🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <214@bahamas.nsc.com> somani@parns.nsc.com (Anil Somani) writes:
>
>  Lately I have been having problem with my PC-XT.
>
>  Symptoms:
>  1. When I boot up, the monitor screen remains dark and 
>     nothing shows up. The hard disk clicks as if the system 
>     is booting up but nothing appears on the screen.

If you have a color monitor, you can do a basic test to see if it is
working by holding a plain sheet of paper close to the face of the
CRT.  If the monitor working, the high-voltage will cause static
electricity to build on the face of the CRT, thus attracting the
paper.  Of course, the presence of high-voltage does not guarantee
that the montor is 100%, but at least gives you a basic indication of
fuction.

>  2. The system crashes with a message "Stack Failure", all 
>     of a sudden during normal operation.
>  3. The screen freezes during normal operation.
>
>  These happen 50% of the time. Other times the system 
>  functions perfectly normal without any problems.
>
>  Someone suggested me that my system might have got infected
>  with some virus. How do I check it and get rid of it, if
>  that's the case. 

Quickest way is to get your hands on an original DOS diskette, one
that is write protected.  Try booting the system off this to see if
the problem persists.  If booting from a write protected original DOS
disk alleviates the problem, you may have:

   1.  A virus.  Get a copy of an anti-virus utility (e.g., McAfee's
       SCAN, available from many FTP sites and BBS's.
   2.  Corrupt partition table, DOS system files, and/or device driver
       or TSR files loaded on boot.
   3.  Conflicting TSR's and/or device drivers.  

In case 1, you should take the action recommended by the anti-virus
utility to disinfect the system.

In case 2, your best bet is to backup your hard disk and try
re-installing DOS (using the SYS command) and other potentially
corrupt files from their original distribution disks.  Note that it
may be necessary to repartition the drive and reformat it.

In case 3, you should remove all device drivers and TSR's from your
config.sys and autoexec.bat that are not absolutely essential for
starting your system.  Then restore them one at a time until the
problem reoccurs.  When the problem comes back, the last added device
driver or TSR is the culprit - try rearrainging the load order of the
offending driver/TSR is you cannot live without it.

>  During my experimentation, I also found
>  that the BIOS and BASIC ROMS on the mother board get heated.
>  May be it's normal or may be it has to do something with
>  the problem.

This is not unusual.

-- 
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Mark Medici/SysProg3 * Rutgers University/CCIS * medici@elbereth.rutgers.edu
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