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Post by Peter on Jan 16, 2015 23:04:36 GMT 10
So... I set up a PC specifically for preps a few days ago. It's a HP tower running Windows 8...
I went to start up tonight and very little happened. There was nothing on the screen other than the generic pointer - restarting didn't make a difference.
Any suggestions?
How I long for the days of Windows 3.11. Or NT4.0...
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Post by thereth on Jan 16, 2015 23:05:49 GMT 10
You didnt change the raid settings in the bios from ahci to raid or ide did u? Win8 hates it when bios settings get messed with after install
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Post by thereth on Jan 16, 2015 23:06:46 GMT 10
Also did the normal boot screen for the main board come up?
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Post by Peter on Jan 16, 2015 23:07:14 GMT 10
I haven't touched bios at all. If I was using Linux/Unix I'd mess about to my hearts content, but not with any MS OS from the last few years...
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Post by thereth on Jan 16, 2015 23:25:38 GMT 10
First step.... get rid of 8. It is a plague and deserves to be prison raped by the entire population of the usa's prison system.
More serious though. Can you access the bios? If you cant try a cmos reset after naking sure all power is ok.
If u can make sure it sees all hard drives and ram and if it has inbuilt gardware testing you should give that a go, hp units do if I remember correctly
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Morgo
Senior Member
Posts: 682
Likes: 661
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Post by Morgo on Jan 16, 2015 23:37:50 GMT 10
Didn't happen to install avast antivirus software before this happened by any chance?
How old is the system? Can you start in safe mode? Access task manager?
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Post by SA Hunter on Jan 17, 2015 1:37:20 GMT 10
Me, I'm a computer retard!!
Hope you get it sorted out soon!
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Post by Peter on Jan 17, 2015 10:59:12 GMT 10
And... in typical MS unpredictable fashion, it's started working again. Without any action by anyone.
Thanks for the tips folks. I'll keep them in mind for the next time it stuffs up.
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Post by You Must Enter A Name on Jan 17, 2015 23:25:56 GMT 10
Sir Pete!
I long for the days of DOS 6.22 personally.
I have only had a little bit to do with Windows 8 but it is certainly very different from traditional Windows. My advice would be that if you only need access to documents, get a good E-reader, build a capacitor battery bank and get a solar panel & charger to suit.
Out of interest and seeing as it's slightly relevant. Hands up if you ever ran qemm386.exe in order to get Ultima 7 to run? Or am I really the only full geek here?
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peter1942
Senior Member
Posts: 146
Likes: 267
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Post by peter1942 on Jan 18, 2015 11:03:04 GMT 10
I have been involved with computers since the mid seventies when they were of the main frame varieties and over my working life I have seen many alterations and modifications to get to where we are today with what we call modern computers.
I was involved in the computer industry when DOS was tossed aside in favour of windows and then because of what was happening in the computer world I changed tack and converted to Apple.
Since converting to Apple I have had no issues with updating systems or programs and in that time I have friends who have struggled every time they have updated their Windows system whereas on the Apple it has just about always been a seamless crossover.
I have only ever purchased one Apple new and the rest I have purchased second hand. Currently I have a Dual 2.0GHz PowerPC G5 that must be six or so years old. I have no virus software, have never had a virus, never had a breakdown, never had an issue and I maintain websites, do all of the other nerdy things that I want to without, to date, any issues.
Now I know that there many people out there who will not own something with an 'i' in front of the name but if you are serious about survival at least get the gear that is the most maintenance free so that you time can be better spent on the serious things in life.
My wife has an iPad and when I first looked at it I was blown away be the technology in comparison to what we put up with in the days of DOS or 3.01 and I still cannot get my head around how an ipad's camera with such a short focal length can take such great photos.
You are a bit modern talking about a 386 as the earlier ones had no hard drives but one disk drive and by swapping the disks you loaded the programs and your files into the memory and went from there. Too bad about gliches or power outages.
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Post by You Must Enter A Name on Jan 18, 2015 12:16:19 GMT 10
You are a bit modern talking about a 386 as the earlier ones had no hard drives but one disk drive and by swapping the disks you loaded the programs and your files into the memory and went from there. Too bad about gliches or power outages. The first PC in our house had no hard drive dual 5 1/2 inch floppies, it was an 8086 (XT) and the first one with a hard drive was an 8086 Olivetti. I remember when the PS2 was all the rage or not so much as it's proprietary parts limited it considerably, Oh I miss the good old days. Man I remember playing on a BBC and everything got loaded from a tape.
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Post by Peter on Jan 18, 2015 16:18:26 GMT 10
I haven't heard the name Olivetti in years - my first PC (in 1996) was an Olivetti - Pentium 133, 2.45GB HDD, 16MB Ram, with a 15" monitor. Everyone at the time - including fellow IT students at uni and Com Sci students all told me I'd never, ever need such a powerful machine.
How times change...
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Post by You Must Enter A Name on Jan 18, 2015 17:05:22 GMT 10
I haven't heard the name Olivetti in years - my first PC (in 1996) was an Olivetti - Pentium 133, 2.45GB HDD, 16MB Ram, with a 15" monitor. Everyone at the time - including fellow IT students at uni and Com Sci students all told me I'd never, ever need such a powerful machine. How times change... Oh man, that was a sweet system for the time. I had an acer P133 at one stage and I overclocked it to something like 150mhz it had a whopping 1.2g HDD std VGA video card and 8MB ram but that was 1998 when from memory it had become last generation technology. Hell I remember buying my first 1ghz System and I had 512MB ram on that bad boy and a 4GB HDD and USB!!!!! Times have certainly changed alright.
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