Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 15 of 17

Thread: Man, Computers are a Pain!

  1. #1

    Man, Computers are a Pain!

    Warning...this post has a bunch of computerese. If things like technical computer specs make you sleepy, do not read this post and operate heavy machinery at the same time. On the other hand, if you are into computers, maybe you have some ideas to help me figure out a problem.

    OK, I make a living at a computer. I've worked with them almost daily for about 20 years, and know my way around them pretty well. I've built several from scratch, and have no reservations about swapping out a motherboard or installing any hardware or software.

    That said, my main computer at home has me (and all the techie friends and co-workers I've spoken to) stumped. I've been having sporadic lockups and apparent hard disk failures with this system for the past 10 months or so, and in the process of trying to track that problem down, I've replaced about 750GB worth of disk drives (I use a lot of disk space), the CD and DVD burners, motherboard, IDE disk controller card, and finally, the power supply. Swapping out the power supply seemed to do the trick with the lockup problem and no disk drives have failed in the past couple of months.

    This system was running like a champ until I logged off last night (about 3:30 AM). Went into my home office this morning (I'm still on Tuesday...my body clock is skewed) and the monitors were black, and they wouldn't wake up to the mouse. I did the three-finger salute, and the system restarted normally enough, with the BIOS splash screen followed by the POST data. About the time I'd expect the boot sequence to hit the initial Windows startup blue screen (not the BSOD), the screen goes blank. No HD activity, no nothing, just dead.

    No worries, I'll restore from a PowerQuest Drive Image backup (a .pqi file), like I've done a hundred times. (I swap boots fairly regularly to switch to different language versions of Windows XP and 2000, and restoring disk images is easier and less problematic than having multiple boots in multiple languages.) Anyway, I pop the Drive Image CD in the bay to boot into the "Recovery Environment", and again things start normally enough, the boot sequence starts to read the CD, the usual message is displayed saying "Setup is inspecting your hardware configuration", and then nothing. It hangs with the message displayed, and will stay that way for hours.

    Further investigation showed that the BIOS sees all the RAM and the primary and secondary IDE channels (correctly identifying the devices connected to them). Sinced about the only things on the system that I'd not replaced in the past 6 months were the processor (an Athlon 2700XP) and the memory (two 512 MB sticks of no-name PC1600 DDR), and since I suspected the previously dicey power supply might have damaged the processor in some way, I went to the local Frys tonight and picked up a new Sempron 3000 processor. Since my relatively new ASUS motherboard can support a 400 mhz FSB and the Sempron can take advantage of better memory than I currently owned, I also picked up a 1 GB stick of Kingston's "HyperX" PC3200 400Mhz memory. It's their high-end stuff...better than I'd normally buy.

    A little electronic surgery later, I had the new processor and memory in their new homes, powered up the box and...same thing. Hangs in exactly the same ways and places in the boot sequence. The BIOS sees and properly identifies the new processor and memory. I haven't tried booting from a Win98 floppy yet. I don't have one, and although I downloaded one from bootdisk.com, the only computer in the house that has a floppy drive is the dead one on my desk, so the downloaded image is stuck on a floppy-less computer (the one I'm typing this on now). I'll make one tomorrow at the office, but I have my doubts that it'll get any better results than I've seen already.

    I'm pretty much out of ideas, although I'm beginning to suspect my relatively "new" motherboard has gone south on me. I have a spare one lying around (the one I replaced a few months ago), so tomorrow I'll probably try dropping that in to see what happens. If it works, I'm not looking forward to rebuilding and reinstalling all my apps. If it doesn't work, I may be considering taking this box off into a canyon and having a bit of target practice with the 30.06. I've got some 180-grain elk loads that'd unstick a tight drive bay for sure. (I wouldn't really do this, but it's tempting sometimes.)

    If any of you who have managed to read all the way through this sordid story have any ideas or suggestions, I'm open to them. I really don't want to go buy a new system, but I also need to have a reliable computer (about the same way a professional woodworker needs a reliable table saw).

    Thanks in advance -

    - Vaughn

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Feb 2005
    Location
    Mont. Co. MD
    Posts
    973
    Quote Originally Posted by Vaughn McMillan
    If it doesn't work, I may be considering taking this box off into a canyon and having a bit of target practice with the 30.06....If any of you who have managed to read all the way through this sordid story have any ideas or suggestions, I'm open to them.
    The only suggestion that I have is that you use a 12 ga. magnum load with either large buckshot, or slug load. The 30.06 will only put a small hole straight through it, and with more kick than it is worth.

    At least if it is the MB, then the stuff on the drives should be ok. I lost a hard-drive (without a good backup) about a year ago. What's worse is that the drive wasn't all that old, maybe a year or so. I'll never buy a WD drive again. I once had one (a long time ago) that was bad right out of the box.
    Last edited by Bill Lewis; 09-21-2005 at 6:17 AM.

  3. #3
    Did you check the mother board itself???
    One of my nephews has a PC that was doing/sounding just like yours and it turned out to be the m/b. It was really hard to see, but by looking very carefully we were able to determine that one of the small components had started leaking and over time gotten worse to the point when the PC would no longer boot up at all.
    Sounds very much like the way you are describing yours, including the new power supply that we had installed at one point.
    Hope this helps a little.

    Edit: Sorry Vaughn, in rereading your post I see that you did mention the MB, but my suggestion still holds... your whole history on the PC sounds just like the process we went through.<O</O
    Last edited by Ken Kimbrell; 09-21-2005 at 8:06 AM.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Feb 2003
    Location
    Just outside of Spring Green, Wisconsin
    Posts
    9,442
    Vaughn, it appears to me that you've tried just about everything, but here are a couple suggestions, just in case you missed them. First, have you tried disconnecting and/or totally removing any and all unnecessary peripherals and then booting? As in, no sound card, no NIC, no anything connected except for the HDD, vid card, KB & mouse. If the same thing happens, try swapping in a known good vid card. Also, you know enough about these things to try and only swap in one known good peripheral at a time and retest. Yeah, royal PITA, but it's the nature of the beast. FWIW, don't overlook your NIC. If you have the NIC chip on-board, I guess it's a non-issue but, if it is an add-in card, don't underestimate what it can do to the rest of the system. Rare, but I've seen a NIC pooch the system to a point of no-boot. Lastly, as you implied, there's always the possibility of a replacement part being bad to begin with. I'm not an AMD fan, but I've seen RAM go bad and also BE bad right out of the box, regardless of brand/flavor. FWIW, in the past 11 or 12 years of doing PC surgery, I've worked on a whole LOT more Intell-based machines than AMD yet, at the same time, I can count on one hand the number of Intell processors I've replaced against a lost count on the AMD side. No, NOT all AMD systems are bad. Quite the contrary. If I'm not mistaken, SMC is running on an AMD-based server. One other thing crossed my mind here: Have you tried swapping in another known-good HDD (again)? Never know...The "new" drive may have gone belly-up, too. Good luck with this and keep us posted as to progress. This is an interesting one!
    Last edited by John Miliunas; 09-21-2005 at 1:34 PM. Reason: spelling
    Cheers,
    John K. Miliunas

    Cannot find REALITY.SYS. Universe halted.
    60 grit is a turning tool, ain't it?
    SMC is totally supported by volunteers and your generosity! Please help if you can!
    Looking for something for nothing? Check here!

  5. #5
    Hey Vaughn,

    Like John said, get this system down to a minimun system. Remove all pci cards, all memory except 1 stick,, hard drives, cdroms, floppies and start from there. Even though it won't boot up without the hard drive you can just sit on the bios screen and see if it locks up there. If that works then add the floppy and boot that diskette you are going to build on the other sytem. If that works add the hard drive and boot up. Each time you want to wait at least 2 times longer than how long the failure typically takes. 3 times longer would be better. Also keep in mind that bad memory can sometimes give different symptoms depending upon which slot it is in.

    You probably have a bad system board or a bad disk/disk image. However I have seen bad cpus, memory and pci options cause this symptom too.

    Intermittant problems can be heat related too. Keep this in mind when troubleshooting. (Think airflow, room temp, and system uptime.)

    Also keep in mind that you are changing the configuration while troubleshooting. (replacement parts are different) I have seen compatibility issues which were real close to the orginial symptom. This can really cause you headachs.

    I'm sure you already know this but I will say it in case anyone else can benifit from it. Dont forget static protection when you are working on the system. If you dont have a static cord try to work on the system while keeping one hand touching the box. Lay the sidepanel down flat and lay all your parts on that. Carpet and dry air are your system's enemy. The cpu is especially sensitive. Also, don't forget to remove the power cord. Just because it is shut down doesn't mean that voltages are not present on the system board. (ie remove ac plug before removing memory)

    Good luck,
    Frankie
    Last edited by Frankie Hunt; 09-21-2005 at 9:28 AM.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Jan 2005
    Location
    University Place, Washington
    Posts
    1,268
    Hi, will it boot in safe mode? Had the same problem on another computer, but it would go into safe mode ok, in safe mode I could go to display settings and slow it all the way down. Worked after that. Replaced the vidio card and no problems after that. Good luck !
    Sometimes we see what we expect to see, and not what we are looking at! Scott

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Dec 2003
    Location
    Baytown, TX.
    Posts
    542
    About the only thing I can think of that you haven't tried would be to test the actual current coming into the box. Maybe you are having strong enough spikes and lows that it's causing problems.

    Good luck.
    Waymon...
    ...My heroes are not athletes, entertainers or politicians;
    ALL my heroes wear US Armed Forces uniforms...

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Oct 2004
    Location
    Central Virginia
    Posts
    66
    Quote Originally Posted by Ken Kimbrell
    It was really hard to see, but by looking very carefully we were able to determine that one of the small components had started leaking and over time gotten worse to the point when the PC would no longer boot up at all.
    As a follow-up to Ken's info, I know you're not working on a Dell, but, they had a bunch of MB's with leaking capacitors that would cause the same symptoms you are seeing.
    Thanks,
    Bobby Hicks
    <mailto:cadman642000@yahoo.com>

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Feb 2003
    Location
    Allen, TX
    Posts
    217
    Hi Vaughn,

    Man do I feel for you...we spend hours tracking down problems like this at work...and I'm a software guy. Difference is I get paid for that

    A couple other suggestions:

    http://www.knoppix.org/ -
    You can get a CD image of a bootable CD which will boot to Linux. The nice part is you don't need hard drives! So you can boot the system up (in linux) and check it out. If things are working OK, you've narrowed down your problems considerably. Useful CD.


    http://www.memtest86.com/
    - I'm sure there's better tests, but I've used this one w/ success. It's a stand-alone memory tester. Burn the CD image, put in the memory tester and it will run memory tests (again, independent of OS...I've never tried it w/out HDs, but I'm sure it will work w/out a HD). This will test your memory pretty nicely. Try one stick, then the other then both.

    Also check cables. Years ago it took me forever to track down a SCSI problem - ended up being a bad cable. And it was something that worked fine for years, then it just got bent just right and started dropping a bit occationally. And finally upgrade your MB firmware. I would be very surprised if that's your problem given everything was working fine, but it's possible firmware got corrupted somehow.

    I was going to suggest heat and static issues too, but someone already hit them.

    Good luck!

    Perry

  10. #10
    Man, the SMC gang comes through again with the advice. Thanks all. I'll try to hit upon most of the comments...

    John's comment about changing only one thing at a time is very sage advice, and something I follow as much as possible. (In fact, it's company policy at the software company where I work.) In this particular case, I did change the CPU and memory at the same time, because I was uncertain whether the new processor was compatible with my older memory.

    The suggestions to reduce the system to the bare minimum are also sound, and indeed I did do that (in backwards order) by removing one thing at a time between attempts, but that didn't end up changing the problem.

    Heat doesn't appear to be an issue. The two temp sensors in my case (it's a good Antec case) consistently read below 90 degrees F. The CPU temp has historically been in the lower portion of the suggested operating range.

    Couln't get it to boot to safe mode, but that's a good suggestion. (The boot sequence wasn't getting far enough along to recognized the safe mode boot request.

    I'll need to check out the links Perry suggested, although the PowerQuest CD has a bootable image that'll run on a diskless PC, and I couldn't get it past the "Setup is inspecting..." message.

    Now, here's the corker: Late last night (about 3:30 this morning) after trying about a bazillion different things, on a whim I decided to change the boot order from "CD > Hard drive > Floppy" to "SCSI device > Floppy > Hard drive". I don't have any SCSI devices, but the MoBo sees my PCI ATA RAID card as a SCSI device. I also don't have any bootable volumes on the ATA card, but I was trying anything. Anyway, the dang system booted (off the hard drive, third in the boot sequence)! For kicks, I switched the boot order back to "CD > Hard drive > Floppy", and again the system hung in exactly the same place. Going back to having the "SCSI device first in the boot sequence, and the system came alive again. I left it up and running overnight, and as of about 10:00 this morning it was still running like a top.

    I have no idea how changing the boot sequence fixed the problem. I'm going to experiment a bit more tonight with it to see if I can narrow down the solution, but the bottom line is that there will probaly be no gunplay tonight. (The 12 gauge with buckshot does sound fun and effective, though.)


    Thanks guys -

    - Vaughn

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Mar 2003
    Location
    SE PA - Central Bucks County
    Posts
    65,685
    Hmm...taking the CDRom out of the boot sequence and it boots... Prior to reading that, I was merely going to suggest giving the BIOS an enema and reconfiguring it from scratch. Still might be a good idea, although it would be strange to have two motherboards having the same issue.
    --

    The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Mar 2005
    Location
    Anaheim, California
    Posts
    6,903
    I'd check the CD drive cables. Hey, I'm lazy enough to swap in a fresh drive without using the fresh cables that came with it, why should you be any different?

    But before I saw the thing about boot order, the first thing that occurred to me is that we had big-time lightning activity here Monday night: maybe something got fried by that...just a thought. (Note for those of you back east: lightning is very unusual in southern California...probably average of once a year the three decades I've lived here.)

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Lee DeRaud
    I'd check the CD drive cables. Hey, I'm lazy enough to swap in a fresh drive without using the fresh cables that came with it, why should you be any different?

    But before I saw the thing about boot order, the first thing that occurred to me is that we had big-time lightning activity here Monday night: maybe something got fried by that...just a thought. (Note for those of you back east: lightning is very unusual in southern California...probably average of once a year the three decades I've lived here.)
    You mean you're supposed to change cables when you put in a new drive? What'll they think of next? (You're not alone, Lee.) I've had enough of the fansy "high air flow" cables go bad on me that I tend to just use the OEM flat cables that come with the new drives these days.

    I had thought about the lightning too, but the system is on an 850 watt APC UPS...better than we use at the office for desktop systems. It has pretty good spike and dip protection, and the other system on the UPS shows no problems. I have dicey power at my house as it is (the UPS logs multiple <1 sec. outages daily), and I suspect that may be at the root of several problems I've had. (We're saving our lunch money to get the main panel upgraded on the house, and hopefully a subpanel for the garage/shop.)

    I hadn't noticed until Jim pointed out the fact that taking the CD out of the boot sequence seemed to fix it. (I was focused on the addition of the SCSI device, and had missed the lack of a CD in the sequence completely). I'll check a few things tonight when I get home to see if that bears fruit.

    Thanks again -

    - Vaughn

  14. #14
    Join Date
    Feb 2003
    Location
    Just outside of Spring Green, Wisconsin
    Posts
    9,442
    Yeah...Just disconnect the CD entirely and see what happens. Could be the CD is flaky. I realize that's not a Dell you have there, but they're infamous for pooching the whole boot process if there's a defective CD drive in the sequence. Also, one other thought: Have you checked your BIOS version? Might be an issue with an older version and a flash on the firmware might be in order. Good luck!!!


    PS too: BTW, the thing about reading your HDD as a SCSI device is NOT unusual. I believe that since about ATA133, this has been the case with a LOT of BIOS's. Same goes for the O/S. Back w/Windows 2K, during an install, if you had one of those drives, you had to press (f6) to add "SCSI drivers" but, in reality, you were doing it for the faster bus IDE drives.
    Last edited by John Miliunas; 09-22-2005 at 8:33 AM. Reason: spelling
    Cheers,
    John K. Miliunas

    Cannot find REALITY.SYS. Universe halted.
    60 grit is a turning tool, ain't it?
    SMC is totally supported by volunteers and your generosity! Please help if you can!
    Looking for something for nothing? Check here!

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by John Miliunas
    Yeah...Just disconnect the CD entirely and see what happens. Could be the CD is flaky. I realize that's not a Dell you have there, but their infamous for pooching the whole boot process if there's a defective CD drive in the sequence. Also, one other thought: Have you checked your BIOS version? Might be an issue with an older version and a flash on the firmware might be in order. Good luck!!!


    PS too: BTW, the thing about reading your HDD as a SCSI device is NOT unusual. I believe that since about ATA133, this has been the case with a LOT of BIOS's. Same goes for the O/S. Back w/Windows 2K, during an install, if you had one of those drives, you had to press (f6) to add "SCSI drivers" but, in reality, you were doing it for the faster bus IDE drives.
    I'll have to wait till later to try taking the CD out of the picture. I'm swamped with work that needs doing before tomorrow morning. The BIOS was flashed about a month ago, so I'm pretty sure it's current. It's an ASUS A7N8X-E that's been around a few years, so they don't seem to be updating the BIOS very often anymore.

    Yeah, I've seen the ATA controller show up as a SCSI device for the past three computers or so...like you say, about the time ATA 133 rolled around. I still have to press F6 to load the drivers during the OS installation (or if I want to see those disks when I'm booting into the PowerQuest recovery environment from CD).

    For now, everything seems to be running OK. [crosses fingers, knocks on wood, and spins three times in his chair for good luck]

    - Vaughn

Similar Threads

  1. OT - 2 Computers, 1 Printer ???
    By Hal Peeler in forum Off Topic Forum
    Replies: 5
    Last Post: 01-25-2005, 11:16 AM
  2. OT My computers won't network......
    By Chuck Wintle in forum Off Topic Forum
    Replies: 2
    Last Post: 03-23-2004, 3:36 PM
  3. Sony computers?? long
    By Tom Sweeney in forum Off Topic Forum
    Replies: 15
    Last Post: 03-11-2004, 1:35 PM
  4. woodturning is a royal pain in my neck!
    By Tom Sweeney in forum General Woodworking and Power Tools
    Replies: 7
    Last Post: 11-02-2003, 10:27 PM
  5. Computers
    By W.C. Turner in forum Off Topic Forum
    Replies: 16
    Last Post: 07-26-2003, 10:18 PM

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •