What should I do?

[Bobby]

I have a dilemma.

I have an old PC in the living room that my kids use to play games (The
Sims) and surf the Net (IE) and phone (Skype). It runs XP Pro SP2.

It's an Athlon XP 2000+ with 512Mb RAM and 120Gb HD. All of the components
are quite old (mobo is about 4 years old). I put ATI 9600 Pro in it to speed
up the graphics. When it runs, it runs well.

My problem is that it gets regular BSDs. And recently it just refused to
boot ("Disk boot failure").

So I swapped HDs (I had another old one - 60Mb) and re-installed Windows -
and had the same problem ("Disk boot failure"). And I don't know what to do.

Both the original and replacement HD are old. Both could have faults (I
think that was why I originally replaced them). But it could also be the
mobo - or memory - or IDE connection on the mobo. You get the idea.

What should I do? Buy a brand new HD?

I have a new mobo spare - one that would take an AMD64 3000+ CPU. But that
would involve new CPU, memory and HD (SATA instead of IDE). The total cost
would be around £200.

I need to fix it because the kids use my PC when they can't use this one.
And that drives me nuts.

Help!

Bobby

 

[Brian McMullen]

What is the BSOD error?

You could try unplugging all IDE drives that aren't needed to boot (cdrom)
as well as the floppy.
Try disabling as many of the onboard mobo devises (NIC, sound, usb, ......)
try to boot.
if it works, introduce 1 new device @ a time until you find the culprit.

~B

 

[Vanguard \(NPI\)]

I have a dilemma.

I have an old PC in the living room that my kids use to play games (The
Sims) and surf the Net (IE) and phone (Skype). It runs XP Pro SP2.

It's an Athlon XP 2000+ with 512Mb RAM and 120Gb HD. All of the components
are quite old (mobo is about 4 years old). I put ATI 9600 Pro in it to
speed up the graphics. When it runs, it runs well.

My problem is that it gets regular BSDs. And recently it just refused to
boot ("Disk boot failure").

So I swapped HDs (I had another old one - 60Mb) and re-installed Windows -
and had the same problem ("Disk boot failure"). And I don't know what to
do.

Both the original and replacement HD are old. Both could have faults (I
think that was why I originally replaced them). But it could also be the
mobo - or memory - or IDE connection on the mobo. You get the idea.

What should I do? Buy a brand new HD?

I have a new mobo spare - one that would take an AMD64 3000+ CPU. But that
would involve new CPU, memory and HD (SATA instead of IDE). The total cost
would be around £200.

I need to fix it because the kids use my PC when they can't use this one.
And that drives me nuts.

Help!

Bobby

Doesn't sound like a hardware problem. Sounds like a user problem - in that
you resinstall the same software that was there before (or you let your kids
install whatever they want) so you reintroduce the same problem. Emptying a
pail with garbage and then scooping up the garbage puts it right back into
the pail. You are putting back in whatever is causing the problem. If it
doesn't come from Microsoft or from another well-known commercial software
vendor, and if it doesn't come on install media supplied by that software
vendor, you don't install it (for now). Later you take a snapshot of the
partition using disk imaging software and proceed to install the unknown
stuff. All the while you should have had an anti-virus program running and
updated regularly, a firewall (either a software firewall or a NAT router
with one), and using malware scanners looking for nasties contained within
the software that you are installing. However, the best best is that you
are installing old or incompatible hardware drivers. You didn't mention
what is displayed on the BSOD screen. You said you managed to install
Windows, so it isn't a hardware problem. It's something you installed after
getting Windows installed. Start keeping notes of what changes you make on
the computer once the Windows install has completed.

You need to check if you are using the correct drivers for your hardware.
You need to not load all the fluff software until you know that the system
is stable with what you already loaded on it. You need to give the kids
limited accounts so they cannot install anything. You need to check their
profile paths (%userprofile%)to determine if they installed software over
there: since they have full write access to their own profile path under
their account, they can still install software there (Google Earth does
this, for example). Tell the kids if they break it then they have to fix it
(i.e., surrender the computer and completely give it to them). If they
break it and then start using yours, well, that's a parenting problem that
I'm not getting into since that is outside the scope of the computer's
hardware and software.

 

[Bobby]

It's more serious that this.

At this point in time I have problems installing XP (errors reading CDs,
errors reading HD etc.) and when I eventually install XP SP1 (and before
installing *any* other software) I get boot errors and the PC will not
start.

It sounds like a HD problem to me.

Bobby

 

[Yves Leclerc]

How often do you update the drivers? Including video card and motherboard
chipset drivers?

Have you check the RAM? You could download MEMTEST'86+ and check the RAM,
since it seem to be the only thing in common, besides the motherboard
itself, that could cause a BSOD error.

 

[Guest]

Hi Bobby,

Did you try to reset the CMOS battery ?

Did you try to reset your BIOS settings ?

Do you have the green light turn on on your mobo ? If no, there is a big
problem there.

Did you try to see your mobo manufacturer web site to see if you have a
newer version of the BIOS for your specific model ? Read carefully the
update and you may be surprised to find a fix.

Or sometimes, flashing with the same version of the BIOS help a lot.

Hope it helps,

 

[Vanguard \(NPI\)]

It's more serious that this.

At this point in time I have problems installing XP (errors reading CDs,
errors reading HD etc.) and when I eventually install XP SP1 (and before
installing *any* other software) I get boot errors and the PC will not
start.

It sounds like a HD problem to me.

Bobby

Looks like it is time to either get some testing tools or take it to the
shop. You can get a digital multimeter to check voltages from the power
supply (when it is under load since no-load readings tell you little about
what voltages are actually getting supplied to the components). You can get
testing software that runs off floppies or CDs to check your processor,
memory, and hard drive. For the hard drive, you could visit its
manufacturer's web site to get their diagnostic tool. You already swapped
out the hard drive and the problems remained, so it doesn't seem to be a
hard drive problem (but could be a BIOS problem or a mobo problem with the
IDE controller). You could try resurrecting your old drives using SpinRite,
or get a *new* drive. MemTest86 can be used for checking the memory. Or
you could get a program or suite to thoroughly test all components. I keep
around an old copy of CheckIt Pro (not free) to do burn-in and
troubleshooting.

Until you scalp the computer down to the processor, one memory stick, the
mobo, keyboard, video card, and PSU to make sure it is running okay (that is
the base system needed), it can be tought isolating the defective part. For
some PSUs, you also need to have enough current draw to make it power on, so
you might have to add a hard drive to the base setup. Test that first and
then start adding components.

Problems that are occurring while installing Windows could still be from
putting in the wrong or incompatible drivers. The only way the OS has
access to the hardware is through the drivers, so if they are flaky or the
wrong ones then the system (hardware+software) will be flaky. See if a base
system is just as flaky during a Windows install.