[Ham-Computers] Help With Diagnosis

[Duane Fischer, W8DBF]

Hello All,

I have a Compaq Prosario 233 MHZ P1 machine running under MS Windows 95b. It 
does "everything" that I need to do, being totally blind, and works with all 
of my adaptive speech and scanning technology. I have never had a problem 
with her, but I sense I am about to.

Since I use the MS DOS mode about 90% of the time on this machine, I use a 
3.5 inch boot disk. When the machine first boots up into DOS at the C:\ 
prompt all is well. When I load the word processing program sometimes I hear 
a high pitched steady tone. When it stops, the program loads. Everything 
works as it should.

Sometimes the word processing program loads fine, but the file I then try to 
load inti it causes the HD to make the high pitched steady tone. The file 
does load, the tone stops.

This generally happens only during the first five minutes of operation. It 
generally only occurs once.

Is what I am hearing a warning sign of an impending failure of the hard 
drive? Or is it something I need to do to the HD, such as run 'scandsk' or 
whatever? I have never run any HD cleaning or defragmentation program on 
this system!

Since Windows and DOS both have a defrag program by the same name, the 
machine has run the wrong file while in DOS! Wiped out a machine for me 
once! I have never run any of those programs again.

It does not get used on the Internet, except on rare occasions now. Then 
only to FTP a file to the HHI web site.

The new machines after Windows 98 SE will NOT run the adaptive software I 
have, they do not have the ISA or PCI slots for the thousand dollar speech 
card to plug into etc. None of them support the last version of Quicken to 
work with a screen reading program, Version 8.0 in DOS Screen reader support 
after that version does not exist for some reason. If I lose my ability to 
run Quicken 8.0 in DOS, I can no longer print checks.

So gentlemen, what is your best guess here? Should I have somebody copy 
everything on the 6 GIG HD to a DVD now? Take her to a qualified tech for a 
diagnosis?

Thanks.



Duane Fischer, W8DBF/WPE8CXO
dfischer at usol.com
HHI: Halligan's Hallicrafters International
http://www.w9wze.net
HHRP: Historic Halligan Radio Project
hhrp.w9wze.net