card didn't have the appropriate check
box...but when nothing else worked, I reloaded it's driver, and that did it.
Click to expand...
You may want to go ahead and locate the newest driver for your video card that
will work on your computer.

Try this:

http://www.video-drivers.com/

User Name: DRIVER
Password: ALL

- Reinhart
 
LASERandDVDfan wrote:
Pretty slick...accomplishes the same thing as 'safe mode' and is more
selective. Unfortunately, my video card didn't have the appropriate check
box...but when nothing else worked, I reloaded it's driver, and that did it.


You may want to go ahead and locate the newest driver for your video card that
will work on your computer.

Try this:

http://www.video-drivers.com/

User Name: DRIVER
Password: ALL

- Reinhart
Click to expand...
but don't forget the original posters friend hardly gets to this stage
Reinhard
 
Yeah, I know...forgot to mention that you start this out *from Safe Mode!*

After that, you use 'normal start,' even though Windows keeps asking if you
want to use safe....

jak

"rw" <rw@netscape.net> wrote in message
news:3F19FE01.2040507@netscape.net...
LASERandDVDfan wrote:
Pretty slick...accomplishes the same thing as 'safe mode' and is more
selective. Unfortunately, my video card didn't have the appropriate
check
box...but when nothing else worked, I reloaded it's driver, and that did
it.


You may want to go ahead and locate the newest driver for your video
card that
will work on your computer.

Try this:

http://www.video-drivers.com/

User Name: DRIVER
Password: ALL

- Reinhart

but don't forget the original posters friend hardly gets to this stage
Reinhard
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Welcome to EDABoard.com

Sponsor

Back
Top