I need advice/help

[Chris]

Hi,

I've asked just about everyone I know about this and I've also scoured
the Web trying to find an answer, but I haven't been able to find
anything. I'm hoping someone on here will see this and hopefully help
me out.

Here's my problem:
I recently upgraded my motherboard/processor from an Intel 1.6 to an
AMD 64 3000+, I have 1GB of Crucial RAM, BFG 5500 OC 256MB vid card,
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card, 120GB (master) WD hard drive, 160GB
WD (slave) hard drive, Plextor 712A DVD burner, & Lite-On 52x CD burner
all running on a GigaByte GA-K8NSC-939 F8 AWARD BIOS w/XP SP2 Pro.
This problem I'm about to describe also happened when I had the Intel
board.

The problem is out of nowhere and totally randomly, my computer
"clicks" like I just turned the power off and freezes up only to
restart a few seconds later and does one of two things: 1) hangs at
Verifying DMI Pool Data or 2) asks for a system disk because somehow my
hard drives got switched in the BIOS and my slave is now set as the
primary drive. I have no idea how that happens!

Now, I've updated all of my drivers, the BIOS included. I just updated
it last night as a matter of fact and when I woke up this morning (I
leave the PC on) I had the DMI error screen again.....

I checked the event viewer and nothing corresponds with the time or
date that it happened. The RAM is brand new, I've done numerous
diagnostic checks on the HDs and they always come out OK, everything
else is updated hardware-wise...I dont' know what else it could be....

So if anyone out there can help me to possibly figure this out, please
post....

Thanks,
Chris

 

[Richard Urban]

New motherboard. Changed the RAM.

The common element here is your power supply, which you did not say you
changed. They do go bad. It also may be under powered do to various upgrades
you performed over the years.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Chris]

Someone told me that it could be that, but I figured I'd try the
mobo/proc/RAM first and see if that fixed it...it obviously didn't. I
was leaning towards doing that next because the PS I have is 350W and I
think it might be underpowered like you said.

Is that a normal type of error to get though for not enough power?

Chris

 

[Richard Urban]

A system crash without any notification in the event viewer? Absolutely. The
system goes down before anything can be written to the event log.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Chris]

Thank you Richard. That's the most concrete response I've gotten
regarding this matter. I just bought a 430W Thermaltake PSU from
Newegg. That should be enough, right?

Chris

 

[Guest]

OMG, and I thought I was the only one! Here's my experience so far:

Original configuration was 5 years old, had a 300W power supply and an AMD
Athlon 1800+ chip. Worked fine for four and a half years, then started
freezing, then resetting randomly. Was having trouble even booting /
logging on: wouldn't get through POST, then wouldn't get TO POST!!! Some
BSODs referred to graphics adapter, so I bought a new one.

This worked (but not 100%) for a while, so I finally lashed out on:
+ 400W power supply
+ new Gigabyte m/b
+ AMD Athlon 64-bit 3200+ chip
+ new RAM
+ new HDD

I put all this together with the old sound card, (new) graphics card, old
HDD, old CD burner and old DVD reader. Worked fine for 24 hours, then I
installed PC-Cillin 2006. Clicked "restart to finish installation", and it
resets every time at the blue account logon screen. Will boot OK in Safe
Mode, however.

Does this sound like a power problem (genuine question!!)??

Given that I have replaced just about everything that could possibly be the
problem (?) and I had no problems until a software install, how can I fix
this? I have already tried repairing the Windows installation - no luck.
I plan to (a) totally re-install Windows, and if that doesn't work, (b)
disconnect sound & graphics cards (m/b has both onboard) and the old HDD,
and add one by one ...

If anyone has any better luck, I'd be overjoyed to hear it!!

Cheers,

Mark

 

[Chris]

Hey Mark,

Sounds to me that it could be the PC-Cillin software. Have you tried
uninstalling it and rebooting? I had a similar experience with McAfee
from Comcast (my ISP). I figured that since they were giving it to us
for free that I'd try it...problem being that I never got to. My PC
would freeze everytime Windows booted after I installed it. Once it
was uninstalled through safe mode, everything was fine (minus the DMI
crap I've been going through).

Chris

 

[Guest]

Chris,

Thanx for the speedy reply: I tried uninstalling from Control Panel in Safe
Mode, but it said I couldn't do that in Safe Mode!! I guess I could just
delete it!? But I think (assuming that PC-Cillin IS the culprit!) that the
problem might be the "runonce" file it's put into the startup area to finish
it's installation.

Any ideas how to delete this file in Safe Mode?

Mark

 

[Richard Urban]

Go here for a basic calculation. Whatever you come up with, add 25% for
future expansion.

http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Guest]

Well, whaddaya know: despite Windows being adamant that I had a hardware
problem, it was as simple as "don't try to run the Zone Alarm firewall with
the Windows firewall turned on"!!

I turned the windows firewall off, uninstalled Zone Alarm completely, and
turned on the firewall in PC-Cillin 2006 .... no problems!!!

Thanx,

Mark

 

[Chris]

Ah! Yea, that'll do it too!

 

[Chris]

well it says that I'd need 289W, but if the PSU is 350W, maybe it's
just bad? Hopefully this new one will be ok....

Thank you for your help.

Chris

 

[Chris]

It looks like you were right Richard. It's been 3 days and nothing has
reset. And now that I think about it, the PSU was going bad because
whenever I played a game, my PC sounded like it was going to take off.
I thought it was the AMD fan, but it was my PSU. Thank you again for
your help

Chris

 

[Richard Urban]

You are welcome Chris!

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Chris]

Seems like I spoke too soon....I came home just a few minutes ago and
came upstairs and found my computer stuck at the same screen again. I
got the Verifying DMI 'success' line and then I had an "Error loading
OS" line after and it was stuck there. I rebooted and got the same
error. I went into the BIOS and my damn hard drives were switched
again!

Now, since we know its not the power supply, what else could it be? A
bad HD cable? Bad case? I'm totally clueless now....I was really
hoping that was the end of my problem with this thing.

Chris

 

[Richard Urban]

I sound like you may have problems with the IDE ports on your M/B. Not a
good sign. I can think of no other reason why drives would switch with the
cables staying where they originally were.

Someone isn't playing games with you, are they?

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Chris]

No, no one is playing games =) The motherboard is brand new and it was
doing this before I changed it with my old Intel board.

I just ran ScanDisk that comes with Windows and everything came out ok.
I have ActiveSMART loaded on my PC right now and it says that
everything concerning my HDs is fine. My 2 most recent "error" msgs go
something like this:

1) Computer reboots by itself, goes and checks everything on startup,
gets to load OS and I get "DISK BOOT FAILURE: Insert system disk and
press Enter" I noticed that where it lists my drives and stuff that
there is no Master drive but the Slave drive is there. I do a hard
reboot, go into BIOS and the damn drives are switched. I switch them
back and the PC boots up normally.

2) This just happened this morning and this is the first time for this
one. PC apparently rebooted and got stuck at Verifying DMI Pool Data.
This time, however, it STAYED at that point and jus had the cursor
blinking. That's never happened before. It usually gives me some kind
of error message.

I just went into even viewer but there is nothing that corresponds to
anything late at nite or early in the morning involving errors, just
when I rebooted this morning. I did find this, but I have no idea what
it means:

TraceLevel parameter not located in registry; Default trace level used
is 32.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

I would like to get this figured out so I don't have to buy a whole new
computer which is what I'm thinking of doing if I can't get this
solved.

Chris

 

[Richard Urban]

If your computer can not verify the DMA pool data - you have hardware
detection problems. Likely a defective hard drive, as that is what you seem
to be having issues with.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!