schizophrenic mobo

[CCmouse]

Oh boy, it is not fun being the computer whiz in the house!! Upon booting up his machine today, dear hubby says 'where are my e-mail folders?'

So I pop over to his desk for a little trouble shooting. Seems the second hard drive was not recognized by the bios (thereby throwing off drive letters and path to partition.) For some reason all the auto detect settings in the bios were off except for C. Reset those and it booted fine.

Because he had an attempted virus attack last night (caught by Virus Scan), I thought I would reload the C partition with the image I had made only yesterday - talk about lucky http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif When I inserted the floppy to access Ghost, it wasn't recognized. Sooooooooo back to the bios. Found the boot sequence had reset itself too.

Okay, I have reset Win 95 on the C partition and all appears to be working fine. But I seem to have lost Com 3 to which his modem was connected. (I can't recall what I had done in the bios several years ago to get a Com 3) but I am wondering if it too was changed by this little episode of schizophrenia (or did the installation of a scsi card several days ago throw this off).

What would cause such bizarre behavior to the bios, except virus or battery?? I have run virus scan several times - nothing found. I thought date/time would be off if the battery was going and they are fine.

This is really got me baffled. I am not big on playing with the bios and I haven't toyed with the settings on this machine in so long, I can't remember what settings should be to see if anything else is off.

Thanks in advance for any comments.




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CCmouse
<*,, ,,)~~~~~~~~~~

[diurnal]

Welcome ccmouse

schizophrenic mobo

Please do not use schizoprenia loosely on these forum, it is a severe mental illness and should not be used like this. People with this disease suffer a miserable existence, its just like aids, and cancer. Im sure your intentions are good, but be careful with wording on these forums, and hopefully pete will enforce this.
See YA,
Diurnal


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Sledgehammer will save the day!

[CCmouse]

Sorry no offense intended. I can't say I am up on all the PC (politically correct) rules. Didn't realize an adjective used in humor would be offensive.

I tried to delete this thread but since you posted a reply it refuses to let me. So here it sits awaiting wet noodle lashing from others, enforcement by Pete. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/frown.gif

Crawling back into the Mousehold... Now I know why I live there http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/frown.gif

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CCmouse
<*,, ,,)~~~~~~~~~~

[Whyzman]

One thought to consider would be removing the modem in Safe Mode and reboot allowing Windows to find and reinstall.

As to what would cause the described behavior...you might have put your finger on it with the virus attack!?


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May all your dealings in life be win/win!

Whyzman

[andyswork@beci.net]

I agree with whyzman. When you install your modem do not use insall modem, it will try and put in on com 1 or com 2, you want 3 or 4. Let windows pick it up. If it does not go to device manager and look for yellow caution sign on pci commucations , click it, click properities, click update drivers, and install from your disk. Installing a moden, at least with me, windows has always tried to put modem on com 1 or 2, and it will not work on com 1 or 2. Might have to do fdisk, formatt and reinstall windows to get rid of virius. All programs do not catch all the virius out there. Good luck,and post back if that all does not work.

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One day I will be a pro, Thanks Andy

[CCmouse]

Whyzman and Andy, thanks for your thoughts.

I never removed the modem, nor received any yellow !'s in device manager.
The only reason I happened upon the modem/com3 quirk is that only 2 com ports showed in device manager (when I was confirming the 2 hard drives were now recognized.) When I looked at the modem, it showed 2 com1's and a 2 instead of com3. On a whim I selected a Com1 (as Com2 has his trackball) and viola, it did let me dial out! Don't think I will mess with it since I don't think hubby will ever use it http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif Merely mentioned it as another weird behavior in the current saga.

McAfee caught the bad e-mail; we deleted it; ran a full scan. I later ran a Norton AV over the network connection from my machine on all his drives. Both say he is clean.

Don't know what the life of a battery is, but the machine is 4 yrs old (only a P200) so think I probably will get a new battery shortly.



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CCmouse
<*,, ,,)~~~~~~~~~~

[mjc]

Go with the new battery...typical life span 3-5 yrs. Sounds like classic "forgetting the BIOS settings" symptoms...you can also avoid having to reset the BIOS if you don't power down until you get the battery.

When it booted it loaded the defaults, and quite probably one or more of the COM ports are off, so that would cause Windows to shift things around (you know...PnP)

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.