irritating power losses / reboot daymare

[azkiwi]

Here's the sich;

I have an elderly ('97 vintage!) IBM Aptiva PII-233 that my 4 yr old uses. Its running W98SE with 128megs RAM. Audio and video are onboard - no cards installed. Its an ATX.

I replaced the CD with a faster unit and now it shuts down almost as soon as it powers up, then restarts, fails, restarts etc. Sometimes it almost gets W98 completely loaded, sometimes it doesn't even get through to the BIOS.

I recall this happened once before when I added memory or took out the floppy or something. I thought it was a loose connection, board short or similar, never did button it down, but it went away - til now!

I've tried dumping the CMOS, checked every possible connection for tight. I'm suspicious of the wire that runs from the on/off switch to the board for no other reasn than its proximity to the CD, though it boots and fails without me touching the box at all. I thought maybe the new CD was overwhelming the power supply (a meager 200W) and unplugged it - no difference. The board is installed with hefty standoff pins (like a tank really), and dust free.

The oddity is that if I leave it off for a while it will struggle through most of the boot-up - but when it restarts itself it just loops in ever shorter intervals powering up and down without ever getting through to a display.

I know its a POS, but don't feel like spending any money on a 4yrs old computer.

Ideas please!

 

[Rav3n]

You already tried unplugging the new CD ROM drive, but have you tried plugging in the older one? If having the older one plugged into the computer makes the computer boot at least, then I guess it would be quite a situtation - you should just test it. How are the jumpers set on your CD drive? What IDE channel is the CD rom on? Have you tried disabling the CD ROM in the bios? What happens? Is the bios properly autodetecting your CD rom drive? Maybe you should flash your bios - that seems to clear things up sometimes. Is windows using an old cd-rom driver? Have you patched up windows? Check your RAM... is it properly seated? Maybe you want to re-seat the ram? I had an IBM just a tad older than yours (200 pentium, no mmx) it was an aptiva. It was hellish to say the least... the cdrom drive was the first thing to go - it just didnt like spinning. I dunno if any of this stuff will do anything for you, just suggestions though. Good luck!

 

[mechBgon]

If you're positive that it's a standard ATX pinout, try a more-powerful power supply.

 

[azkiwi]

"You already tried unplugging the new CD ROM drive, but have you tried plugging in the older one?"

same problem with the older one

"How are the jumpers set on your CD drive? What IDE channel is the CD rom on?"

CD set to slave (as was the old one) to the only hard drive

"Have you tried disabling the CD ROM in the bios? What happens? Is the bios properly autodetecting your CD rom drive?"

well I tried unplugging it completely - so that should rule out the CD - no?

"Maybe you should flash your bios - that seems to clear things up sometimes."

This computer is not net-enabled, and I could hardly get a NIC to work on it, if it won't even boot up. It also has no floppy, so it will be a song and dance to flash the BIOS and I sure don't want to compound the problems. It just doesn't seem like unplugging the CD should require a new BIOS...

"Is windows using an old cd-rom driver? Have you patched up windows? "

Can't get into windows to find out! The farthest it has booted was to the point where I clicked Start>Programs - mostly it dies just after the GUI comes up.

"Check your RAM... is it properly seated? "

Re-seated all RAM.

Thaks for the constructive suggestions! Sometimes the checklist prompts fresh thought. I guess since it crashes as the GUI loads one might speculate that it is a driver issue or that so many crashes while loading Windows has fragged the registry, though it went through a Scandisk a couple of times before starting...

I am loathe to spend more than the $20 I paid for a new CDROM on the machine - it just isn't worth the time - except for that little boy wailing about his Atlantis game

 

[Rav3n]

Flashing your bios: get the mobo model and use the computer you are on now to get the bios. Usually the bios programs are setup to be put on a diskette, so you should be able to do that from any computer.

IDE Channels: Try changing the CDROM drive to be the master on your secondary IDE channel. Rule of thumb I have read a number of times - keep HD's on channel 1 and everything else on channel 2 unless you have full on CH2, or full on CH1, in which case its not possible to keep everything separate.

When Booting: Try to get to the menu to select the way in which you boot into windows (pressing F8 before you get to the windows boot screen). Do the step by step confirmation thing. Take note of what driver you are loading, and make sure you aren't crashing every time on a particular driver. By doing this you will at least be able to tell if its a software issue or not (sounds like it probably is).

CD Driver/Windows updates: Copy the cd-rom driver your computer is using now (your working pc) and replace it with the one on your crappy one. This might cause lots of problems, so if you do this, make sure you rename the old file and save it, before you apply the new one.

Double Check your Bios settings: Make sure it is set to autodetect, and that the autodetect is detecting the correct things... The reason I suggested doing this with and without the CDROM drive in is becuase your computer might be reading the drive as something else when its in, and maybe reading something false when its out. I dunno... computers do weird things sometimes.

Hmmm... did you say you cleared your bios?