Can't boot!

[Mike McCarty]

William M. Quarles wrote:
> OK, this PC is playing mean tricks on me. The past 10 times I've tried 
> to boot it, the boot has failed, and also, the keyboard stops responding 
> (so <Ctrl><Alt><anything> doesn't work). This thing is behaving very 
> inconsistently, because it just did a successful boot and I was able to 
> log in.

Sounds like a hardware problem, or incipient hardware problem.
I suggest shutting down, powering off, and unplugging from the wall.
(Do not omit to unplug.)

Then remove and reinsert all add on cards, especially memory boards.
and all cables, like to hard drives, floppy drives, and CD-ROM
drives (or DVD type drives).

If that doesn't help, then remove all but one memory stick,
your video card, hard drive, and keyboard. Then start adding things
back in one by one. Be sure to power off, and unplug. Motherboards
today keep power on them even when they are "turned off" unless
you completely unplug from the wall outlet.

If that doesn't help, then I suggest that you may have disc problems,
and may want to try to boot either from floppy, from a CD-ROM (rescue
disc) or from a thumb drive, in that order of preference.

If you can boot from a floppy, and from USB, but not from CD-ROM
or hard disc, you may have an incipient or actual controller failure.

Today, that is probably not a separately replaceable item, being
part of the chipset on the motherboard.

Mike
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