First of all, I am so grateful for all your help, and hope that you know that!

I did go look for floppies - and the one store I had time to visit only had ones
formatted for a Mac - so came home and found some empty ones here - exactly
six. I then put one in the floppy drive and discovered the option that said "create a recovery disc" - so I did that. I have no idea what that did. I know absolutely nothing about MS-DOS - so I"m not sure what to do with that disc if I did put it in my machine if it refuses to boot up.

I am running Windows XP Home Edition with service pack 2 - sorry if I omitted that with my original question. So it looks like - from reading the last two posts, that the automated recovery option is not available to me - so I will have to go the other route that b1caez01 was talking about. However, I'll still have to go get more floppies - as now I only have 5.

Meanwhile - I did set up the machine to do a 'disc check' and then shut down the machine and it did come back up and do the check - again taking it a full five hours to do so - is that normal? But at the end of that, the machine booted up normally and has been ok since - even when I shut it down last night because of excessive thunderstorms in our area. It does take forever to boot up - and the first time, it came up with that "check sum" error - and I have to click F1 to continue, and the date is always off - saying either January of 2001 or 2002. The second time I had to re-boot in order to get it connected to the cable modem, I did not get the "check-sum" error - and things seem ok. I say 'seems' because I don't trust that it is.

Now I will go and do the clean-up thing that b1caez01 mentioned, and see what that turns up. Hoping so much to put all these errors behind me... and being ever so much more diligent with backups...

Gratefully,
Trish

Hi,

are you sure that the very beginning of your problems wasn't due to bad weather ie. thunder and lightning? You say that the power went out. IF the computer keeps "forgetting" the date, it will possibly also be forgetting other important stuff like harddisk type, ram type etc. This is just off the cuff but I would check two things before doing anything more radical:

1) get a new CMOS battery and change it.
2) get a flash-image of the newest BIOS and re-install it.

What may have happened is that the "weather" caused a power-surge that corrupted the BIOS and/or damaged the battery. "Forgetting" the date an the checksum errors seem to indicate problems with these components.

But as I said this is off the cuff...

HTH
/Petri

Thanks for your reply - and I am sure the recent storms are not the cause of the 'check sum' error - as this has been an occasional problem for a while - so very occasional that I never thought of it, but it is becoming more the norm.

Where does one get a new CMOS battery? At Comp USA or the like? Do they come in different make/models - or do I just need to get 'any kind'. Related to that - how do I go about changing it? Will it be obvious to the eye where this component is, and is it just a matter of popping it out and replacing it? I do not want to appear dense, but this is uncharted territory for me.

Same question for the 'flash-image' (what is that?) of the newest BIOS - where do I obtain that? And is there a particular type for different computers, or is it specific to a certain computer?

Sorry to need the 'step-by-step' directions, but all this stuff is very intimidating to me....

As always, thanks for your patience and help - I truly appreciate it!

Trish

I don't know diddly about mother boards and such, so I shan't comment on whether the battery is or is not at the crux of it all... Usually, most everything else on a computer goes belly up before a battery does...I am assuming that you don't know diddly either...so go to someone who knows about this sort of stuff... It does not sound like a software issue...IMHO...

re: floppies: to reclaim that floppie, sometimes, just reinsert and reformat...all is not lost...in fact, since it already reformatted, it is already done... the only problem I've found is that once XP reformates a disc it is useless for most everything else, so, if you can get "fresh" [pre-formatted] floppies, it is less confusing and time consuming...if your computer cannot prepare the floppies properly, and you have only one computer [many have a main frame and a laptop] then you may need to have someone else prepare the discs for you. Since, you do not need your own setup to prepare them, one computer is as good as another, as you are only downloading what is going to go on the floppies rather than scanning your own system and using it to prepare them, like an ISO boot disc...

re: batteries, et al; I'd take the whole shebang to a small computer store, not a big boxer, and have them check it out...just ask them to check to see if it needs one, and while you are there, ask them to check the mother board for any blips...to see if anything is amiss...the smaller stores, especially the ones that build units for customers, will often tinker around with it for a lot less then the big boxers in the hope that you will return with more business...the big boxers don't need you or your business on that scale...help the little guys

re: motherboard: Motherboard Troubleshooting Procedures You might get some insight into your problems there. There are many software available, but I'd leave it to a qualified techie to do, as noted above...they've got the proper equipment and know what they are doing.

A google search for your specific problems may turn up good advice e.g. "clock does not work" This was an interesting site that I turned up...

Howstuffworks "Why does my computer need a battery?"

" Why does my computer need a battery?

Most computers have a small battery. In many cases, the battery is soldered directly onto the motherboard, but the battery is usually in some sort of holder so it is easy to replace. Computers are not the only things that have a small battery like this -- camcorders and digital cameras often have them, too. Just about any gadget that keeps track of the time will have a battery.

In your computer (as well as other gadgets), the battery powers a chip called the Real Time Clock (RTC) chip. The RTC is essentially a quartz watch that runs all the time, whether or not the computer has power. The battery powers this clock. When the computer boots up, part of the process is to query the RTC to get the correct time and date. A little quartz clock like this might run for five to seven years off of a small battery. Then it is time to replace the battery.

This does not explain why your computer would not boot, however. You would expect the computer to boot fine but have an incorrect time and date. The reason your computer would not boot is because the RTC chip also contains 64 (or more) bytes of random access memory (RAM). The clock uses 10 bytes of this space, leaving 54 bytes for other purposes. The BIOS stores all sorts of information in the CMOS RAM area, like the number of floppy and hard disk drives, the hard disk drive type, etc. If the CMOS RAM loses power, the computer may not know anything about the hard disk configuration of your machine, and therefore it cannot boot.

Many more modern computers are not quite so dependent on the CMOS RAM. They store the settings in non-volatile RAM that works without any power at all. If the battery goes dead, the clock fails but the computer can still boot using the information in the non-volatile RAM area. "

Tryshz, the next time you start your PC press F2 to enter the BIOS settings, check the time and date, save and exit and restart your PC. Then press F8 when it restarts and choose the boot logging option.When your PC has finished loading, find and post the bootlog.txt file.

Regards

Martin

I have a friend that left his computer on during a storm and the power went out, and when he tried to reboot, his computer went haywire, nothin but errors than it eventually wouldnt turn on again. It seems kind of odd for you to be gone and not on the computer than come back after it was shut down by a storm and then have all these errors for it to be a trojan. I think during the surge some bad things happened in that quick instant of shutdown. Electricity works in very weird ways.

The saga continues.
First, as always, I thank everyone for their input - I am very grateful for all the
help I am receiving.

I did create the boot disc. I finally was able to find some new floppy discs, and have created the 6-disc set. I back up the registry along with all my other backups.

I did get that registry cleaner - and ran it - there was a ton of stuff wrong - and so I just let the program fix it.

I (of course) am now getting a new error - BSOD every single night - and now more often than that - at times no blue screen, but the computer is simply locked up, and I have to reboot. So far, it IS re-booting.

The new error:
DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
Stop: 0x000000D1(0x00000034, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0xF74C58F0)
IdechnDr.sys - Address F74C58F0 base at F74C0000, Datestamp 3d99eac3.

I tried to run a disc check - and the computer froze at:
"Check is verifying indexes Stage 2 of 5 0% completed.

Was out of town visiting my son, who built this computer - and his advice was that he thought the hard drive was failing, and to get another one and transfer all the files and operating system to it. So I'm looking into that (as the computer has failed twice already today) - but how does one move all the stuff from one drive to a new one? He gave me an IBM program to do this - but it will not install on my machine. Trying desperately to move all the stuff I can to my laptop before this machine goes completely - any further enlightenment would be most helpful to me....all this trouble is overwhelming me...

Thanks for your help and patience....
Trish