Problems booting

Hello. I have an old Dell Dimension desktop here that a friend asked me to have a look at. It appears to have Win98 OS on it, based on the disks that came with it. However, I can't get the thing to boot up. In addition to the C: drive, I've tried booting with a Win98 CD, a Win95B CD and a Win98 diskette (drive A The computer just powers up, shows the BIOS info and goes straight to the blue DELL screen - nothing else happens.

Now, I can troubleshoot some software problems, infections, etc., and have reinstalled a few operating systems, but I don't have a clue when it comes to something like this. Evidently this computer has been sitting for a long time, unused, but it has always been plugged in. Anyone have any ideas? Could the MB have died?

Thanks.

What I normally do in these situations is unplug anything connected to the motherboard, hard disks, floppy disks, cd/dvd roms, unplug the cable from the motherboard and the power to each device, take it back to basics so all you have is the graphics card and ram..

Also find the clear CMOS jumper on the motherboard and clear the cmos, then try it again.

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Thanks Mike. I opened up the computer and started unplugging everything. I inadvertantly powered the computer up without attaching the mouse and keyboard - it booted! Plugged the keyboard & mouse in and it hung. Powered down, tried to reboot and had the same problem. Plugged in a USB mouse; still the same problem. Plugged in a USB keyboard and VOILA, everything works.

Thanks for your advice!

Thanks for letting us know, glad you got it sorted

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