off topic: hardware advice

[Janina Sajka]

It doesn't sound to me like there's any particular problem. The shutdown
from Windows behavior you describe is just all too common. While it may
have many causes, it is absolutely correct that the next boot include a
run of scandisk. That is how it should be.

The business about your cmos password is another matter. Is it trying to
get you to set a password in cmos? Or did you ever set such a thing and
now it wants you to enter it? In most cases, blind users should avoid cmos
passwords like the plague--because you won't have speech during cmos.

But, what are you doing to get into cmos? It shouldn't come up unless you
request to get into cmos via whatever command does that on your system.
 On
Sat, 23 Jun 2001, Kenny Hitt wrote:

> Ok, here goes.
> First, up until June 12, the laptop was a Windows only system.  I always ran
> software speech, so I didn't have any feedback until the system reached the
> desktop.
> The computer has two problems which might or might not be related.  Both
> problems are intermitent.  They occurr about every month to two months.
> One problem, is sometimes the system will crash during a Windows shutdown.
> The system will start shutting down, but hang just before it powers off.
> When this happens, and I go ahead and press the off button, Windows will
> run scandisk the next time I boot.  The system usually boots with
> no problem.  That problem seems to occure after I've installed or uninstalled
> software in Windows, so I've always thought it is a Windows problem.
>
> Second problem:
> When you power on the system, you hear the drive power up, BIOS prompts me
> for my password, and you hear the drive start to access.  However, the access
> stops responding imediately, and won't boot.  When this happened in late
> April, I just left it until a friend came by to read the screen.  The message
> on the screen said that Windows was booting in safe mode.  It hung just after
> it printed that message.  If I power it off, and back on four or five times,
> it will finally boot and the problem won't happen again for a month or two.
> When it happened yesterday, I had a DOS floppy, so I booted up with it.
> Unfortunately, I've been brain dead lately, so I didn't have a floppy with
> ASAP.  For the last two weeks, when I needed to boot to DOS, I've just run ASAP
> from the Windows partition on drive C:.  When it failed this time, I booted with the DOS floppy, and tried to switch to drive C:.  The system just beeped at
> me after I type the c: command.  Once again, powering it off and back on
> finally got it to boot.  I now have a ASAP floppy for the next time!
>
>           Kenny
>
> On Fri, Jun 22, 2001 at 04:35:01PM -0500, Gregory Nowak wrote:
> > Backup and wait a minute.
> > What kind of a problem are
> > you specifically referring to.
> > Tell us exactly what happens and
> > in what sircumstances if any particular ones.
> > Greg
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Jun 22, 2001 at 04:24:48PM -0500, Kenny Hitt wrote:
> > > Hi, my laptop is having intermitent hardware failure.  When I used windows,
> > > I thought it could be a bad driver.  Now that I have Linux installed, I know
> > > for sure it is hardware.  Specifically, my hard drive.  My question is:
> > > since I always hear the drive power up, is it more likely to be the controler,
> > > or could it just be the hard drive.
> > >
> > > When it happened this morning, I didn't have a DOS floppy with ASAP to varify
> > > what message it displayed.  I've got one now for the next time it happens.
> > >
> > > One other thing, after trying to boot 4 or 5 times, it came up with no
> > > problem.  This behavior is consistant any time it happens.
> > >
> > >           Kenny
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Speakup mailing list
> > > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> > > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

-- 

				Janina Sajka, Director
				Technology Research and Development
				Governmental Relations Group
				American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)

Email: janina at afb.net		Phone: (202) 408-8175

Chair, Accessibility SIG
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