OpSys Boot Problem

[Nutz900]

Hello everyone

I have my nephew's PIII 600 SuperMicro machine here, which seems to work up until it boots any windows OpSys.

I can start it with the setup disk, and install win98, or 2k with no problem. The whole process goes smoothly until it finishes installing and reboots. Then it goes dark and cuts off power to the cd drives, the doors will not open until I reboot. It will boot to dos, even on the hard drive, so it appears not to be an IDE problem.

Thanks in advance

 

[muradtalukdar]

Will it boot into safe mode? How about getting into the bios? You say it works until it boots a Win opsys--does that mean the POST runs fine(no strange beeps or lack thereof). Not sure what you mean when you say it will boot to dos--even on the hard drive. ??

 

[Nutz900]

When I say it will boot to DOS, I mean it boots up on the win98 start up floppy, or to the hard drive with only the system installed. If I try to run win98, win2kpro, or knoppix it goes black right at the last moment when you expect your desktop to appear.

It's my nephew's machine, so I have no idea what he may have done before it crashed. He's at that age, and that stage, where he thinks he knows a lot more than he does......

I have removed everything except the agp card (I tried a known good spare) and the memory (also swapped). The only thing new in the box is the power supply which had only a stuck fan.

The other thing it does.....when it goes black, it seems to lock up too. The CD drawers will not open (CD present or not), and the power on light STAYS ON and the voltage measured at term 8 (power OK) on the ATX power connector reads 5 volts.

I've already spent too much time on this....unless we get it quick, I'll just be a good uncle and get him a new mobo combo.....any suggestions?

 

[hereticiv]

You said it was not an EIDE problem but I experienced similar problems when I added a new hard drive and formatted it incorrectly (used the maxtor software instead of win xp's internal formatting). The drive became corrupted after a time and then had IO problems, to the point where it wouldn't boot up after the os began to load (same place you are having problems). I had to use the maxtor software to perform a complete reformat of the old drive (clean slate) and then boot up to win xp and format from there. Sooo, my point is that is could be an IO problem.

maybe?

 

[Nutz900]

well I would say "could be" except that I've tried several known HDs. I even used the knoppix CD which is essentislly "Linux on a disk" which does the same thing: It loads everything then starts to boot and


that's all.