I have a PC with Pentium 3 and Windows 98. I think my son messed up
something when he was here but he went back to Texas and does not give
me any clues by email.

What happens is that when I turn on the PC it just loads that first
screen with with among other things "press F1 to continue"  or "Esc to
go to Setup".(I think).
Any ways we always have to hit F1 for the PC to load, you know Windows
and all those columns of numbers and stuff I don't understand.

Question: What do I do to get it to load normally like it used to as
well as my other PC's that don't have that problem?

JohnP.

Hello pendleton,

Thanks for your question. I think it may just be coincidence that your
son visited recently and it may not relate to your current problem.

I searched "F1 to continue" -keyboard to eliminate responses that show
"Keyboard not found, press F1 to continue" which is a common error
message when a keyboard fails or is not connected.

There are several possibilties that I found, though some require a bit
more knowledge and experience with the BIOs of your PC than you may
have at this moment.

http://club.aopen.com.tw/forum/viewmessage.asp?forumID=17&MessageID=7579

This site has the following message anbd answer:

"please help me here .

my pc with aopen mainboard keeps on giving me this error during start
up.

1.cmos default loaded then it tell me to press f1 to continue of
course if i do that it boots okay and works well. i want to eliminate
press f1 to continue. please help me"

Reply:

"Try to load Set up default in BIOS setting, after doing it, it should
not show the message again. Check also your CMOS battery this can also
be caused by a drained or bad battery, you can use a Multitester to
measure its Voltage value, that should have at least 2.5V for proper
functionality. Good luck."

Many sites report that this error will occur when a keyboard is not
attached and / or when the floppy drive is not accessible or faulty.
Most computers will check to boot from the floppy drive first, then
the hard drive. This is useful when you must boot from a floppy due to
a hard drive or software failure and you are using a boot floppy or
emargency disk.

So, after examining a number of sites for your problem, I can distill
the probabilties of the problem as follows:

1. Check to be sure that your floppy drive is functioning and that
there is no disk in the drive when booting.

2. Enter the setup program for your BIOS by hitting DEL( or ESC as
your message may prompt) instead of enter or F1. Do not make any
changes, but exit and save the settings as they are, usually by
pressing F10 then Y for "yes" and enter. If it will not allow you to
save without making a change, change the date or time, then change it
back and it will recognize that a change was made and allow you to
save.

If you are not comforatable working in the computer BIOS settings,
have someone with more experience here assist you. You can make
changes here that will drastically effect the operation of your
computer.

3. Try replacing the backup CMOS battery on the motherboard. Again,
you may wish to have a knowledgeable user or a repair shop do this for
you. These are wafer type batteries commonly used in watches, but
there are a number of different styles and the computer may also lose
its BIOS settings when the battery is removed. Have someone familiar
with this process do this for you.

Since you do boot after pressing F1, it is very unlikely you have a
hard disk problem. The odds are very good the above will lead to your
solution and it will reveal itself as a floppy or battery failure or
an incorrect setting in the CMOs setting of your computer. If there is
any additonal information in theis message that you see upon boot,
such as "CMOs checksum error" or "BIOS ROM checksum error" then there
is a different problem. You may wish to check this page for examples
of these other errors:

Compguys Techweb BIOS errors:
http://www.compguystechweb.com/troubleshooting/bios/award_errors.html

I trust this information has been helpful and wish you luck solving
the problem easily.

Regards,

-=clouseau=-

That was a tough question. I think I did not follow the instructions
carefully. The end was I had a bad virus (the PC, that is) and we had
to reformat everything. I am so thankful for you and answers.google
for being there. I don't feel all alone and helpless. Keep up the
great service of ANSWERS!!!

Hello, I too have this same problem. it has presited for several
monthes. I'm no expert, but I am no novice either.
After tickering with the cmos a bit, I have found no cure.
What I do know about my particualr problem is that it is related to
the system clock.
My pc is a aopen, axbc6 MB P3 500, running Win98.
I have downloaded and installed 2 concurrent biosflashes form the
AOpen site, and the problem still persist, even after AOpen annouced
these updates fixed issues such as this.
Now, done through wipes of the hd, and fresh os installs. Even bought
a newer higher copacity hd and tried win2k.
None of this made any difference, naturally, since the old bios is
till used.
For a while I thougth maybe it was some of my older software causing
this problem, such as the adobe reader4.0. As things would appear fine
till I installed that, but I found out after a wipe and install
session, and not instlaling adobe, that it didn't matter.
At any rate, I went throught lots of trouble installing things one at
a time and rewiping etc. This had no effect. Problem still
remanifested itself.
The system clock always ends up resetting the CURRENT date back to the
yr 2000. If I just leave it that way, it all works fine and I do not
have to fight with F1.
So I just live with files being dated as 2000.
Hope this may help you. It's no fix, but it can be tolerated so long
as you aren't dealling with time sensitive items, such as shareware,
official documents, etc.
BTW, I have talked to AOpen about some of their firmwares. They don't
speak or understand english to well, so I haven't bothered to contact
them abotu this issue. Especially since these MB's are no longer
supported and out of warranty. figured I'd justw ait till it times for
a pc upgrade and then pass this oen along to my 4 yr old son to tear
up.

PS,
I', also in Texas, maybe it's something in the water.