plug and play initiallizing?

[eagleuh1]

After having lightning strike on my cable line, frying a cable splitter, cable modem and my monitor power supply no longer working. I bought new monitor, but my computer only boots up to "initializing plug and play cards". It shows #1, voice ,fax modem. Thats as far as it gets. I removed this card and it just gets to initializing plug and play. I then placed it in another slot and it gets to the modem line again. Any suggestions for fixing this. Its a PII 266 from Quantex running windows 98.

[Rocketmech]

Remove all your cards . Look the motherboard over for bad caps , http://www.badcaps.net/ident/
. It may help to clear cmos . FWIW , lightning can damage 1 thing or everything , you never know .

[Sterling_Aug]

It sounds like a lot more do fried than just the modem.

Mobo and hard drive maybe.

Who told you it was only a bad cable splitter, cable modem, and monitor power supply?

[eagleuh1]

I removed all cards, reinstalled different slots, replaced battery, looked over all cards, motherboard, and everything else for physical damage. No bad Caps. Visually anyways. Still gets to the same spot, initiallizing plug and play cards. Can the bios chip be bad and not allowing it to initiallize. It powers up fine and recognises the hard drives and cdroms and the memory just fine. Can you buy PII 266 mother boards still. I'd like to get it running again just for surfing and e-mail, and buy a new notebook. Thanks

[eagleuh1]

Nobody told me. That was all that I could find that was physically damaged and not working. Cable splitter was melted, monitor power supply does not supply power and cable modem does not come on when powered and plugged into repaired cable. Also, the computer does not get past initiallizing plug and play cards. Sooo?

[BipolarBill]

What do you want us to say?

Try booting the PC with all cards removed.

If no joy, replace the motherboard and buy a surge protector with cable connections.

[Rocketmech]

P2 motherboard ???

http://computers.ebay.com/
http://www.pricewatch.com/
http://www.pricegrabber.com/index.ph...9b30413e834329

[G Ray88]

As cheap as new computers are now days, you might want to move up to a newer and faster computer.
Good Luck

[G]

Computer on the cheap: what a mug.

http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProdu...duct_Id=124817

[G]

Computing on the cheap: what a fool.

And you all do it will USP, SPS, backup progs, AV, malware etc until it is to late and then you ask for help.

http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProdu...duct_Id=124817

The small preventative measure that you did not take is going to cost you a lot of money inconvenience and possible data lose.

You only have yourself to blame.

[Rocketmech]

FWIW , a UPS or surge protector , [/U]will not[U] take a direct lightning hit , I don't care how much they advertise their joule rating and lightning protection . The best and sure protection for lightning is to pull the plug , and wait it out . Other devices are for when your out of pocket when lightning strikes , and then you pray .

[Peter M]

It probably isn't stuck /at/ PnP card init, it's stuck at whatever it's trying to do /next/.

Now that PnP message only exists in AwardBIOS, and the next thing after PnP card init in /that/ BIOS is IDE HDD init.

My guess: Dead harddisk, optical drive or IDE interface.

[Sterling_Aug]

Excellent idea Peter.

Take out the hard drive and any CDROM drives you have and boot to a floppy disk. See if the PC boots now. If not, then you have a dead mobo and/or processor.

[eagleuh1]

Thanks, I'll try those ideas tonight. Hate to spend money on another computer right now, but i've been looking anyways. Maybe my wife will get the hint, my birthday is coming up soon. Thanks again for all the advice.

[eagleuh1]

Well, tried all the above and still no progress. Guess its the motherboard or processor. I found a P2-300 processor and motherboard on ebay for $2 plus shipping, maybe I can keep my surfing and e-mail computer going for a while longer. Thanks for the help. Jim