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Question for professional PC HARDWARE ENGINEERS who may kindly guide me.

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Before I explain you the problem of my PC I would like to tell you a few things about it so that it can help you in understanding the configuration and features of

my PC:

1. It is a Pentium III 550 MHz. Desktop PC with 128 MB RAM and Windows 98 as its OS.

2. It is quite old model which doesn't have ATX technology (so Windows 98 cannot shut it down automatically; but we have to press the toggle switch meant to turn it on to switch it off after Windows gives a message that "It's now safe to turn off the personal computer" after windows shuts itself down.

3. The said PC has green light that remains on when the PC is started and till it is manually switched off by pressing the toggle switch. Then, there is a yellow light below the green light that blinks when HDD is accessed. Otherwise, it remains off. So Yellow light is the HDD light in the entire discussion below.

4. In the normal mode (when the said PC was not having problems and it was running perfectly) when the PC was turned on Green Light gets on immediately followed by yellow light blinking and then 3 keyboard lights blink and CD ROM drive is accessed followed by monitor showing details about BIOS, Pentium III 550Mhz. 128 MB RAM and then the drives attached in the PC including HDD and CD ROM are shown This is followed by Windows 98 booting and starting itself. Then, password is asked and start up programs are loaded. There is also a beep sound once taking place in this entire process (but when that beep sound occurs was not observed by me earlier).

Since a few weeks a distinct problem has started happening with it (the said PC).

When I switched the PC on one afternoon (After the PC was switched off late night (11:00 pm) the previous day) the Green light and Yellow light turned on (but yellow light didn't blink but just remained on. Usually yellow light used to blink; Actually, it remaining on continously without blinking is a sign of HDD cable being wrongly connected as far as I know. But here, no one had touched the cables earlier. Yet it remained on without blinking. The keyboard lights

blinked once and remained off. There was no beep sound. The PC got stuck without doing anything further (it didn't show BIOS type, Pentium III 550Mhz. 128 MB RAM and then the drives attached to it (and naturally didn't proceed to boot OS). The monitor was absolutely blank. And the monitor's yellow light simply blinked (just like it blinks when the screen shuts itself off for POWER SAVING if no one is working on the desktop and desktop remains on for say 15 minutes or so). Usually when monitor is on and showing something on screen (like when we are working on the PC) the yellow light of monitor remained on continuously. Anyways, coming back to PC -> Nothing happened except the two lights Green light and Yellow light of CPU were continuously on. After a while the Yellow light also switched itself off. The Green Light remained on and PC was not showing anything on monitor and was also not doing anything except remaining on.

Since nothing was happening I tried to switch off the PC by pressing the toggle switch that is used to turn it on. But even after pressing that toggle switch the PC didn't switch off but the Green light remained on. So I had to switch off the PC by switching of the electric power supply switch itself so that power to PC was cut off. I was compelled to do so because the PC's switch was not turning itself off even after the toggle switch was pressed repeatedly.

Again after a while when I switched the electric power supply switch the PC was turned on with both green light and yellow light on and doing nothing (just like mentioned above). So this time I pressed the RESET button of the PC. And after the RESET button was pressed several times in succession the HDD light blinked, the keyboard lights also blinked and I was shown the usual BIOS details, Pentium III 550Mhz. 128 MB RAM and then the drives attached to it and Windows 98 started loading itself up and the PC started functioning normally like it used to perform usually. I actually could perform work on that PC on this occasion. Another observation that I had made was that if this PC was shut down after performing work then the toggle switch worked and it turned the PC off when I pressed the toogle switch (like it normally used to do) and then when it was switched on again immediately (say after 10 minutes or so) the PC booted normally without any problem. But if the same PC was switched on say after 1 hour or so (Basically, after it cools down) then both lights turn on and screen remains blank and PC did nothing (unless RESET was pressed several times till it finally started performing properly).

SO I THOUGHT THAT IT WAS A MINOR PROBLEM AND I THOUGHT THAT I HAVE FOUND A SOLUTION AND THAT THE SOLUTION WAS - WHENEVER THE PC DIDN'T SHOW ANY DETAILS ON MONITOR AND GOT STUCK AFTER STARTING ITSELF ON (LIKE MENTIONED ABOVE) I PRESSED RESET BUTTON SEVERAL TIMES TILL THE HDD LIGHT BLINKED AND THE PC STARTED FUNCTIONING NORMALLY. BUT AFTER A FEW DAYS THE PC DIDN'T FUNCTION PROPERLY EVEN AFTER I PRESSING RESET BUTTON SEVERAL TIMES. SO AS OF NOW, THE PC DOESN'T CARE ABOUT I PRESSING RESET BUTTON SEVERAL TIMES (SO BASICALLY NOW IT DOESN'T GIVE A d**n TO MY IDEA OF PRESSING RESET BUTTON SEVERAL TIMES TO MAKE IT FUNCTION PROPERLY).

Earlier for years such a problem never happened. It only started happening since a past few weeks. I would be very grateful if a PC Hardware engineer can Please guide me exactly as to what is the problem and what is the solution?

SINCE I HAD REPLACED CMOS BATTERY ONLY 6 MONTHS BACK AND THE PC CLOCK WAS WORKING PERFECTLY WHEN MY PC WAS WORKING I DON'T THINK IT IS A CMOS BATTERY PROBLEM. PROBLEM LIES SOMEWHERE ELSE.

CURRENTLY I M POSTING THIS FROM ANOTHER PC AND THE SAID PROBLEMATIC PC ABOUT WHICH I HAD WRITTEN ABOVE IS NOT FUNCTIONING EXCEPT SHOWING ME GREEN LIGHT (PC ON LIGHT) AS MENTIONED ABOVE.

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3 ANSWERS


  1. It's hard to say exactly what's wrong with it without actually fooling with it and checking things, however, even if you did find out exactly what is wrong with it, it's going to be extremely difficult to find replacement parts for a computer that old. You can get one newer than that for fairly cheap, probably around $100 at a thrift store. There are plenty of people out there who feel the need to have the latest and greatest technology. Then they just donate their old computer to goodwill or something like that. To retrieve your files from the old computer, just remove the hard drive and hook it up as a slave in the new one, it should read the files off the old drive.


  2. reassemble all inner parts of pc

    most of the times it works for me.

  3. The motherboard is failing, either there is a problem with the BIOS or one of the chips that control power management. Its not an eMachine by any chance is it?

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