I hope some genious can help me! I bought my kids a computer for Christmas last year. It ran beautifully at first and the only thing it needed was extra memory so I put in the extra 32MB chip I already had. After about 6 months, the computer suddenly wouldn't recognize the hard drive and wouldn't boot up. I called tech support and was told to check the removable hard-drive. I'd never had a removable hard drive before and found that it had somehow gotten moved and needed to be pushed back in. Voila! Fixed and problem free for another month or so.

Then once again my kids came to me in desperation again complaining that it wouldn't boot up. I thought it was the hard drive again so I had them pull it out and put it back in. They had to try this several times before it would recognize the hard drive. After that each time they tried booting up, they had to keep doing it over and over to get it going. I finally got fed up and opened up the computer. I thought I could fix it by taking the hard drive out of the casing and hooking it up directly with the IDE cable. Logical but it didn't help any. It still boots maybe once every 30 or so tries. I tried everything I could think of (outside of trying the HD in my computer which I probably should but rather not) like changing the IDE cable, switching from primary to secondary IDE, changing BIOS settings (hundreds of ways), checked for viruses with the latest definitions, scan disked, defragged, checked the memory chips, checked the fan, checked the power cables, grrrrr. Nothing helped. One time I actually resorted to prayer and believe it or not, it came on - we haven't figured out what to make of that! Anyway, this is not my idea of fixing the problem. I am now totally frustrated and would be grateful for any help! Oh yeah, just so I cover all bases, BIOS is American Megatrends, only one beep sucessful boot or not, red light when boot fails, and strange/loud sounds at times from the cooling fan. Any ideas???? Thanks very much and sorry to be so lengthy.

Ginette

Specs:

Processor/CPU: AMD K6-2 500MHz Processor w/512K L2 Cache
Fan: Ball Bearing Heatsink CPU Cooling Fan & Case Cooling Fan
Motherboard: Sis Chipset all-in-one Micro-ATX motherboard with additional 1 PCI or 1 ISA slot,
Memory/Ram: 32MB 7ns 3.3v PC-100 DIMM SDRAM,plus 32 more that I put in
Hard Disk Drive: 10GB ATA-66 IDE Hard Drive
Case: Micro ATX Case w/2x5.25", 2x3.5" Drive Bays w/Removable Hard Drive Mount Rack

Hi and Welcome to Pcguide.

Sounds like incompatable RAM to me.

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[This message has been edited by sea69 (edited 09-30-2001).]

Sounds like incompatable RAM to me.

I considered that too but it's worked just fine for months with the added RAM so I figured that couldn't be the problem. Wouldn't you think it would have failed right from the start?

Ginette

thats almost my exact problem. http://www.pcguide.com/ubb/Forum2/HTML/001969.html
Grrrrrrrrrrrrr..........
Dane

RAM can be a very "funny" thing.

Certain sticks are required sometimes exactly to fit your setup. Sometimes they can be incompatable but work for a while (somewhat).

Keeping in mind that the entire time (if it was wrong) it was in there........... now perhaps it has 'given out', has become unreliable and may (most likely) affected other areas.\

There are of course other possibilites, but in my experience.. ( and I have worked on a few machines) what works in one machine will not work in others.

Just sticking a stick of RAM in a machine because you have it lying around (without making sure it is correct for that particular machine) can cause LOTS of problems.

I have even gotten correct RAM for certain machines and the stick itself (even brand new) can be bad.

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homepage (http://www.seanweb1.homestead.com/3.html)

[This message has been edited by sea69 (edited 10-01-2001).]

1. Try it without the added RAM.

2. Try the hard drive on another machine, if it tries to boot, come up in Safe Mode to make sure you don't install drivers specific to that motherboard...

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