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Pentium 4 Laptop cannot get past "Mouse initialized" (photos.aesistril.com)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by yogurtwrong@lemmy.world to c/retrocomputing@lemmy.sdf.org

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This is with HDD and CD-ROM removed. I tried booting with either stick of ram removed and it was still the same

When i turn off quiet boot in the bios setup, I get the following logs:

223M System RAM Passed
512K Cache SRAM Passed
System BIOS shadowed
Video BIOS shadowed
Mouse Initialized
(then it halts here)

I also turned off IDE and IR in the bios, didn't help. Enabled a setting so it beeps when it starts booting the OS but the beep never comes which means it is stuck in POST.

It also can't reach boot device selection menu.

This machine was in pretty bad shape when i got it and I basically had to take it apart and put it back together.

CPU was repasted and there is no way it is overheating since I can stay in the BIOS as long as I want to and the fan kicks on when the CPU starts heating up.

There were apparently PCI diagnostic cards for these machines but they are hard to find where I live. So guesses to which stage boot is failing in is appreciated.

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[–] wizzor@sopuli.xyz 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Is there a battery for the rtc and have you replaced it? An empty cell might cause a voltage drop and have weird effects.

[–] yogurtwrong@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

CMOS battery is dead, but are you really sure that is it? I mean it holds bios settings as long as I keep it plugged in

[–] wizzor@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 days ago

I don't know, but if it is easy to replace or even remove I would try that - won't make it any worse at least.

[–] Doomsider@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Some of the old bios would have an option to stop boot if it couldn't initialize things like a keyboard so I would check there first.

[–] MML@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I mean works it be crazy to think it's the touchpad?

[–] yogurtwrong@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

i unplugged the touchpad, now it just doesn't say "mouse initialized" and still crashes

[–] TerraRoot@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Then it's an issue before the mouse, is the stock BIOS available anywhere? Maybe a reflash, tho I don't know what " * BIOS shadowed " means

[–] yogurtwrong@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

Shadowed means it just copied the bios from rom to ram for faster access. It is part of the normal boot procedure. The problem is probably after mouse initialization.

I'll try a reflash if i can find the original bios. Maybe it is corrupted but i doubt it. I think the problem might be with pci devices

[–] thisbenzingring@lemmy.today 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

What kind of laptop? The old Sony viao or whatever they were called, were full of stupid proprietary stuff. If something fails it's would all fail.

Does the keyboard have a pause button? Sometimes pressing it a couple times would continue if it's an IRQ problem. Do you know if it's a ps/2 or serial based mouse? Sometimes if the ps/2 is fried, the motherboard is toast. It's really easy to fry that port. Unplugging a device with the system was powered on, risked killing it

[–] yogurtwrong@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

It's a Toshiba A30

When I hold pause, it shows me a blue rectangle and reboots, then fails to boot as always. Hitting repeatedly has the same effect.

Idk what type the "mouse" is, touchpad has a 4 pin ribbon connector

I can reach somewhere like this when I hold both printsc and pause, then it crashes shortly after

1000042143

[–] thisbenzingring@lemmy.today 3 points 2 days ago

do you get a POST beep?

if the pause button crashes the system, thats not a good sign. basically its haulting the CPU and if the CPU is unstable and the system cannot "pause" in that BIOS system, not a good sign.

are you able to open and save the BIOS? resetting to factory defaults doesn't work? try turning off any auto setting. does it have a diagnostics?