Computer sometimes hangs pre-boot

[aggped]

I did a search but didn't see any topic like this, and I can't say that I my experience I've run into this problem before...

I have an older Gateway PC that I have been rehabbing for my company to get working. It has a quirky problem that I don't know what it could be caused by.

When I press the power button, the usual Gateway screen appears. On a normal startup, when this screen appears it has a bar along the top-left that fills up, and there are options written along to bottom to remind you that you can do the (F1) to change setup and such. Once the bar is filled, the computer begins it's boot-up looking at the floppies and such.

But increasingly what I've found is that the Gateway screen comes up with no writing along the bottom, and no bar along the top. Therefore the PC just hangs there indefinetely. No input from anywhere is recognized, and finally I have to hold the power button down for the requisite four seconds and restarting.

Sometimes it will start correctly the first time, sometimes I will have to stop-restart several times before I get the bar and can proceed. I've never had a PC hang this early in the startup so I'm not quite sure where the problem may lie, or where I can look to try and solve the problem.

Can anyone guide me forward to where a solution may lie??

Thanks!!
Robert

[Murf]

Welcome to CTH

When it does boot up and is running have you noticed and problems with the time? If so the CMOS battery could be on it's last legs.

Could be a hardware detection problem or a hardware conflict.

Reboot and press the F1 to enter SETUP. Once in SETUP find where you can load "System Defaults", somewhere on the screen it tells you (probably another "F" key), then SAVE and EXIT. If it boots normally several times then it was some sort of hardware conflict. Post back.

[aggped]

Ok... this was an adventure...

The time wasn't exact, but considering that the PC had been sitting for a couple months before I started in with it, I don't think a nine-minute difference is a problem.

So then I started to try the other part of what you wrote, and step-by-step this is what happened:

I shut down the PC and restarted.
It got the good screen, so I went into F1 and reset the defaults, saved and exited.
On exit it immediately came up with the bad Gateway screen.
I had to force restart, and this time it came up ok.
After Windows had loaded (this poc has 98SE fyi), I went to shut down and restart again to see what would happen.
As the PC was shutting down the dreaded blue screen appeared. I looked at it for a second, but before I had a chance to get a pad of paper to write down the error, it automatically shut down on it's own and restarted.
The restart was good, so I went to shut down Windows again.
For the second time the blue screen appeared. This time I had the pad ready, and I started to write. As I was writing I thought it looked like the error changed. This is what I got:

Fatal exception OE has occurred at 0028:C00069F8 in VxD VMM (01) + 000059F8. This was called from 0028:C004C09C in VxD VFAT (01) + 0000A024.

It had the usual press any key or CNTL-ALT-DEL. The press any key didn't do anything, so I CNTL-ALT-DEL'd. At that point, the first error code changed to:

0028:C003635B in VxD IFSMGR (01) + 00002997.

The rest remained the same. I do not know if the IFSMGR code was the first one that came up, and then changed to the VMM one as I was starting to write, or if there was a third code at the beginning that I missed because it went away to quickly.

At this point the computer was non-responsive. So I had force restart.
The restart screen was ok. But when it entered Windows, the resolution was reset to 16-color, and it refound my graphics card. After it was refound it wanted to restart again, so I said yes.

This time it came up with the bad Gateway screen. Forced restart.
Four more times in a row - bad screen. Forced restart.
Finally it came up with the good one, and went into Windows.
Windows loaded fine, and this time when I went to shut down, the PC shut down all the way normally.
It restarted ok, went into windows ok, and then i went to write this... (I'm on a different PC from that one).
It appears after that adventure that I am back where I started.

Don't know if all of those contortions will mean anything to you or not.

Thank you for you assistance. While I wait for a reply I think I'll go searching for a sledgehammer...

Thanks!
Robert

[Murf]

Replace your CMOS battery, I don't think the computer is remembering your settings. This may just solve it. After replacing the battery, see if you get different errors and post back.

FYI: The CMOS battery is a big watch type battery that is under $3 bucks and available anywhere they sell watch batteries, Radio Shack, any computer store, Wal Mart ect.

The IRQ Equal error is generally contributed to video, not aways, when you set to system defaults it loaded a generic video driver, thus it found the card and tryed to reload the driver. That error can be caused by a multitude of problems and is tough to pinpoint.

The 0028:C003635B in VxD IFSMGR (01) + 00002997 error can be caused by different problems, Netword Card is sometimes the main culprit, particularily if it is a Linksys Ref: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=192844