🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi,
Unusually I don't have a problem at the moment but i thought I would
post this as it may save others out there a long hard slog, as it
actually took me many days to solve.
I was then managing several Novell Netware networks and had just taken
delivery of 35 brand spanking new PC's, all 486DX33 's. ( This was a
couple of years ago but a similar event reared its head recently ! ).
These were connected to a 50 user server. MS Windows was installed on
the server and every PC accessed that one copy. Perhaps not the
correct way to do it but in the circumstances at the time it was
useful. All the PC's were diskless and booted from the server remotely.
The problem occurred when about 20% of the PC's refused to run Windows.
They simply crashed after the title screen and then returned a network
error. Understandably this caused great confusion. One copy of Windows -
so if one worked they all should work. Thin wire ethernet cabling - again
if one works they should all work. However I have seen some funnies so
the cabling was thoroughly checked out. Network security - nope, even
enabling concurrent logins for one user failed to solve the problem for
these few PC's. Shared access to all files - nope even tried it as 
Supervisor on every PC.
Thorough diagnostics on the affected PC's failed to bring up even 
the dullest beam of light from the end of the tunnel.
I was stumped.
To confuse the matter further looking at the bootlog file for Windows
indicated that the PC's were failing on the video driver.
This sidetracked me for a long time while video cards were swapped
between working and non-working PC's. Given that these PC's were all
bought at the same time from the same supplier and all the video cards
were identical...............!
I started checking BIOS revisions and found some irregularities but as
the problem occurred on PC's regardless of their BIOS revision it didn't
make any sense. 
Enough - this story has gone on far too long. I don't know how I noticed
but the companys quality control must have been crap. For some reason
some of the PC's had the 25 pin serial port as COM1 and some had the
9 pin as COM1. This caused a problem as the serial mice were attached to 
COM1 and consequently Windows was falling over loading the mouse driver
not the video driver as bootlog.txt indicated !
Seems simple doesn't it ? - but you try and find it given all the variables
that it could have been. I don't know why Windows should actually fall over
just because it fails to find the expected mouse rather than just run
without any mouse control, anyone know the answer ?
I hope that this very long story is of help to others out there as it cost
me first grey hairs and my company a great deal of overtime !
Happy PC networking !

Dave

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_________________________________________________
| ___| || |  _  \ | ___| | |__  || |  _  \  __| |   Dave Sharp
| __|  || |     / | __|  | _  | || |     / |  _ |   British Computer Society
|_|    || |_| \_\ |____| |____| || |_| \_\ |____|   dsharp@bcshq.demon.co.uk
 Burning Rubber on the Information Super-Highway.