Please help!

[goldberg]

I have a very strange problem.

I am running windows 98, and all of a sudden the screen went black, like the power had been turned off. The power is still on as the lights are still lit on the base unit and the monitor. I tried a reset but still no display.

Now the only way i can get the machine to boot is to turn on the machine, wait about 2minutes, open the cd tray and keep it open. If i do not keep it open the screen will just go black again. Once the machine boots to windows 98, it will only last about 1 minute before the screen turns black!

Also if the cd tray closes at any time the display will go again.

i have tried reinstalling windows 98 but this is still happening and I have no idea why beacuse I am not much good with computers and was hoping some of the experts reading these forums can give me some advice.

Thanks.

[Abbadon]

try unhooking the cd and see what happens. Sounds like the cd's autoplay feature is wreaking havock, although to be fair, I don't understand how or why it would do that...

[david eaton]

If disconnecting the drive doesn't work, a possibility is that you have been infected with some form of gackware.

Please download Hijack this (http://mjc1.com/mirror/hjt/). Unzip it into its own folder, doubleclick HijackThis.exe, and hit "Scan".

When the scan is finished, the "Scan" button will change into a "Save Log" button.
Press that, save the log, do Ctrl-A to Select All, and copy its contents here. Most of what it lists will be harmless or even essential, don't fix anything yet.

[Quantax]

Not that this would necessarily solve the problem but are the CD drive and the hard drive on the same IDE channel? If so, you might put device on the other channel just to see if this makes any difference.

[classicsoftware]

First, try the monitor on a different computer.

Second try a different monitor on this computer.

This will allow you to determin if the monitor is bad. If the monitor uis bad, the same thing will hapen after step 1 and it will not happen after step 2.

If it is NOT the monitor, try to boot up in safe mode. If you can boot up in safe mode, the most likely cause is corrupted video drivers.

Please follow these steps and post back the results.

[Sylvander]

One of the most obvious causes would be that the screensaver is set to kick in [after a few minutes of inactivity] with a blank [black] screen.
This might have been arranged by a malicious infection.

How about trying to jump back to a good configuration using "scanreg /restore"?

[goldberg]

Hi

Thanks for your help so far but it has not solved the problem!

I have tried disconnecting the cd drive, changing IDE channels etc but the same problem is happening.

I cant even try to run HijackThis as windows will not saty up for long enough for me to use it.

I guess there is no way that this can be solved.

[classicsoftware]

The problem can be solved. But you must do it in a logical and methodical way. If You follow what I posted earler we can help you solve the problem.

1) Rule out the monitor.

2) Rule out the video card/driver

3) Rule out gackware or spayware

4) Rule out the OS

So in order to sort this out, try the monitor on a different computer and try another monitor on your computer. Let's see if it is the monitor first.

[goldberg]

Thanks for sticking with this classicsoftware.

I've just tried another monitor on the computer and the same thing happens, and the monitor I was using on the computer works fine on another machine.

I booted in safe mode and win 98 seems to stay up for as long as I want it to. However to get to safe mode I still have to open the cd tray (and keep it open) to get the machine to start up in the first place.

I tried running HijackThis from safe mode and there seems to be no gack/spyware that I can see.

I have also tried uninstalling and reinstalling win 98, but that did not help either.

The thing that bugs me more than anything is why do I have to open the cd tray to get the machine to load?

I just cant understand this at all.

Any further suggestions would be very very welcome.

Thanks a lot for your time so far.

[PrntRhd]

Maybe a bad cable to the CD-ROM drive and HDD?

[classicsoftware]

Now we know what we are dealing with.

First things first.

Get some canned air. Open the case. Inspect the ribbon cable and power cable that connects the CD-ROm to the motherboard and the power supply.

Remove them.

Boot up and see what happens. It could be a bad cable or drive.

If it boots Ok with the CD-ROM disconected. Shutdown the computer. Clean the connections with the canned air and remove any dust on then ends.

Re-boot and see what happens.

If it is still bad, try a new ribbon cable.

If it is still bad, replace CD-ROM.

Also while you are at it.

Post the contents of your autoexec.bat and config.sys files found in the root directory. of your hard drive, ususlaly C:\>