It wouldn’t boot

A friend of mine is still using dial-up Internet service so he can save some money. He doesn’t really use the Internet much so dial-up suits him just fine. He called me the other day saying that he couldn’t connect to his Internet service anymore. I told him to bring me his computer and I’d take a look at it.

I tested out his system and it turned out the modem was the problem. It was about 5 years old and it just gave out. My friend didn’t want to spend much on the repair, I was only charging him for the part, so I went to CompUSA and picked up a cheap v.92 modem. The modem was less than $20 because I have another friend that works there and he gave me a discount.

Once I got home, I pulled the old PCI modem out and put in the new modem I just purchased. Push the power button and….no video. There was power but it wouldn’t POST. Hmmmmm. I take the modem out and try the power again and it boots up fine. I shut the system down and put the modem back in, making sure it was seated properly, and it still wouldn’t POST when the power was turned on. Just to make sure it’s not the slot, I put try a PCI video card one time and a PCI sound card another time and it POST’ed fine each time.

I went to CompUSA this morning to exchange the modem. They asked the obvious “What’s wrong with it?” question and I told them (system wouldn’t boot with it installed). The first thing the guy behind the counter said was “Did you try installing the drivers?” Wow! Why didn’t I think of that? Oh, I know, because the system wouldn’t boot. I told the guy that it would be hard to install the drivers when the system won’t boot and that’s when the light bulb went on and he said, “Oh, yeah, that makes sense.”

The new modem works fine in the system. My friend was happy to get his system back without having to pay some repair shop more than the computer is worth to fix it. I don’t know if his Internet service uses v.92 but it doesn’t really matter because the main improvement, faster uploads, isn’t something he utilizes.

You can have power over people as long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything, he’s no longer in your power. -Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

08.Oct.05 Hardware, Technology

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3 Responses to “It wouldn’t boot”

  1. CypherXero | October 10th, 2005 at 9:45 am

    So what made it work? Did you take the modem out, boot the system, install the drivers, and then put the modem back in, or what? I don’t think you said what finally made the modem work in the computer.

  2. Poe | October 10th, 2005 at 3:57 pm

    He most likely used a different brand of modem. I bought a couple of $5 modems from newegg one time in case I ever needed them. They have come in handy a couple of times.

  3. wyckedone | October 10th, 2005 at 5:19 pm

    So what made it work?

    The modem I got when I exchanged the bad one. It was just a problem with the first modem.

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