Damaged PC

[Jonny]

My sister's PC had a major burnout. Motherboard burnt up. Motherboard,
cpu, RAM were replaced, and XP installed new. Ran fine for about a year.

Now, anytime anything that accesses the hard drive with gusto like McAfee
scan, defrag, Disk Cleanup, etc, the PC reboots. Attempt to use any kind of
software to look for viruses, trojans, etc results in reboots. Even online
scanners. She's connected to the internet via switch, router to cable.

I removed the hard drive from the PC, inserted it in a Firewire enclosure.
Ran NAV on it from my laptop, 45 minutes, over 200,000 files. Its clean.
And no reboot response.

Put the hard drive back in her PC. Removed the only partition, recreated
and formatted NTFS. This worked okay. Setup afterwards started at 39
minutes remaining. Setup produced a stop message, or simply froze at times.
Went through this 8 times before XP installed. It never rebooted after that
as noted on the first paragraph. Went to the zonelabs site and got ZA.
Somehow, Alexia got in. So we got a freebie trojan sniffer and AVG as well.
Things finally settled down when the sound driver was found and installed.
Was locking up sometimes before that.

Then, tried SP2 install. Downloaded fine from windowsupdate site. Install
started. Made it to backing up registry, then rebooted without notice.
Kept doing this over and over again upon each attempt. After 4 times, we
gave up.

My feelings are that SP2 doesn't like the hardware, or there's a vague I/O
problem.

However, prior to me messing with it, SP2 was installed on this PC. So,
have dismissed the hard drive due NAV flogging. Guessing RAM first, then
power supply, then motherboard flaked. What's your estimate?

 

[Alias]

My sister's PC had a major burnout. Motherboard burnt up. Motherboard,
cpu, RAM were replaced, and XP installed new. Ran fine for about a year.

Now, anytime anything that accesses the hard drive with gusto like McAfee
scan, defrag, Disk Cleanup, etc, the PC reboots. Attempt to use any kind of
software to look for viruses, trojans, etc results in reboots. Even online
scanners. She's connected to the internet via switch, router to cable.

I removed the hard drive from the PC, inserted it in a Firewire enclosure.
Ran NAV on it from my laptop, 45 minutes, over 200,000 files. Its clean.
And no reboot response.

Put the hard drive back in her PC. Removed the only partition, recreated
and formatted NTFS. This worked okay. Setup afterwards started at 39
minutes remaining. Setup produced a stop message, or simply froze at times.
Went through this 8 times before XP installed. It never rebooted after that
as noted on the first paragraph. Went to the zonelabs site and got ZA.
Somehow, Alexia got in. So we got a freebie trojan sniffer and AVG as well.
Things finally settled down when the sound driver was found and installed.
Was locking up sometimes before that.

Then, tried SP2 install. Downloaded fine from windowsupdate site. Install
started. Made it to backing up registry, then rebooted without notice.
Kept doing this over and over again upon each attempt. After 4 times, we
gave up.

My feelings are that SP2 doesn't like the hardware, or there's a vague I/O
problem.

However, prior to me messing with it, SP2 was installed on this PC. So,
have dismissed the hard drive due NAV flogging. Guessing RAM first, then
power supply, then motherboard flaked. What's your estimate?

Sounds like RAM to me, too. Try putting some known good ones in for awhile.

Alias

 

[Guest]

Try this RAM test (makes bootable floppy or CD):
http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

--PA

 

[Woody]

In my 40 years of fixing computers I have never seen a ram test that would
show up these type of problems. The only way to isolate it is replace the
memory. The only thing that will show it up is running programs with heavy
ram usage. I have a 512 meg simm that will boot and run internet activity
forever but start one system scan and it is gone. It runs every memory test
I have found on the internet.

 

[Bob Willard]

My sister's PC had a major burnout. Motherboard burnt up. Motherboard,
cpu, RAM were replaced, and XP installed new. Ran fine for about a year.

Now, anytime anything that accesses the hard drive with gusto like McAfee
scan, defrag, Disk Cleanup, etc, the PC reboots. Attempt to use any kind of
software to look for viruses, trojans, etc results in reboots. Even online
scanners. She's connected to the internet via switch, router to cable.

I removed the hard drive from the PC, inserted it in a Firewire enclosure.
Ran NAV on it from my laptop, 45 minutes, over 200,000 files. Its clean.
And no reboot response.

Put the hard drive back in her PC. Removed the only partition, recreated
and formatted NTFS. This worked okay. Setup afterwards started at 39
minutes remaining. Setup produced a stop message, or simply froze at times.
Went through this 8 times before XP installed. It never rebooted after that
as noted on the first paragraph. Went to the zonelabs site and got ZA.
Somehow, Alexia got in. So we got a freebie trojan sniffer and AVG as well.
Things finally settled down when the sound driver was found and installed.
Was locking up sometimes before that.

Then, tried SP2 install. Downloaded fine from windowsupdate site. Install
started. Made it to backing up registry, then rebooted without notice.
Kept doing this over and over again upon each attempt. After 4 times, we
gave up.

My feelings are that SP2 doesn't like the hardware, or there's a vague I/O
problem.

However, prior to me messing with it, SP2 was installed on this PC. So,
have dismissed the hard drive due NAV flogging. Guessing RAM first, then
power supply, then motherboard flaked. What's your estimate?

Maybe RAM, maybe inadequate cooling. Check that all fans run, and are not
caked with dust, and that the filters are not clogged.

 

[Bullwinkle Moose]

I had a similar problem. Also stopped at 39 minutes. The 39 minute mark is
the installation of devices. I was also unable to do a repair install. You
might try to disconnect some of the other devices you have attached. Let
Windows XP install without the extra peripherals and then install them one
at a time until you find the one causing the problem.

I'm assuming you are past doing that while windows is still working. If your
windows os is working the try disconnecting the preipherals as a form of
troubleshooting.

Go slow and good luck.

Regards,

 

[Jonny]

Maybe RAM, maybe inadequate cooling. Check that all fans run, and are not
caked with dust, and that the filters are not clogged.

All fans running, none slowly. PC and fans were full of dust. Unplugged
PC, and blew all the crap out. Found some dust buildup on one side of the
RAM module slot that was used. Did the pencil eraser thing on the RAM
module as well.

Temps okay per bios. Voltages in spec, doesn't show negative voltage
though.

 

[Jonny]

Only peripheral, if you want to call it that is the NIC cable connection.
That was initially disconnected until setup started looking for a network,
that's when I plugged it in.

Her floppy is dead, so its disabled in the bios. No printer or any other
peripherals. She has one of those Logitech keyboards with all the bells and
whistles, but needed that for XP setup to work. Its USB with a USB to PS/2
adapter connected at the PS/2 keyboard connector on the motherboard.

Had to nudge her to get a USB memory stick for her Quicken data backups.
Came in handy when I reinstalled XP and Quicken. Stick was only connected
when restoring backup.

Only driver problem was the camedia sound driver. She didn't have the
original motherboard CD. XP found the driver, and all worked fine. No
exclamations or X marks in device mangler.
--
Jonny

I had a similar problem. Also stopped at 39 minutes. The 39 minute mark is
the installation of devices. I was also unable to do a repair install. You
might try to disconnect some of the other devices you have attached. Let
Windows XP install without the extra peripherals and then install them one
at a time until you find the one causing the problem.

I'm assuming you are past doing that while windows is still working. If your
windows os is working the try disconnecting the preipherals as a form of
troubleshooting.

Go slow and good luck.

Regards,