Acer Aspire PII 333Mhz tower freezes after counting memory

I just received an Acer Aspire PII 333Mhz tower computer last weekend
as a trade-in while selling used systems at a flea market.

The machine seems to be working perfectly, except sometimes when you
first power it on, all of the keyboard lights (caps lock, num lock and
scroll lock) just stay lit solid and it hangs. Holding down the power
button for 4+ seconds shuts it back off, and it usually boots just
fine on the second (or third) attempt.

Then, when you tell the OS (I've tried Windows '95, '98 and even XP
Pro) to restart the computer, it usually counts the memory, says it
checks out good, then freezes up.

It doesn't even begin trying to load up the operating system, so this
seems like a BIOS issue/conflict. This machine reports its BIOS as
version 3.1, and I can't seem to find any newer updates on Acer's ftp
or web site.

I already pulled out the modem card (only expansion card in the
machine), and tried playing with BIOS settings (including setting the
serial port to "disabled" and "enabled" as 2F8, IRQ 3 -
enabling/disabling ACPI support, etc.) and nothing seems to help.

I saw what sounded like this same issue mentioned in a FAQ on Acer's
site, but their solution simply said to "make sure hardware monitoring
is set to "enabled", and "spread spectrum" is "disabled" in the BIOS".
My BIOS has neither of these options, even after I press F8 and look
in the advanced settings!

Is this simply a defective motherboard, or has anyone else experienced
this and found a solution? I know it's a fairly old machine, but I'd
still like to get it working properly so I can resell it and get my
money back out of it.

Thanks in advance,
Tom.

(Tom Wyrick) wrote in
om:

I just received an Acer Aspire PII 333Mhz tower computer last weekend
as a trade-in while selling used systems at a flea market.


have you tried re-seating the RAM?