[quiche]

My Acer Extensa was working until this morning. This morning I turn on the power switch and it starts for a moment then shuts off. There is no battery. I have been using this laptop heavily the past few days, keeping it on constantly and using the Direct Cable connection to try to setup Office on another laptop. Last night I had to reboot it a few times to get rid of the file sharing.

I've tried everything this morning - removed all cables, attempted to power up with another adapter - and nothing has worked. I'm considering purchasing a battery from Ebay, but don't know if that will solve this problem. Help!

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at what point during boot up does the computer shut off?

Is it before, during or after the windows logo appears?

[techroy]

at what point during boot up does the computer shut off?

Is it before, during or after the windows logo appears?

[quiche]

Now I'm on the Acer.

It was on for a couple of seconds, the screen had not even lit up yet - when it just as quick shut off.

I got it started with a boot disk - but not right away. It took pushing the "on" switch several times and holding it. Therefore, I'm not sure if it was the boot disk that did the trick.

I have some pretty old diagnostic programs on floppies. I ran one and it showed the CPU is alright.

I have since rebooted a few times without the reboot diskette. However, at one point - my mouse pointer went wonky - and I could no longer control it with the touchpad.

Last week I upgraded from Windows 98 to Windows 98SE - which has been running fine. But last night after having file sharing on - I had problems with my modem and had to uninstall and reinstall my Internet and Communications programs from the Windows SE CD.

Right now I'm running my anti-virus program. It was run just a few days ago.

[techroy]

usually, if the BIOS has not even loaded and the system shuts down, the problem is the hardware. So, try to go to the system BIOS and see if it can stay on at that mode.

If you encounter the same problem with the system shutting down or it is not turning on, check if the system is a little warmer than usual. If it is, your fan could be malfunctioning.

You can also remove the memory and put it back in just to check if it was just loose. Loose memory can also prevent the system from turning on or it can make your system shutdown. It can also cause intermittent slow operation.

Actually, anything loose can cause it to shut down.

[quiche]

Thanks, TechRoy. But it turned out to be the registry and I had to re-format the disk. This all came about with me fooling around with the file sharing and Direct Cable Connection without a good set of instructions to guide me - so that wrecked my registry system.

Then I compounded the tragedy by trying to restore through ScanReg from the oldest backup files. So, it left me with no means of recovering the registry.

Luckily, I have my Windows 98se OS on CD and I keep most of my programs as the original zip files in a folder. Still, it was several days work. Of first using an old laplink program to transfer copies of those zips to another laptop. Then several times formating and re-installing the OS. It's best with Windows SE that you download and install IE 6 before you do the critical updates. Then re-installing my Office 2000 was a headache too as the Windows Installer needed to be upgraded from that one which came with Windows 98se on the CD. This was easily a several days, day-long project. It is a real headache having to reinstall IE 6, the critical updates, the Microsoft framework and DirectX and all the upgrades to Office 2000 - that you can only get online.

Lesson learned - do not fool around with File Sharing and Direct Cable Connection without a good set of instructions in front of you.

Now the Acer Extensa is back in working order. In fact, I'm typing from it now.

[techroy]

I'm glad to hear it wasn't what I thought it was.

Good luck with your system. I hope it stays problem free.