[drlucker]

After a thunderstorm we found the computer had turned itself on (it is on a APC battery backup). The screen was blank. We rebooted the system and it came up to the screen that says the past boot failed. If you start in regular mode the screen goes blank and nothing happens. If you try to boot in safe mode or command prompt you will see the screen fill with driver info then stops and nothing happens. Since my sonn had filled the machine with tons of games I decided to just start fresh. I purchased a new hard drive and install it. Then I ran the factory restore disk ( I had to do this 1 year ago when the factory hard drive failed). The install program (in DOS) ran fine. At the end it rebooted to start XP and it is doing the same thing that the old hard drive did! Since it runs DOS (boot from disk or factory restore CD, it will not go to the command prompt booting from XP)based programs fine and not XP I fear that something on the motherboard that is critial for XP is dead. Any ideas? Thanks

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Was the computer hit directly by lightning? Is the computer behind a surge protector? In a rare but serious case, I dare say that your motherboard might have suffered damage due to the strike. However, we'll hope that's not the case and continue to ask and answer questions

[Facedown98]

Was the computer hit directly by lightning? Is the computer behind a surge protector? In a rare but serious case, I dare say that your motherboard might have suffered damage due to the strike. However, we'll hope that's not the case and continue to ask and answer questions

[dsenette]

when you try to boot into safe mode....does a big list of drivers come scrolling across the screen? which one does it stop at? did you try to run the recovery disk on the original hard drive? or are you trying to avoid that to save data?

[Facedown98]

Your suggestion about drivers gave me a flashback... Are your fans working properly? Let's not rule out overheating yet

[drlucker]

Was the computer hit directly by lightning? Is the computer behind a surge protector? In a rare but serious case, I dare say that your motherboard might have suffered damage due to the strike. However, we'll hope that's not the case and continue to ask and answer questions

I do not know if it was hit by lighting. We were not home. When we came home the computer had turned on by itself and had a blank screen. Yes the computer has a APC surge protector and battery back up.

[drlucker]

when you try to boot into safe mode....does a big list of drivers come scrolling across the screen? which one does it stop at? did you try to run the recovery disk on the original hard drive? or are you trying to avoid that to save data?

Yes in safe mode and command promt a list of drivers go by. With the old hard drive the last two drivers it load are "Mup.sys and then IPVNmon.sys". With the new hard drive it stops on "Mup.sys". Yes I am trying to save the data on the old drive. But this old drive is not the oringial drive, it failed a year ago and I replaced it and the restore worked that time. Also the recovery disk ran fine, it completed the load and then restarted.
Also I have down loaded the system console boot program from emachine, they said this would let me boot the machine so that we could trouble shoot it. The boot takes several floppies, on the last one it locks up. Thanks

Edited by drlucker, 27 June 2006 - 09:29 AM.

[drlucker]

Your suggestion about drivers gave me a flashback... Are your fans working properly? Let's not rule out overheating yet

Good question, I will check this tonight when I get home. I have a higher wattage power supply in the computer, I will check it and also put the originial back in and test this to. Thanks

OK I check it out, the 350 power supply I have in the computer is working fine. I even put the old supply back in just in case (the new supply is for a video card I had put in,it currently has been removed so that I could do the reinstall).

Edited by drlucker, 27 June 2006 - 05:09 AM.

[drlucker]

Hi
Well I ordered a new motherboard, hopefully this will fix the problems. Thanks for all the suggestions.

Dennis

[Facedown98]

Good luck to you Keep us posted on this as well. You have an interesting issue, and we'd love to know what the issue turned out to be.