Hello. I am having a boot-up problem with our family 600mhz Pentium III.
This is a problem I have being trying to solve for over 4 months so any help anything would be so very much appreciated. Well here goes!

The configuration is:
Windows 98 SE
Intel Pentium III 600mhz .25micron processor on a 100mhz bus.
128mb of Micron PC100 Memory.
ASUS P3BF 100MHZ Front side bus Motherboard
Western Digital ATA 66 28gigabyte Hard drive on a
Promise ATA 66 Hard drive card
Floppy Drive
3Dfx voodoo 3 16MB PCI video card
Hollywood Sigma II PCI card
Vortex 2 PCI Sound Card
Hollywood HiVAL 16x DVD drive.
In a 400watt Antec SOHO file server case with rear fans and fan pulling air up and out of power supply
1400VA APC Backup Battery Power Unit(In case the power goes out)

It is a home build computer. One day I went to start it up and the screen just flickered.
I heard the fans whizzing. So I knew they were working and it was booting somewhat.
I just could not reach POST. I thought it was the video card or DVD card. At this time our Monitor was connected or passed through our DVD card and a cable ran from our DVD card to our video card. The DVD card is a Hollywood Sigma II PCI card and the video card is a 3dFx Voodoo 3 16mb PCI card.

So I ran the monitor cable to the video card directly. Still I got the flickering black screen at boot up like the monitor or video card were bad. So I took the voodoo 3 card out and tried it in my other computer. The other computer booted up on it with no problem. So I knew the video card worked. I pulled out the dvd card thinking maybe it was hanging the system. I put the video card back in and the 600mhz system booted. So I thought it was all fine. Bad dvd card. But it wasn't. Couple days later, I get this message on boot up: WINDOWS FILE ERROR. INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND RESTART.

I thought 3 things: The hard drive had a virus, the hard drive image was bad or Windows 98 was corrupt. I was still able to boot in safe mode at this time and get into the BIOS. Also at this time I had a 300watt power supply. So I was able to get into safe mode and do a virus scan and found nothing.

I restarted the system the system and I got the flickering black screen like my video card
Or monitor was bad. So I killed the power. Switched the monitor because the video card had been tested before. Still I got the same thing. So I shut off the system and waited a day. Next day I booted into windows 98 like nothing happened. Virus checked it all. Nothing. So I backed up all my data on cds and did a virus check on the cds on my other computer and the cds came up with nothing.

So I thought my 300 watt power supply was bad. The case I had was outdated so I bought a new ANTEC BX1400 SOHO File server case with 400 watt power supply.

At this point I thought I should seek some outside help so I called my cousin who has built several home computers and is much more knowledgeable in this sort of thing than I am. He felt it was a corrupt Windows 98 image and to wipe out the hard drive and that is why I got the WINDOWS FILE ERROR. INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND RESTART.
Error.

So I wiped out the hard drive took all the computer components and installed them in the new ANTEC 400 watt case. At this point I thought I best only install the bare bones of what I need to boot the sucker. So I had just:
motherboard in the new case,
cpu,
memory,
hard drive connected not to the Promise ATA 66 card but the motherboard itself,
and video card.
(Side note: the max hard drive transfer rate of the MB is 33mbs). I even took out the floppy drive because at this time the floppy on my other computer decided to die on us. (Just our rotten luck).
I even didn't connect the DVD drive.
I wrote zeros to the hard drive using our other computer. Oddly when I connected the hard drive to my other computer I was able to view all our files like there was no problem.
Still I formatted the hard drive so it would be like it was when it came from the factory.

I tried to boot it again and got the black flickering screen.
The system is able to turn on. I hear the fans turning. I see them turning.
The fans on my heatsink attached to the cpu are moving. These fans are connected to the motherboard so I can monitor their speed. Also I have a green light on my motherboard and it lights up. So I believe the motherboard is functioning fine.

At this point I thought maybe the CMOS battery was dead. So I replaced that.
I also switched out my memory with my other computer.
I tried to boot the computer. It does not post. I cannot get into the bios.
All I see is my monitor screen blinking black, I see & hear all the fans moving.
The cpu heatsink feels HOT to the touch. I hear no warning beeps or anything.
I am baffled. Any help from anyone would be very much appreciated.
Thanks.


try another ram stick...or maybe the motherboard needs a bios flash...