ME Boot Problems

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Working on a Gateway Box w/ Win ME installed, Problem began w/ system locking up during operation. Owner tried and failed to use restore disk. Now it refuses to boot at all. Opened case and it was full of dust, cleaned it out and tried swapping HD with one that I know is ok and same problem. Thought CMOS battery was low changed battery no change. It displays message that CMOS date and time not set and directs you to hit f1 to change settings, but hangs there. Any suggestions?
 
Yeah, get rid of ME. It was really a piece of garbage. Mine would crash every other week due to the driver file reproducing itself every time I shut it down and then restarted. The driver files would reproduce themselves at every boot. It slowed down so much, at first I thought it was a virus. Then I noticed the driver cache folder would deep growing. If at shutdown, there were 1000 files, at the next bootup, it would multiply to 2000 files, and so on and so forth.
ME was a thought without much quality testing before dumping it on the market.
I would upgrade to XP. Even 98 SE was a better product.
 
Thanks,
Tried to upgrade but, it either starts loading the setup files and hangs up or if I persist it load the files and gets to a point where it sees no OS
 
Try putting the XP ugrade disk in the drive and then shut it down. Then reboot and see if it will work. What I usually do when installing/reinstalling an operating system is to go into my bios and reset my boot sequence to have my cdrom/burner as the first boot device. Then I put the disk in after saving the changes and shut it down. Then I reboot.
 
That's the route I took, but to no avail. When I opened the case this thing was full of dust, as I said I cleaned it very well, but could the dust have caused this problem? New update I removed the CMOS battery and cleaned the contacts again and it's booted, but no telling how long it will run. Any ideas on items to check.
 
What are your system specs? Dust will cause it to overheat, which will lead to problems. What to do next depends on your budget. My advice (but that's just me and I've already had my problems with ME), would be to go out and get a full install of XP w/SP2 since Microsoft's support for SP1 is gone.
 
Let it sit for a while. Make sure the side case cover (left side cover) is off. Try to reboot it with cover off. When it starts to boot, see if the heat sink fan (fan over the cpu chip) is running. At first impression, sounds like a heat problem. Are you getting any error messages prior to it locking up??
 
You may be having the same problem that I had with ME. Go into your Windows folder. I can't remember the exact folder name, but I do believe it's just labeled Cache or Driver Cache. Right click on it and scroll down to properties. See how many files there are in it. I believe the number it should be is somewhere around 800. Mine kept multiplying. I had to manually delete all duplicates.
 
When I first had this problem and finally figured it out, that folder had over 120,000 files in it. The problem was that the OS was continually searching that folder for the drivers for programs to operate and it would just lock up.
 
One thing, if you already change the HD with no OS installed and you try to install windows and then lock up, that has nothing to do with the software.

Could be many reasons for the lockup, I'll first change IDE cable for one it's new or at least one that you are completely sure it works ok, then make sure the HD is visible at BIOS, then try the full install of windows.

I agree Win ME is trash, and that system might run XP way much better.
If the installation on the different HD (of same one but completely reformatted) still locks up, you might also want to try a diferent optical drive, also change the IDE cable (trust me, i have reasons to blame IDE cables, make me waste a lot of time in the past) If the problem still persists, I believe MOBO could be the problem. If the problem is solved after the windows installation then sofware was the only problem, nothing more to worry about.

Good Luck
 
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