Hardware troubleshooting PART 1

TROUBLE SHOOTING

1) There is no power light, and you cannot hear any cooling fan.

Check SMPS power, main power connection, and check connection on

Motherboard from SMPS, check front panel connections.

2) There is no power light, but you hear the cooling fan running.

Check front panel connections.

3) The power light is on, but there is no apparent system activity.

Power good signal, video card, RAM slots.

4) The power light is on, but you hear two or more beeps.

CMOS checkup failure, RAM speed mismatch, RAM not inserted in its slot properly.

5) The power light is on, but the system hangs during initialization.

Check hardware settings, cables and bus.

6) You see no drive light activity.

Check power connection to that drive, front panel connections.

7) You see a message indicating ‘CMOS setup problem’.

Indicates CMOS memory has been failed so change CMOS battery.

8) The drive light remains on continuously.

Lens or head problem which indicates that disk is bad.

9) You see normal system activity, but there is no video.

Check for monitor cable connection, monitor problem.

10) System fails to recognize the newly installed devices.

Power supply, cable connection, port, hardware. Enable settings in bios.

11) The system fails to boot, freezes during booting, or freezes during operation for no apparent reasons.

RAM, cache memory.

12) One or more applications fails to function as expected after an upgrade.

Check for hardware compatibility list for the newly installed software.

13) Windows 98/Me will not boot, and scandisk reports bad clusters that it cannot repair.

Scandisk, high level formatting, zerofill.

16) Windows 98/Me registry files are missing.

Scan Reg.

17) During the windows 98/Me boot, you get an “Invalid system disk” error.

Operating system failure, invalid BOOT.INI file, bad MBR.

18) Windows 98/Me will not install on a compressed drive.

98 don’t support NTFS to install OS.

19) Windows 98/Me does not recognize a new device.

Restart the operating system, scan for new hardware, hardware settings in BIOS.

20) BIOS ROM checksum error—system halted.

Restore BIOS settings, set the jumpers, and check the battery voltage and change it if necessary.

21) C or D drive error.

MBR, repartitioning, cable, bad sectors, formatting.

22) Cache memory bad, don’t enable cache.

Change processor.

23) CMOS battery failed.

Change CMOS (complimentary metal oxide semiconductor) battery.

24) CMOS checksum error-defaults loaded.

Check jumpers.

25) CMOS memory size mismatch.

Change CMOS.

26) CPU at “nnn”

Cache memory fails.

27) Diskette read failure.

Lens or head problem, check cable and power connector.

28) DMA (or DMA#1 or DMA#2) error.

North Bridge fail, disable DMA controller.

29) Drive not ready.

Lens, empty disk, cable, power connector, insert OS disk.

30) Hard disk configuration error.

Setup BIOS as auto detect.

31) Hard disk controller failure.

Check for BIOS settings either enable or disable.

32) Hard disk failure.

Cable, auto detect, check for BIOS settings.

33) Hard disk drive read failure.

Drive not formatted, cable problem, jumpers, logic board, bad sectors.

34) Insert bootable media.

O.S checking on hard drive, change boot priority.

35) I/O card parity error at xxxx.

36) Keyboard controller failure.

Change keyboard.

37) Primary boot device not found.

Hard disk auto detect, jumpers, cable.

38) Primary input device not found.

Keyboard not connected.

39) Secondary IDE controller resource conflict.

Set IRQ in auto.

40) The parallel port fails diagnostics when in the bidirectional mode.

Change the setup in BIOS integrated peripheral.