Cannot reboot: Nothing, blank, no floppy, no cd, nothing!

Big Trouble, Big Big Trouble:

[TheWatchman]

Well this is going to be a good one, after changing some of the configurations in setup, and then rebooting, NOTHING! The cd light goes on but then it's total darkness, absolutely nothing. This is my step-son's PC which he bought used, it was working slow and after deleting many additional programs which he wouldn't have used I was able come from 38% resourses to 68% and she was flying along beautiful. Now nothing.

The guy that had it before he had it has 2 hardrives installed, running windows 98 sec, with a AMD-K6 3D Processor, a total of 120mb for ram but I don't think his floppy is working and also he didn't make a emergency disc for this situation. I tried using one I have for windows 98 sec but nothing is happenning. So anyone care to take a crack at this, he's coming home from a week's vacation from Iowa tonight at 11:30pm and I sure would like to have it running like I had before.

[grelmar]

If you have broadband, try downloading a copy of Knoppix, it's a version of Linux you can boot from a CD.

You might have to go into the computer's BIOS in order to make the CD the default boot, but if you can get that to happen, you can then boot with Knop, and use the built in utilities to look for errors on the hard drive. (with a bit of searching, you should be able to find a fair number of forums where the techies talk about "miracle saves" they've done with Knop, a lot of sysadmins carry a copy at all times).

The other thing is, the main boot hard drive might have chosen that exact moment to give up the ghost. *shrug* it happens. You might want to try yanking the case, and disconnecting the two hard drives, and swapping where they were plugged in, which should make the old #2 drive the default boot drive. Then you can try installing Win on that drive and see what happens. Again, check the BIOS before you boot. You might have to change drive types around to accomodate the physical changes you just made, especially if they're two completely different makes and types of Hard Drive. If they're the same make and model of drive, don't even bother checking the BIOS.

Lastly, when all else fails, never underestimate the restorative powers of giving it Fonzie. (Just whack the thing upside the case).

[TheWatchman]

Grelmar: I will have to start inside now anyway. No possible way into the setup to change the bios. I will pull the battery and the jumper first maybe that will reset the bios then do as you have suggested after unplugging and replugging everything to make sure there reseated properly. Thxs I'll let you know how it goes. Yes I know about knoppix, may have to use it even after I get up, if I get up? ;)