Boot-up failures starting to occur



Can anyone here tell me why my computer started coming up with Drive not ready Error, Insert boot disk. If I hold down the F6 key it boots fine. Maybe something in CMOS not set right? Or battery starting to fail. Clock keeps good time.

captain-kirk (162) on 03/28/99 at 10:05:30 PST

If your CMOS is forgetting constantly, then either the battery is dead, dislodged, or the "clear CMOS" jumper has been set on constantly by accident.

Or, of course, your CMOS is defunct, but that is a rare occurrence. If the computer is two years old or more, a dead battery is the most likely culprit, esp. if it has recently been left unplugged for any length of time. If you are near a radio shack, open up the machine and see what kind of battery you have. Make sure it is securely there, and if so, try replacing it. You can even test the battery with a battery tester if you have one.

if you have a soldered battery, then you have to go to "plan B", which is attaching an external battery pack to the motherboard and connecting it. Again, RS has carried this item.

If the battery is gone, would it still keep the time correctly have had it unplugged for about 20 minutes and it is still right. It keeps all the info in CMOS except for the hard drive data. Starr

captain-kirk (162) on 03/28/99 at 10:22:47 PST

hmmm...if the battery is going, then usually the clock starts slowing, and eventually disappears as well, since the only thing keeping the clock on time is the battery (when unplugged anyway).

I'm out of useful suggestions, other than to never turn it off. The good news is that, presumably, you don't lose any data when you do the "auto detect" option, so it may be something you have to do.

It is still theoretically possible that the battery is just weak enough to keep time, but lose other data. But if the clock keeps really good time, then that is very unlikely.

rmorrison (27) on 03/28/99 at 17:59:47 PST

Starr --I saw your post of this morning and I think that your hard drive is slowing down. Bearings wear and the drive takes a little longer to spin up to speed, causing boot to fail. I set a 5 second delay in CMOS on mine and it works fine now. BTW rebooting should always work as the hard drive is already spinning and will give the boot up info just fine.

..back..