smiling faces

[bibo2003344]

hi all
when my pc starts , it is ordinary to see the bios , but in my case , u can see in some areas smiling faces , may be a very wierd letters , and a words in the bios screen written in wrong formats .
may any body tell me the reason plz ? is it related to the battery or shall i update the bios , or is it a virus ?
thanks a ton for ur help

[Kimbo]

What operating system are you using? Weird characters on the boot screen can be caused by a corrupted MBR and possibly even a virus. We need to know more about your system so we can give you more help.

[bibo2003344]

the processor is 800/512 , windows 98 se , i have mcafee antivirus version 6.02 , thanks for your help

[Kimbo]

My first thought is bad memory. If your 512MB memory is 2 sticks of 256, try removing 1 and see if the problem persists. Do the same with the other stick. I've often seen the weird characters occur when memory is going bad or isn't compatible with the motherboard or the other memory. Have you recently added memory to the system?

Be sure your McAfee virus definitions are updated and run a full system scan to rule out a boot virus as the cause.

If the problem has just started happening, you might try restarting your computer in MS-DOS mode and typing scanreg /restore (notice the space after scanreg) at the C:\Windows prompt, then choosing to restore the registry to a time before the problem began.

Another cause of weird characters at boot could be a corrupt MBR. Go here (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/Q69/0/13.ASP&NoWebContent=1) for more information on rewriting the MBR.

If none of these things is helpful, I'm sure others here will have more ideas for you.

Kimbo

[bibo2003344]

Originally posted by Kimbo
My first thought is bad memory. If your 512MB memory is 2 sticks of 256, try removing 1 and see if the problem persists. Do the same with the other stick. I've often seen the weird characters occur when memory is going bad or isn't compatible with the motherboard or the other memory. Have you recently added memory to the system?

Be sure your McAfee virus definitions are updated and run a full system scan to rule out a boot virus as the cause.

If the problem has just started happening, you might try restarting your computer in MS-DOS mode and typing scanreg /restore (notice the space after scanreg) at the C:\Windows prompt, then choosing to restore the registry to a time before the problem began.

Another cause of weird characters at boot could be a corrupt MBR. Go here (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/Q69/0/13.ASP&NoWebContent=1) for more information on rewriting the MBR.

If none of these things is helpful, I'm sure others here will have more ideas for you.

Kimbo thanks all , but i didnt install any new rams , i have 2 sdram of 46 mb since a long time , and it worked good i will try to remove one of the and i will tell u . thanks .