Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: J3Vr6 on March 02, 2004, 01:25:03 pm
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Alright, I'm having problems again. If you don't remember, I had issues with an motherboard and got a new MSI motherboard where you guys were nice and dandy to help. I'm too lazy to link the old threads about it. Anyway, things have been going peachy keen til lunch today (more specifically, since I've installed I-War2).
I went home for lunch and turned on the computer to play a little I-War 2 when my computer decides to hang at start up (windows 98SE). It happens once in a while so I restart the computer and try to boot up.
First thing that happens is that I get the following error:
"While Initializing device IOS:
Windows protection error. Please restart your computer."
No idea what that means. So I try to restart it and the computer wouldn't even POST. After trying restart it a few times, I finally get the computer to POST when I get the following error before getting into windows:
"Invalid VxD dynamic link call to device 3, service B. Please run windows set-up to fix."
????? I don't even know if I have the CD anymore! I try to restart and finally get into Windows and see if I have the setup in my windows directory (I remember my brother in law installed all the CAB files and whatnot to a directory). I try the windows set up and it goes into windows install. Don't know if I had to do that or not plus I had to go back to work, so I cancel.
Afterwards, the computer wouldn't post for a good 20 minutes, had to reset bios twice. Windows is still giving me those above errors...
What to do?! What to do?! :(
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[color=cc9900]How old is your hard drive? The symptoms sound as if it's giving up the ghost.[/color]
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Um, pre-2000... don't know how much older than that.
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[color=cc9900]That could be it then. I've had drives running for longer than that, but then again I consider myself to have been lucky.
The other options I can think of are really, really nasty things. Such as virii, or motherboard failures.[/color]
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You got a crap hard disk. Get a new hard disk, preferably of a more respectable brand. You'll probably be able to recover most of the data from the old one when you've got a working one as primary to boot from.
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oldprobly exploded.....but i recommend you drag your HDD to another PC stick it in and see what it does
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It's a Maxtor... I thought Maxtor was a good brand.
So I shouldn't even bother running Windows set up on it? Or upgrade to XP on it? Will the torture ever end?
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[color=cc9900]If your HD is dying, no amount of re-installing will 'fix' it. Hard drives are cheap, you should have little problem finding a new 80GB one for £40, whatever the equivalent currency is now.
Of course, you can always try running Windows setup. It ought not to hurt anything. Ashrak's idea is also good, be sure to take care with the master/slave jumpers if you choose to go down that path.[/color]
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Well I searched windows to find out what they had to say about it. Surprisingly enough, they had both of them on there for the IOS one:
It could be an unsafe device driver is detected, or a protected mode driver is missing or damaged in the Iosubsys file, or a virus. It could also occur if you have installed new software or hardware, or removing outdated software or hardware.
Since this computer isn't hooked up to the computer, I don't think it's a virus (plus I haven't installed anything new except for I-War2). Anyway, it has some fun things on there to figure out and do.
The VxD one said that it can occur if the System.ini file is blank. Huh? No idea what this means.
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Actually if the HDD is showing symptoms of dying, you better use it as little as possible. Otherwise it may get worse and you may not be able to recover any data to a new HDD later on.
Although it worries me if the system wouldn't even boot, if it would be just a HDD malfunction, the system should still POST.
If the motherboard does not sound the standard single beeb when it POSTS, but something else. Get the mobo's manual and see what the beeb code means.
If no sound comes, it might be a bad power supply (also possibly damaged other components if you have bad luck) or then it's the mobo.
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poop. I don't like my computer anymore.
Well, I got it to post finally cuz apparently something got set wrong in Cmos for some reason. And I think I know what that was. I tried to overclock using the software the mobo came with and it crashed. Didn't bother clearing the cmos on that one til lunch today.
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Are you using 1 memory stick or two?
Put another one of the same speed in if you're not.
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Using two sticks of the same memory.
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Very strange. One, or both, of them may be bad.
It runs fine until Windows GUI starts to load right?
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Sometime it posts, sometimes it doesn't. Usually it will post right away and get into windows (if I don't get that VxD or IOS error) but then in windows it will crash and restart on it's own. When that happens, it sometimes doesn't POST. Then I have to wait forever and then it will POST again.
Fustration owns me right now. I'm starting to wonder if it *is* my harddrive, since every time it seems to crash is when it's reading the C: drive.
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Maxtor=Fail
I got a 13 gig for christmas in '00. About a year later it died. I had it RMAd. Got a 20 gig in return (they stopped making the 13s). A year later it died. Had it RMAd they gave me a 30 gig Quantum. Still using it without any problems.
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If it's the harddrive shouldn't it POST all the time anyway?
EDIT:
Also, one of the times that I was able to get into my computer I decided to just go to COMMAND PROMPT ONLY. Everything was fine for a while, looking in this directory and that, when I tried to read one of the directories in C:. The computer froze and there was a ton of letters all over the screen. Had to restart. When I did, I couldn't POST again.
Does this sound like the harddrive?
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Turn on S.M.A.R.T. support if the driver supports it and see what that does.
In answer to your question, yes it does, save what data you can and start looking for a new one. Don't pay more than $1.00 per GB, less if you can find it.
Gigaparts (http://www.gigaparts.com/store.php?type=computer&action=search&skuprefix=HD) Cnetpc.com (http://www.cnetpc.com/ideharddrive.asp)
Seagate has the best reputation, I've always thought that Maxtor was better than Western Digital. Also look at IBM or maybe Kingston.
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I found an 120 gig western digital for like 80 bux...
What peeves me is that a few months ago I saw an 120 gigger at Office Max going for 50 dollars rebates...
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[color=cc9900]I've never had a Western Digital fail me yet, so I'd deem that a good choice :)[/color]
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Well, if the computer sometimes does not POST at all, take your pick:
- Motherboard
- PSU
- RAM
- CPU
Almost all motherboards howewer should POST but give warnings about faulty CPU or RAM. So my guess is either the mobo or PSU.
Faulty HDD shouldn't prevent the system from POSTing, because it does not read any data from HDD at that point.
Howewer, it does not read out the possibility that HDD or any other component might be damaged, because faulty PSU's can damage other components as well. Rarely howewer faulty mobo damages anything except maybe data being written.
I have a feeling your system is self-built because you haven't yet taken it to a service under warranty. So your best bet is to call a few friends and ask them to bring their systems for testing, or you can take your computer to them and switch components until you can confirm what the problem is and RMA it if the warranty is still valid. Make no mistake, faulty PSU or mobo is not easy to track down because it may not have any immediate effect to a new HDD or other components.
Howewer, try to check the PSU with a voltage meter or somesuch to see if there are any irregularities. PSU's must always give steady amount of power, otherwise fluctuations will damage other hardware.
With self-built systems there is this possibility and this is why people who have not prepared for this possibilty would be better to buy prebuilt systems from a store.
I hope you get the system up and running properly again.
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I've had Maxtor's since I can remember... it's not bad...
I've had 360 gigs (3x120) for 2 years now and it works fine.
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What's a PSU?
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[color=cc9900]Power supply unit. At the back of the computer.[/color]
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ugh... so how do I figure out how big of a "PSU" I need it to be?
This is becoming such drama.
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[color=cc9900]I really would recommend dumping your HD into someone else's computer as a slave before you go screwing around with a multimeter near PSU's. If you're prepared to hoist the cash around (it's only £20, which is $36 or so) to get a new PSU, go ahead. 400+ Watts would be a safe bet. Can you tell us what the wattage of your current one is? It should say somewhere on it.[/color]
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I have no idea what the current power supply is, I think probably in the 300's.
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400 watts minimum. You can probably get a whole case for what most places want though.
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[color=cc9900]If you've got huge quantities of things running from the PSU, then that might cause problems. Have you got any USB devices? With an extensive array of USB ports, it's possible to severely tax a PSU. Or any heavy duty internal devices?[/color]
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Um I got 2 harddrives, a CD player, a CD Burner, a USB bracket thing, another set of USB's that I have my joystick connected to, and a fan that doesn't really do anything (whre you connected it in the case doesn't really have good ventilation so it doesn't circulate much). Other than that, my video card and my sound blaster live 5.1.
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[color=cc9900]I don't think it's a power supply problem, then. Unless your video card is one of the types that reqires inordinate amounts of power.[/color]
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what card is it? a GeForce or a Radeon?
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It's a Geforce 2, 32 megger.
Listen to this one: I get home from work yesterday and decide to do the following: run scandisk, update the BIOS, update my video drivers, patch I-War2 (just in case it was that), and reinstall Windows 98SE.
Mind you, the day before I could barely keep the computer on, let alone try to do anything on it. But when I turned it on last night, it seemed like it was back to normal. I was on it for like 2 hours doing everything to it. I ran the scan disk and it worked fine, so now I'm wondering if wasn't the harddrive since it didn't crash then.
The bios update went without a hitch. When I reinstalled windows, I didn't format the harddrive and only installed it over the existing 98. Why? Cuz I have no idea how to format a harddrive and I don't have the Win 98 cd (my bro in law, when installing it the first time, put all the CAB files and whatnot in a directory). I had one error, and that was cuz I forgot to disable norton antivirus, but I got thru that. When I finished installing it, I would sometimes get BSOD with fatal exception errors, seemed like they would come in batches. Then I'd restart and the computer would be fine. It's probably cuz I haven't done a Windows Update (kinda hard when I'm not hooked up to the internet).
I do everything else and leave my computer running for a little while. No problems. It seemed like it was running as new. I was even getting better resource management by 1% (no big deal I guess).
Then I shut down and go watch Enterprise. I come back to it later, and BOOM. Same crap as before: Windows protection error, please restart. If not, it's the dynamic link VxD crap that tells me to run windows set-up.
It doesn't even let me into Windows thru safe mode. Going step-by-step start up, it seems to crash and shut down at loading windows GUI. Then it won't let me post forever.
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Originally posted by J3Vr6
It doesn't even let me into Windows thru safe mode. Going step-by-step start up, it seems to crash and shut down at loading windows GUI. Then it won't let me post forever.
Oh man, that's deeply screwed. I'm more confused that it lets you into the GUI first and then it crashes. Hold up, is this after a fresh Windows re-install?
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Yeah, after. But it had restarted a few times *AFTER* the reinstall also and it worked fine. I put it thru it's paces in terms of starting and restarting and there was no problems. It was only when I turned off the computer for a couple of hours to eat dinner and watch Enterprise and came back to it that it didn't want to get into Windows.
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Setekh, wasn't a fresh install. He installed it over existing W98 installation. He hasn't formatted the drive or anything, which would be preferrable.
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Like Mr Fury said, a bad HD shouldn't stop the machine POSTing. As for PSUs, given your specs you could probably run on a 250W - anything in the 300s is fine. Since it's crashed in both pure dos and both windows installs it's not directly any of them either.
What you need to start doing is some hardware diagnosis. If you want to check if it's the HD it's best to do that first (it's the easiest). Replace it with any HD you can lay your hands on that's ok, install windows on it and see.
Otherwise: get hold of a friend's machine that has hardware that can take your ram and cpu. Install one component from your machine into theirs at a time and see if you can isolate the faulty one. Make sure you don't inadvertently damage anything you're working on: Either use an anti-static wriststrap or you can get away with earthing yourself by touching any earthed peice of metal. If you're going to use anti-static bags for holding components while they're out of the machine make sure you put stuff inside the bag not just on top. Before you start it's probably a good idea to disconnect your friend's HD - you don't want to risk their data while you're testing.
You'll need to test the things that you absolutely need to POST: the RAM, CPU , and graphics card. If they seem fine, I'd consider the HD and PSU. I wouldn't really expect them to be source of the problem though. If you do test the PSU I'd suggest either following Mr Fury's advice of checking it with a multimeter or put your friend's PSU into your machine - none of the other components can really do damage to your friend's hardware, but the PSU could.
Just remember to take your time and be methodical. Guessing or assuming will either lead you round in circles or you'll replace the wrong part.
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Thanks guys. I don't know who I should ask since most of my friends don't have AMD setups or are extemely out of date. The PSU I have is 320watts. Last night I even unplugged one of the CD players to see if maybe it was that.
I don't have another HD to test with :( I was planning on buying a new one but wasn't planning on doing it for a while.
The strange thing is that it will work fine for a really long time but once it crashes in windows, the computer will freak out. It won't post or I get those VxD's. If it does posts and go into command prompt, it will freak out after a while. If I try to do a step by step, it will crash at the GUI part, even in safe mode. If I let it sit for a long time, then restart it will work again for a while.
Looking thru windows knowledge support, it said it could be a misconfigured CMOS, but I hadn't touched anything in CMOS since and it was working fine for a long time (til I started to play I-War2, actually)
Also, u know when it hangs? It hangs between early chipset initialization or on the memory, based on the LED lights that come with the D-bracket. I tried taking out one stick and it didn't do anything. I tried with the other and still nothing.
The computer was running at like 70 degrees celsius before (remember, I didn't have the paste but bought it like 3 days later) so maybe it's the processor that's bad?
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you have broadband?
if so, get Knoppix, and see what it does. IIRC it had a few extra system utility's for hardware tests.
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I'd forgotten you've got diagnostics lights. Can you post the exact message you have from the diagnostics concerning where it stops?
Err..you've got an Athlon 1700xp? It'll should only take damage at over the 90-100 degrees range. 70 is quite high, but I think you should be ok. If it was the high temp itself, you'd be able to boot cold fine and get problems after using it for a while. If it has actually taken heat damage, I'd be surprised that it could operate at all for any length of time.
My best guess here would be flakey RAM. Apparently damage from a static discharge can take a while to become apparent. Did you make sure you were earthed while you were building this machine?
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Yeah, I followed all the instructions I've seen including touching the base of the machine before fiddling.
I got this floppy (it boots up from the floppy) called memtest that should run tests on the memory. But a quarter into it I got the same error that I always get if I'm in at the command prompt: computer freezing and funny symbols showing up.
When I turn on the computer it freezes either in processor info or at chipset initialization or memory testing. Normally what it would do regarding the LED is that it would show memory test initialization then jump to early chipset initialization, you'd hear a click, and then go back to memory test lights. But mostly it hangs at the processor info one.
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A click? There shouldn't be any noises except for the CPU fan until the POST completes successful or not.
I'm leaning at this point toward the processor being damaged by the high temp somehow or the memory is damaged somehow.
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Originally posted by Mr. Fury
Well, if the computer sometimes does not POST at all, take your pick:
- Motherboard
- PSU
- RAM
- CPU
Almost all motherboards howewer should POST but give warnings about faulty CPU or RAM. So my guess is either the mobo or PSU.
Faulty HDD shouldn't prevent the system from POSTing, because it does not read any data from HDD at that point.
Howewer, it does not read out the possibility that HDD or any other component might be damaged, because faulty PSU's can damage other components as well. Rarely howewer faulty mobo damages anything except maybe data being written.
I have a feeling your system is self-built because you haven't yet taken it to a service under warranty. So your best bet is to call a few friends and ask them to bring their systems for testing, or you can take your computer to them and switch components until you can confirm what the problem is and RMA it if the warranty is still valid. Make no mistake, faulty PSU or mobo is not easy to track down because it may not have any immediate effect to a new HDD or other components.
Howewer, try to check the PSU with a voltage meter or somesuch to see if there are any irregularities. PSU's must always give steady amount of power, otherwise fluctuations will damage other hardware.
With self-built systems there is this possibility and this is why people who have not prepared for this possibilty would be better to buy prebuilt systems from a store.
I hope you get the system up and running properly again.
I've had machines fail to POST because of a faulty IDE cable....
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Given your diagnostics, I'd be focusing on the cpu and ram. Problem is that you can't really tell which without testing them separately. Did you buy these recently? You could try asking the store to check them for you if you did. Or look for a local pc shop or pc repair company maybe? Even the IT dept at school/college/work might do you a favour if you ask nicely. :)
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Well, I was looking thru MSI's forums and it looks like their boards don't like Kingston memory too much. So maybe it's that.
As a "just in case" I went ahead and got me a power supply last night, up to 430. I found a website that calculates how much power you need and anothter link on the MSI forum where it details that my board needs to have the powersupply running in the 30%-70% of capacity to really work well. The minimum I needed was 316 watts. Add 30% to that and it goes up to 411 watts. I may upgrade later, so I got an Antec True 430 watt.
I got home, and sure enough, it wasn't the problem :( So we've ruled out the PSU. Next is either IDE cable, the processor, or the RAM (I'm going in order as I think I saw here). I'll check the IDE cable when I get home for lunch (if I get home for lunch that is). U guys answer my question on the other thread on which is a good processor for me and in the meantime (if the IDE cable didn't work) I'll be looking for muskin memory cheap.
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Alright guys, I think this processor is done. I took out the processor to check it and it looked a little burnt. The green part that's around the actual chip was brown. I turned it over, and between the little pins and in the middle of those 4 rows of gold dots, was a brown smudge.
So that's burnt, right?
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Or going at the very least....
If you have access to another processor that your board will accept, try using it and see if the problem persists....
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I ordered a 2600 and hopefully will get it this week.
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This time, make sure your heat sink's got thermal paste on it before you turn it on. :)
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:p I'll pee on it too.
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Or a pad.
I wouldn't, water does have a very good thermal conductivity, but it would evaporate it quickly and leave the important bits unprotected and leave a nasty smell.
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Well I bought a really big fan the other day (when I got the processor) and it has already some thermal compound already at the bottom of the heat sink. I'll be using that fan.
Ooo, a question. How do I get more ventilation into my case? Is drilling holes a smart thing to do? I was thinking of drilling some holes at the front of the case, as there's a fan there but hardly anywhere to get air from (there are tiny slots at the bottom of the front, but seems as if it has to travel an awfully lot to get to the fan). As it is now, I've placed my hand infront of the fan and didn't feel any air from there.
Wanted to get some other fans, but not sure whree I have to put them to get the most advantage of them.