What is ISO 8859? The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) introduced 8859 as its standard for representing one-byte (8 bit) character sets. It is used primarily to describe Western languages, including a number of variants for Latin, Cyrillic, Hebrew and Arabic scripts. The first 128 characters of all ISO 8859 …

What is MIME? MIME is an acronym for Multi-purpose Internet Mail Extensions. It is a standard first defined in 1992 to extend the capabilities of Internet e-mail beyond plain ASCII text. Before MIME, there was no straightforward and reliable way to transmit any material other than plain US-ASCII text using …

Real Time Clock Failures If you have arrived here through a search engine, and there’s no menu to the left click here! Explanation: A failure has been detected in the real-time clock module on the motherboard. Diagnosis: When encountered during the installation of a new motherboard or system, this can …

Keyboard Key Stuck If you have arrived here through a search engine, and there’s no menu to the left click here! Explanation: A key was stuck on the keyboard as the system booted up. Some systems will detect this specifically, while others just give a generic “Keyboard error” in this …

Keyboard Error If you have arrived here through a search engine, and there’s no menu to the left click here! Explanation: The system has detected what appears to be a failure with the keyboard. Diagnosis: Usually this is a problem with the keyboard, such as it being disconnected from the …

No Boot Device If you have arrived here through a search engine, and there’s no menu to the left click here! Explanation: The system has attempted to find a drive with a Boot Sector to load the operating system, but has failed to locate one. The error message itself may …

Floppy Drive Mismatch If you have arrived here through a search engine, and there’s no menu to the left click here! Explanation: The BIOS’s POST sequence has detected that the actual type of floppy disk drive found in your computer does not match what what has been defined in the …

CMOS Battery Failure If you have arrived here through a search engine, and there’s no menu to the left click here! Explanation: The CMOS memory holds the BIOS settings that you define in the BIOS setup program. This memory is powered using a small battery mounted on the motherboard so …

Detected Short in Address Line If you have arrived here through a search engine, and there’s no menu to the left click here! Detected short in address line Explanation: The system has detected a short-circuit in one or more of the lines of the address bus on the motherboard. Diagnosis: …

Unexpected Interrupt in Protected Mode If you have arrived here through a search engine, and there’s no menu to the left click here! Explanation: The system has detected an interrupt that should not be occurring within the system. Diagnosis: This is probably either a processor or motherboard problem. Recommendation: Troubleshoot …