cpu frequency and XP booting

[Guest]

Sorry for long post, but if you have knowledge about the subject, please
read.

Friend of mine has an emachine, older model, I believe T19XX series. He's
had np real problems ever with it besides hard drive going out awhile back.
He went to power it up and as soon as the windows screen comes up to boot
windows, it's like the computer just dies. No power on light, hard light, or
video, but the the CPU fan, power supply fan continue to run and the LED
power on indicator soldier on MB stays lite. Holding in power button still
shuts it down. I tried booting into safe mode and half way thru the listing
of files being loaded same thing happens.

If you enter bios upon start up everything is correct settings and no
problems with computer running. I even tried load default just to make sure.
Also tried clear CMOS and new battery.

I went thru the process of disconnecting various hardware not needed to
boot (dvd-drive, floppy, even front USB plugs) and also removed one of the
two sticks of ram and trying them 1 at a time. No difference.

I was out of ideas for further troubleshooting so I switch the CPU freq
jumper on the board from the default 133 mhz down to 100 mhz and the computer
boots into windows and runs just fine, of course alittle slower clock speeds.

I switch jumper back and same thing, Windows beings to boot and then just
stops. I know that with the jumper set to default 133 mhz, I can boot from
disc and being repair install with no issues. I didn't have the time to
actually complete the repair install thou so I canceled it, but plan on doing
repair install later as this is the only fix I see.

I am really curious and would like to know what caused this or how it
can happen. So my question is has anyone experienced this or that can
enlighten me? This is beyond my average knowledge of computers and windows.

 

[JS]

Either the memory in the PC is marginal or was never meant to be run at
133Mhz.
Try running Memtest86+,
This utility runs from a boot disk and should eliminate or confirm if your
ram is questionable at 133Mhz.
Then set the speed to 100Mhz and let it run/test the ram for as long as you
can, 2,4,6,8 or more hours,
if no errors by then your ram is OK for the speed selected.
See: http://www.memtest.org/ for the memory test utility
See: http://www.crucial.com/ for a analysis of the PC's memory speed and
type.

JS

 

[Guest]

The memory is same that it came with from factory and has been running at
133 mhz for about 6 yrs. Can't remember the actual brand Emachines use but
they are matching PC2100, 256mb sticks. Possible 1 is bad? I did try booting
it set at 133 mhz with only 1 stick in and done this with both sticks. I did
notice that when we do boot windows at 100 mhz setting, it is only showing
480mb of the 512, wasn't sure if it subtracted the allocated video memory
from that thou.

Thanks, have ran memtest on other comps, will try that before I do the
repair install, but figured since I can boot from CD and start a repair
install at 133mhz (tried it just to test if I could and canceled it at the
select drive screen cause of little time) that it was a file or driver that
windows is loading causing issue. It does it right as the loading bar makes
one pass or half way down the file list in safe mode.

 

[Jim]

The memory is same that it came with from factory and has been running
at
133 mhz for about 6 yrs. Can't remember the actual brand Emachines use but
they are matching PC2100, 256mb sticks. Possible 1 is bad? I did try
booting
it set at 133 mhz with only 1 stick in and done this with both sticks. I
did
notice that when we do boot windows at 100 mhz setting, it is only showing
480mb of the 512, wasn't sure if it subtracted the allocated video memory
from that thou.

Thanks, have ran memtest on other comps, will try that before I do the
repair install, but figured since I can boot from CD and start a repair
install at 133mhz (tried it just to test if I could and canceled it at the
select drive screen cause of little time) that it was a file or driver
that
windows is loading causing issue. It does it right as the loading bar
makes
one pass or half way down the file list in safe mode.

It does seem a bit strange that memory that is supposed to use 133 mhz bus
speed only works right when the bus speed is reduced to 100 mhz. Perhaps
one of the memory sticks is going bad. The fact that it has lasted 6 years
means nothing.

Yes, the difference between 512 mb and the reported 480 mb is caused by
sharing of memory between the cpu and graphics cards. Shared memory is one
way to reduce the cost of the computer...

Jim