Time saver

[Billforce]

I learned a good lesson last week that I should know better but didn't because of time involved. A customer brought me a PC that stopped booting at the WAIT signal from the bios.
I changed the mem ram etc but the same thing. I finally resorted to pulling the device cards one at a time and low and behold when I pulled the PCTel 288ia modem, the PC booted and ran normally. As soon as I reinserted the modem, it would quit booting again.
So, if you have a PC that suddenly stops booting....PULL all the cards and see if it will boot. If I had done this to start, I would have saved a lot of time. And of course, when I installed the modem card, it would have quit and would have told me it was the modem dummy. Evidently the modem had experienced a lightning hit....very common here.

[BipolarBill]

BillForce makes the BigTime! Stickified.

[Billforce]

Faith and Bejabers.....must of been in a fit of bad taste.


J.M., take note....and only 950 posts.

[Recordlord]

Hmmm Lightning strikes on the dark side of the moon??

[tantone]

Hmmm Lightning strikes on the dark side of the moon??

It's that American flag we put up. Acts like a lightning rod!

That's extremely good info BillForce! One of those things we've all heard and should know, but always try to avoid because it means having to get our hands dirty.

[rangeral]

Lightning, surges, etc. first batter up is the modem or just electronics going bad, the next one after cards is cdroms unplug them completely and it starts working, next up is the hdd unplug replace with anything and sys works. I believe that is the order though you can question ram too.

[crapyking]

i would say modems are the most likely to go. i had a whole computer acted dead - no psu fan or anything.pulled modem ran fine - they will give you fits!

[j.m@talk]

Originally posted by Billforce


J.M., take note....

Tryin to say I'm dim?



Tell me summink I don't frikkin know

[Bizkitkid2001]

Originally posted by j.m@talk21.com
Tryin to say I'm dim?



Tell me summink I don't frikkin know

My cat is white, happy now?

[mrstickerman]

The same exact thing happened to me a few months ago, only it was a PCI card that had both a sound card AND modem on it. Good thing it had an extra PCI slot.
Also, it was running XP in Spanish.
Yup, I grew up speaking Spanish, but those darn technical terms were never taught to me by my parents.

[Billforce]

Mui bien!

[FijiJohn]

Per my recent post, it was an ISA sound card causing a "no keyboard or keyboard error" message that prevented booting. Thaks Billforce! Without your post I'd never have tried removing the sond card.

[chronk]

I had lightning surge / modem related issue a few months ago.
Modem worked but telephone did not - phone was plugged in thru computer.

Plugged tele directly into RJ-11 wall outled - phone worked.

The modem (through-put circuit ? ) to supply signal to phone was destroyed.

Fix:

I kept modem - bought cheap RJ-11 splitter for wall outled.

Now modem and phone connected thru splitter - works same as before.

[j.m@talk]

Originally posted by Billforce
Mui bien!