Mick

iTrader: (1)

HELP!!!!!

My mates machine runs an XP2200 chip and 256 Mb RAM and an ATi all-in-wonder graphics card ~ 2/3 yrs old.

He had a problem that although the machine would power up it would not turn the monitor on.

I took the box home and plugged it into my peripherals and exactly the same thing happened.

I swapped my graphics card into the machine - no difference.

I connected the clear CMOS jumper - no difference.

I then disconnected and removed the PCI cards - firewire and modem - no difference.

I disconnected the CD & DVD drives & floppy drive - no difference.

Disconnected hard Drive - no difference.

Removed RAM & replaced - cleared CMOS again and pushed on button without returning jumper to default position - no power on, realised mistake and replaced jumper in run position and machine started to boot.

Shut down and added hard drive back in... machine booted into windows

Added components back in floppy, CD, DVD - machine booted again.

Firewire... machine booted again

modem - machine started whilst putting in card - didn't run though to boot up. removed card & tried again - monitor not responding, no boot up. connected JP1 to clear CMOS - no boot up, connected JP1 and pressed power button then returned JP1 to default position and machine booted up

The machine seemed to be OK at this point tried a few boot ups and shut downs.

Checked BIOS settings - adjusted basic stuff - saved settings and exit - no boot - Had to do the JP1 press power button & return jumper to get machine to boot.

Suspected Battery on board.

I returned the machine to my mate who mentined that a couple of times the machine had lost it correct date setting causing his emails to be incorrectly filed. - So new battery must be required I thought.

He plugged it into his peripherals and the thing wouldn't boot!

I got a new battery for the board (and an extra 256 Mb of RAM robbed from one of my machines ) Went round to sort it out - took ages of fiddling to get the thing to boot again - down to removing & replacing RAM stick & clear CMOS with power button press before it would boot again - once running we connected all the stuff & put in the extra RAM & all seemed OK - I ran a defrag & left.

It worked being turned on & off about 4 times over the weekend - Sunday night it went onto the screensaver & froze completely - when reboot button was hit it seems to be back to square 1 - He has just phoned me this morning to let me know

We're getting a bit stumped now - don't want to have to do this evry couple of days Does anyone have any idea of what the problem is - or steps to take to isolate the cause? - He's getting that cheesed off with it he was on the verge of going to PC world with £500 to get a 'new one' - surely we can get him up and running with a stable machine for a tad lesss than that????

Many Thanks

Mick

oops - put it in the wrong forum - can the mods move it - or should I repost?