Re: Very Strange Problem

John7 wrote: 
Hi,

3 thoughts.

1. If the Reset switch makes intermittent contact
    you may get weird lockups and boot failures.
   Unplug it from the m/b for a while.

2. Disconnect the burner. Any better ?
    If so, could be writer or IDE cable.
    Some burners don't like 80-wire cables.

3. Most likely (sorry).
    Hard disk or IDE cable could be bad.
    I've seen hard disks lockup a pc right after bios msg.
    That's where hard disk auto detection take place.
    Try running the HD manufacturer's diagnostic.
    If the problem won't allow you, connect the disk
    to a friend's PC (not at cable of his boot disk)
    and run the diagnostic.

Thx John. As I noted to the other poster, we are looking at an electrical problem in the apartment unit itself for now. Hopefully that will solve the matter. To give you an example, I drop a box up here and all the lights down below flicker, every one of them. 

"Bob" <bob@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%239XJ2BF0FHA.3408@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Here is the problem I have been having. Prior to upgrading my entire
box, I was having what appeared to be power supply problems. That is,
difficulty in finding USB devices, computer acting crazy on reboot,
massive file corruption and then finally Windows 2000 not starting at
all on reboot and requiring repeated reinstalls. I felt the problem was
a bad power supply. We never diagnosed it but instead just redid most of
the box and the problem seems to have gone away.

However, with the new box I recently put on some new Windows updates (10
of them) and rebooted. First of all, it would not shut down (a common
problem from back in the "power problem" days). It came back up and lost
the USB cable modem (a chronic problem with the prior setup) and it
never could grab the cable modem again. I rebooted and it froze while
loading at

BIOS version
[Something else]
Checking memory
512 MB memory
Press Del to Enter Setup

Freeze.

Furthermore, attempts to power off the box with the power button
repeatedly failed. The box had to be powered off with the switch in the
  back of the computer. Repeated attempts to power off and back on the
box resulted in the same freeze. The box would not accept any floppy at
all, even a Checkit floppy that supposedly even boots a fried OS.

Finally, I pulled the cord from the wall and put it back in and powered
the box back on. Everything came back up fine and Windows 2000 found the
cable modem again.

This is really bizarre. It smells like the power supply problem again
but there is a whole new power supply in the box. The box has:

New power supply
New motherboard
New CPU
New memory
New video card
New sound chip
New DVD drive

In short, everything is new on the box except for the hard drive and CD
burner.

Yet the same bizarre problems, which smell like "power problems"
continue unabated.

What gives? Any thoughts? I am terrified to reboot the box for fear of
all the problems that may occur.
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