Error message

[Jake]

I have a puzzleing problem. First my computer freezes up solid and I turn off the power and turn it back on only to find it won't boot up. Won't even go into the BIOS. So I shut down again abd try it over. Nothing happens wxcept the monitor light blinks a few times. So I get out a boot disk and try again. It boots up to a "AQ" prompt and when I try and load up windows it gives me some registry error message. So I reboot again and it gets all the way into windows. I run scandisk with no errors found and then (win98) I run system file checker-no problems. I did come up with a problem when trying to get online. I have a cable modem and IE 5.0 doesn't recognize it as being online. So I reboot again and this time it works OK. So far it appears back to normal. Here's the question. When I rebooted after the freeze up it came up with the FDC error. It was checking for the hard drive and then the CD-ROM drive and then it stops and gives me this "FDC ERROR" It was reacting kind of slow booting up while checking the drives. I have no clue what to try. Could it be my 3 year old Hard drive is giving me problems? Please send me some help!!! It's a AMD 300 proc. and a PC100 mainboard. It has a SIS 530 onboard VGA card up to 8 megs and a onboard C-media sound card. I have 48 megs of RAM. jt_hall@hotmail.com is my e-mail address. Thanks, Jake

[Susan]

Hard to tell with all those different problems going on, but there are two things that come to mind.

Power supply problems or a memory problem. I'm leaning more towards a PS problem because upon bootup your having recognition problems.

[Jake]

Thanks Susan. I did take the cover off and blew out all the dust. Maybe that helped and I didn't know it. What do you think about a possible cable problem. I checked them and they seemed OK. Maybe to much plugged into the same power strip? Actually I haven't had a freeze up in a long time until today. I know what you are referring to as to the onboard stuff. Or were you referring to my cheap MB? Hey you get what you can afford.

[Susan]

I was referring more to the power which is reaching your MB, whether it be the PS itself or some type of surges of power going through your PS to your board.

Did you blow out the dust from your PS, too?

[Jake]

Yes I blew that out too. PS That is. It booted up fine this AM. I just know soemthing is going to happen!! hahaha Oh well I'll have to wait and find out. Thanks.

[Mike H.]

A friend of mine had a problem similar to yours, that he fixed by replacing the Powerstrip\Surge Protecter.

[Susan]

While we're on the subject of power:

Just recently I started having some electrical problems in my entire house, and the problem lies with the voltage coming into it.

This was causing me many headaches with my system even though it is connected to two redundant surge protectors. I was experiencing registry errors, incomplete shut downs and ended up blowing a PS on another system.

I fixed the problem by buying a UPS.

[Jake]

Thanks. I think it may be a power thing. It's back to normal today. Once again Thanks to you all. Jake