Hi people,

I wonder if anyone has experienced this problem and might be able to suggest a possible approach to resolve it?

I have a Gigabyte 8S661FXM-478 with a Celeron 2.4 GHZ, 2 x 256 MByte DDR 333 MHz, 1 x 80 GByte + 1 x 4 GByte HDD on IDE-0, and a couple of CD drives on IDE-1.

It has on-board SOUND, AGP video and LAN.

I assembled the PC from parts, and it worked fine for a while with Windows 98SE installed and running.

Then it started to hang at random TIMES - it would just stop dead, sometimes as Windows was booting up, sometimes before Windows even got started, sometimes while Windows was running. Same thing if I booted off a DOS floppy disk - the PC would just stop dead. Nothing would respond, not even the Reset button. I'd have to switch the PC off and then back on again.

After one of these episodes in which the PC would just stop dead in its tracks, subsequent attempts to restart the PC would yield no display, no beeps, but definite signs of life as both CDs and the HDs came to life, and then appeared to cycle through the same process of coming to life again and again, repeatedly, as evidenced by their little green lights lighting up for a period, then blanking out briefly before lighting up for another go, etc.

Now, in this state, the PC was effectively useless. No POST, no beeps, no nothing, just the endless cycling of what looks like the very FIRST steps of the computer starting to wake up.

I don't think it's a RAM problem - I replaced that several times.

I don't think it's a PS problem - replaced that several times.

I don't think it's a HDD or CD problem, as they all work swimmingly well when the PC is working.

Could it be a CPU problem? I don't believe so, and I'll elaborate a little on that, but I'm still open to suggestions.

The thing is, if I leave the PC for a few days, come back and start it up again, lo and behold it sometimes boots up again, apparently without any problems. And away we go again, happy as two pigs in a sty, until the PC decides to do it's "drop dead" thing again.

The thing is, I can't see a dodgy CPU causing this sort of problem, simply because by my way of thinking, when a CPU dies, it usually stays dead - forever. This PC keeps coming back to life.

I updated the BIOS to the latest available version (F8, I believe) during one of the periods when the PC was acting like a proper PC again. I thought that had fixed the problem, until it happened again, and again, etc.

Lastly, I will note here that, in researching this matter, I read a couple of forums on the Web in which people described identical pathology with the same or similar motherboards (eg, same chipset, different MB makers). Those forums were somewhat dated, and no solutions were offered in those cases. BUT the problem was identical to a "T", right down to the CDROMs behaving as if they were repeatedly being initialized, over and over, without any POST or beeps or screen displays at all.

I'm hoping that the reports of an identical problem being experienced by other people mean that my situation isn't unique, and that some common identifiable issue is at the crux of the matter.

So that's my story (for now).

Can anyone suggest what might be going on here?

Thanks for any help.The last time I had a similar experience the video card was grounding out on the chassis. When it wouldn't boot I REMOVED the motherboard (and the video card), power supply and one hard drive from the case. I put all those guts on an anti-static bag (one that the motherboard came in) on a table. I then connected the power switch to the motherboard, the power supply to the motherboard, video card, and hard drive, connected the monitor and all was well. (This brought me to the conclusion that there was a grounding issue.) It's also possible that some other connection was not quite right and I corrected it upon reassembly.