PC Won't Boot. Stops During Memory Check.

But I fixed it!!

Here's the whole story, but if you just want the fix; scroll down to the bottom.

The night before last I had cause to reboot my old PC. Since it has been at Dads it has been on constantly, but when I rebooted it it got a quarter of the way through the memory check and froze up solid.

I hit F12, F2, Del trying to get into the BIOS but it was completely locked up, so I reboot again and again and again. Same thing.

So I take out the memory (2 x 1GB) and try each stick on its own in each of the 4 slots. Same thing, only gets half way through 1GB before freezing up, same place every time with each memory stick. Well, it would be a strange coincidence that both memory modules are causing a memory error at same place and locking up the whole machine, so for now I can discount that!!

Then I notice the CPU fan. Err ... there seems to be half the carpet wedged between then fan and the heat sink. *cough* OK I'll vacuum that out and let it cool down while I pop to the pub for a beer. Cursing myself on the way that I have probably fried my CPU.

So I come back an hour later and gah, still not working. *sulk*

So I spent most of yesterday at work searching the internet for ideas and solutions and I had a list of things to check when I got home last night.

For once I chose to do the easiest thing first. That was to remove all USB devices. I thought it can't be that, but lets just eliminate that as a possibility.

Well actually the first thing I did was turn it on hoping that 24 hours of downtime would cure it. Nope! still knackered.

So, lets remove the USB devices. BINGO. I removed the USB Keyboard, USB Mouse and Nostromo n52 and then PC went flying through the memory check and then told me "No Keyboard Installed" so I plugged the keyboard back in and hit F1 and "Wiz Bang Wallop" it proceeds to the IDE check and then Windows loads.

Plug in other USB devices all is fine. Reboot PC. Locks up at memory check. Remove all but keyboard. Reboot. Fine.

Thinking back on it the last time I successfully rebooted was before I plugged my sons Razer Gaming mouse in.

It seems that like old PCs would try and boot off a floppy (if one was left in the drive) and give you a "Non System Disk" error; my PC is trying to boot the BIOS or something off a mouse - hahahhaha!!

Not an uncommon problem apparently, but you would think it could lock up in a more user friendly manner wouldn't you? A message would be nice.

So there you go, if this happens to you, try unplugging your USB devices before you go hacking your PC to bits :)

If this has been helpful to you please leave me a comment.