Expert: Gregory Donner - 3/27/2008

Question
Hi, I switched on my Amiga 600 the other day only to find i have a hand cursor but no icons on the screen. When i try loading a game it goes to the start game screen then freezes.

Please could you advise me on what the problem might be and how to resolve it?

Thank you...Roy

Answer
Hi Roy,

The problems you're encountering sound like some kind of hardware (as opposed to software) problem. If you don't see any colored screens on boot up, such as blue, red, green, or yellow, I would suspect the floppy disk drive, though it could also possibly be bad RAM. I would try an external floppy drive and see if that helps, and if not, you could have a place like Software Hut (www.softhut.com) look at it, but it's probably far cheaper in the long run to buy another used A600 from a place like eBay.com, instead of paying shipping costs to/from and labor costs for someone to look at the problem (which may not always be fixable). Unfortunately, Amiga hardware is very old in computer terms, and these kinds of problems are to be expected as hardware begins to break down.

I hope this helps!

Greg