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General discussion

Averatec 3150 Booting Problem

Mar 6, 2005 9:53PM PST

My niece has an Averatec 3150 (mobile Athlon based notebook) that stopped loading WinXP (it hangs at the WindowsXP loading screen). I tried a system restore with the same problem, and tried live linux CD's which all halted after hardware recognition. I called Averatec tech support (not a good idea). They suggested that it was a boot sector virus and then told me to reload the BIOS. I pointed out that loading from CD's kind of ruled out a boot sector virus and since their bios updates only work within windows, the call was a total bust. I started experimenting and realized that the system would run DOS and I could successfully load and run Win98. I updated the bios using Win98 and tried to clear CMOS by pulling the battery and even popping the CMOS chip. Neither trick zeroized the settings, however the CMOS screen does indicate that the bios has been updated to a new version. The effort did not fix the problem though. The only thing that I can think of that WinXP and Linux Live CD's have in common that Win98/DOS doesn't is acpi. I'd really appreciate any hints if someone has had a similar problem.
Thanks,
Marshall

Discussion is locked

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Tell more and get to the XP forum.
Mar 6, 2005 10:07PM PST

This isn't a laptop exclusive issue so I suggest the XP Forum.

Tell if the boot to SAFE MODE, SAFE MODE COMMAND PROMPT or other boots work when you tap F8. Also tell the last change, such as any partition rearranging.

Bob

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More Info
Mar 6, 2005 10:23PM PST

Bob,
Thanks for your reply. None of the safe mode options get past the loading process either. Since my niece is not very computer savvy, I'm sure there was never any partitioning changes made on the hard drive. I even threw in a new clean hard drive to rule out any wierd problems with that. You might be right about a WinXP problem, but the machine wouldn't load Win2k or run any Linux liveCD's so I kind of thought that ruled out a WinXP problem. I will look on the WinXP forum. Thanks again.
Marshall

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If LiveCDs don't run as well as Win2k....
Mar 6, 2005 11:18PM PST

You have found a hardware problem that needs repair. I don't want to sound too negative, but this is the old Sotec company and if the usual happens, you don't end up with a fixed machine.

-> What to do now... Recover what files you can't lose before doing anything else. A simple $3.65 drive adapter from compgeeks.com and other places will allow you to place that hard disk on the second IDE channel of a working desktop and either with XP/2000 or Knoppix you can retrieve the files that can't be lost.

Bob

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Places I would send such a machine...
Mar 6, 2005 11:18PM PST

ikenfixit.com and notefix.com

Bob

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Thanks
Mar 6, 2005 11:44PM PST

Bob,
You are in line with my suspicions. I zeroed in on acpi related stuff because dos and Win98 will load and run. I lost the contents of the hard drive long ago when I first ran the restore disks (and got the hint about dos since Norton Ghost is running under dos). I'm going to try and load one of the modern Linux distro's with acpi turned off and see if I can at least get some function out of th e machine.
Thanks,
Marshall