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  • From: sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [BL] broken windows needs replacing
  • Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 17:03:48 +0000 (UTC)

On Sat, 16 Apr 2005, Sheldon Isaac wrote:

On 16 Apr 2005 at 23:45, sindi keesan wrote:
My neighbor's Windows (2000?, ME?, about 600 MHz) computer has been having
problems for a year or two and he says now it is dead, won't even boot into
Windows, and he suspects a virus.

Please excuse, I am relatively un-expert. "it is dead" - you figuring the
hardware is probably OK, but the software is messed up?

I have not seen it. He says it 'won't go on' which could mean either.
Before this it would work part of the time. A friend once gave us a computer which was 'broken and not usable' which meant the serial port had been hit by lighting so he could not use a mouse. We used it without a mouse. The neighbor is a carpenter.

If it can boot with DOS floppy, use HWinfo, for example, and check the
hardware. And, if need be, physically check it - cables, connections, CPU
and memory seated, replace doubtful RAM (even with a smaller total Mb for
the interim, if necessary), etc etc. You are very competent with hardware.
Does the computer overheat? Fan? Dirty?

We will check all this after doing a virus check. One person gave us a computer that 'worked perfectly' except for a dead cpu fan that she did not know about, and in the process of removing personal files she removed some things pointed to in autoexec bat and it would not boot until I made a dummy file with the right name. We have memtest. Most likely it will boot but not run Windows (impression gained from another friend who talked to him), considering he said he tried to put on XP and it ran out of memory or something.

http://www.hwinfo.com

Thanks, did not know about this program. I have learned a lot from list members.

We are going to use F-Prot on it.

Good!

Look at http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
I no longer have a high-speed connection, but could make and US-mail you a
copy of a very slightly older version of Damn Small, as a "live CD" to boot
Linux from.

We have a copy of an older version of this and had not thought of using it, mainly because I am not very familiar with it, but can show him that too, after he looks at what I am using (166MHz with 32MB RAM and BL3 and 2). I also want to put BL3 on a zip disk and run it from the boot disk that David put together for parport zip drive. The neighbor is luckily in no hurry as his computer has not worked right for over a year and he checks email at work.

Regards,
Sheldon Isaac




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