dead machine

[ajmmac]

a friend has an ibm aptiva pentium lll 64mb ram win98--about 1 1/2 yrs old--was runnung fine and he got error message ay boot up saying mouse not connected--it was--tried different mice etc--no luck--used recovery disk and now system will not boot up--when switched on the ibm logo comes up and machine stopr at that point--there are NO beep codes at all--any ideas--motherboard? bios? processor?--help would be appreciated--obviously it won't boot from floppy either

[lucasdigital]

Sounds nasty :( See if you can enter the bios control screen on bootup and see if you can alter the 'fail on' settings so that the bootup is not interupted by a lack of a mouse. This might get the machine back and working. With the problem occuring so early I would think this might be a hardware problem such as damage to the PS2 or serial port in which the mouse normally sits. check for damage such as a pin having broken off in the port.. Good luck.