Zapped

[Donoho]

Could Someone explain a step by step process from power on to IPL.
My daughters PC, when she powers on, gets a not connected message on the monitor, The floppy runs for a while and nothing else happens. She thinks she might have left it on during a lighting storm but no one used it for several weeks so we are not sure what all happened. The monitor works fine in my PC. I put the restore CD in the drive and it will not IPL. I tried both a win98 and a win95 IPLable floppy and it does not IPL. I pulled the HD and put it into a buddies PC that has some tools loaded. It does not install, something about cannot assign drive letter. When I run his tools Norton & PQMAGIC that he has, Its there, it is FAT32X. Norton finds bad segments down into the check quite a bit. I'v learned that she constantly turns it off with normal shutdown. PQMAGIC recogizes it but can't process it. Error message is missing end of cylendar. FORMAT tells me things about it but I haven't tried formating. I'm still hoping I might be able to use it or at least salvage something from it.
I've about ready to give up on but, I was hoping someone could tell me about the hardware and microcode/bios from power on to IPL. I'm convenced that as soon as the power comes up, the monitor screen should go blank. There is no hardware checking or bios that would prevent this. I do not have any way of knowing what is configured to IPL, no monitor, But I would think I hear something when I put a ipl disk in the floppy or CD, even if the HD is broke.
I'm wondering if POST is hitting an error, and hanging. I've no idea on how to get into setup, even if I did nave a monitor. You never try these things until their broke and then it is to late. I'm also, wondering if it would be wise to invest in plug in card for the monitor. If I can just got it to come, I might get a step closer.
This is a year & 1/2 old Ntel, 333mz Celeron, 15in monitor, CD, HD and the 120meg floppy.

[dale]

I think it could be one of several things, in this priority order of guessing :-)

1. Your motherboard doesn't have power. Your power supply could be partial broke or your blew some kind of power capacitor on the motherboard during the lighting storm. You can take the power cables off the motherboard and use a normal voltmeter to scope it out and you should see 5 and 12 volt measures on a couple of the pins. If you have power on the cable, you might have toasted your motherboard.

2. Your video card/chip could be bad. Try a different video card. You might ask a friend if you can borrow theirs instead of buying a new one.

3. Your bios might be toasted. If so you will need to take it to some place to get re-flashed or contact the computer manufacturer to send you another one - this will be frustratingly hard based on my experience since most don't have a clue where to start to get a replacement bios.

As to turning the computer off and on, I always recommend that people leave their computers on, the power surging and temperature changes definitely has a negative affect on the components. I have left my computer running almost constantly for a couple years and my laptop for 3 or 4 and no problems. The only possible downside is that your hard drive will run a lot longer and may wear a little quicker. But with power saver settings, you can have the drive spin down during idle times.

dale

[Donoho]

dale[/B][/QUOTE]
Dale, thanks for your ideas. I should have mentioned that I found the pinout for an ATX power supply and checked that.
I like 2 and 3. I think I would rather order a cheap motherboard then try and flish the bios but I will look for a Graphics card. Problem was, I did not know that bios could effect the monitor and I wasn't sure, because the graphics is on the mother board, that I would be able to get a pug in graphics card to work. I will find a good graphics card or buy one and try that. Thanks Jim

[dale]

Yeah, the BIOS usually has to initialize the video card by running a little rom program stored on it. So if you main BIOS is toast, the video card never gets its "15 minutes of fame" during the boot cycle and if the video chip/card is toast, there is no logic to get it going. Hope all works out for you.

dale

[Donoho]

dale[/B][/QUOTE]Fantastic, Thank you. That makes good sense. It always helps if you can understand why and what fors.
I'll leave this entry here for a day and then figure out how to delete it. Thanks again, Jim