PC almost at standstill

[Chris Whelan]

On Thu, 06 Jun 2013 18:18:43 +0100, Terry Pinnell wrote:

[...]

BTW, just realised I presumably need to install XP SP1 and SP2...

Nope, just download and install SP3; it's much quicker that way.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322389#method21

Vhris

 

[GB]

On Thu, 06 Jun 2013 18:18:43 +0100, Terry Pinnell wrote:

[...]

BTW, just realised I presumably need to install XP SP1 and SP2...

Nope, just download and install SP3; it's much quicker that way.

Curiously, the automatic updater doesn't do this. It downloads and
installs loads of updates, and then SP3. Seems daft.

 

[Rob Morley]

No, too much else to do! And I don't think memory really seems an
issue, do you?

Bad memory symptoms can look very much like a bad disk or controller,
and it's generally pretty easy to check so worth eliminating as a cause
of problems.

 

[Chris Whelan]

On Thu, 06 Jun 2013 18:18:43 +0100, Terry Pinnell wrote:

[...]

BTW, just realised I presumably need to install XP SP1 and SP2...

Nope, just download and install SP3; it's much quicker that way.

Curiously, the automatic updater doesn't do this. It downloads and
installs loads of updates, and then SP3. Seems daft.

Yep, that's why I suggested downloading it.

Of course, if you plan on doing this more than once, it's worth slip-
streaming SP3 into an XP install disk.

W7 behaves similarly; it does one hundred-plus updates in several
'batches' then install SP1 at the end. It takes around three times as
long to update as it does to install, even with a 60Mb connection.

Chris

 

[Jon Danniken]

Bad memory symptoms can look very much like a bad disk or controller,
and it's generally pretty easy to check so worth eliminating as a cause
of problems.

Running memtest is the logical first step in diagnosing *any* computer
problem.

Jon

 

[Paul]

Running memtest is the logical first step in diagnosing *any* computer
problem.

Jon

Memory testing, is part of "acceptance testing".

It should be a part of incoming inspection of new computing
equipment.

Since memory frequently fails during the life of computers,
it also doesn't hurt to run such a test perhaps once a year,
just in case. I've had several memory products fail at the
1.5 year mark.

The same goes for a stress tester such as Prime95. Or one
of the other burn-in type programs. Four hours of Prime95
stress test without errors, is one of my acceptance tests.

In this case, with Terry, we were searching for the most
likely hardware fault, to give some idea what to swap out
first. Running Maxtor drives in a garden shed, is just
asking for problems (high humidity, high temperature, combined
with a quality hard drive). That's why I headed there first,
as well as with the symptoms of "slow disk access" and so on.

(For the first time here, I have received two new hard drives,
with desiccant packs included inside the anti-static package.
Disk drive companies do not waste good money on such things,
without a reason. There are actually temperature-humidity graphs
for disk drives, showing the allowed environmental bounds.)

Once the computer is considered to be repaired, I would still
want to run my short "acceptance test suite", before putting
the machine back into service (i.e. trusting it).

Paul

 

[Mike Tomlinson]

Nope, just download and install SP3; it's much quicker that way.

Agreed, but there's still a metric shitload of updates to do after that
(about 120 last time I did it, but that was a year or so ago, it'll be
more now.)

 

[Terry Pinnell]

Next time you have a hassle like this let me suggest a boot disk that avoids
the strangeness of Linux. It's called Hiren's Boot Disk, runs XP, and it's
a ready made, with lots of applications. Download and burn to a CD, boot,
and you can test some of your hardware, run A-V apps, look over your file
system, etc.

Looks great from this description by its authors
http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd
Strangely no download link to it there, but I found it near the bottom of
this page:
http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

Downloading the 593 MB zip now, thank you.

 

[Paul]

Agreed, but there's still a metric shitload of updates to do after that
(about 120 last time I did it, but that was a year or so ago, it'll be
more now.)

And on that topic, you'll want to use this tool, to prepare
a local cache of patches, for when Windows Update no longer
supports WinXP. When you use this tool, the file downloads
are from Microsoft, and you can keep a folder of those updates,
for some future Windows XP reinstallation effort (i.e. to get
those 120 updates back in place, after 2014).

http://download.wsusoffline.net/

I plan to run that, a month before support goes away.

Paul

 

[Terry Pinnell]

And on that topic, you'll want to use this tool, to prepare
a local cache of patches, for when Windows Update no longer
supports WinXP. When you use this tool, the file downloads
are from Microsoft, and you can keep a folder of those updates,
for some future Windows XP reinstallation effort (i.e. to get
those 120 updates back in place, after 2014).

http://download.wsusoffline.net/

I plan to run that, a month before support goes away.

Thanks for that tip, I'll do the same.

 

[Terry Pinnell]

Re the sudden display-related reboot issue I reported yesterday, the
graphic driver does indeed seem the likely cause:
http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/cs-004260.htm

I'm searching the Nvidia site for the driver for my 'Geoforce2 MX/400'.
Not as easy to find as I'd hoped.

 

[Paul]

Re the sudden display-related reboot issue I reported yesterday, the
graphic driver does indeed seem the likely cause:
http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/cs-004260.htm

I'm searching the Nvidia site for the driver for my 'Geoforce2 MX/400'.
Not as easy to find as I'd hoped.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4019461/Devices-1.jpg

Geforce2 MX/MX 400

Go to geforce.com/drivers (that's where the nvidia.com driver
link took me this time).

Use the settings shown here. I think that matches
your Geforce2.

http://imageshack.us/a/img560/77/drivers.gif

Legacy
Geforce 2 MX Series
Geforce 2 MX/MX400
Windows XP
English
All

That still leads to the 93.71 WHQL driver. It appears I got here via
a slightly different path.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_93.71_2.html

Check the Products Supported tab, assure yourself it matches
your card, then download the installer.

Paul

 

[Jaimie Vandenbergh]

Since memory frequently fails during the life of computers,

*Frequently*? What environment are you working in?

Since losing yet another ZX Spectrum to dodgy 4-bit RAM chips back in
1983, I didn't have another memory failure until 2009 (DDR2).

Cheers - Jaimie

 

[Rob]

On Thu, 06 Jun 2013 18:18:43 +0100, Terry Pinnell wrote:

[...]

BTW, just realised I presumably need to install XP SP1 and SP2...

Nope, just download and install SP3; it's much quicker that way.

Curiously, the automatic updater doesn't do this. It downloads and
installs loads of updates, and then SP3. Seems daft.

Yep, that's why I suggested downloading it.

Of course, if you plan on doing this more than once, it's worth slip-
streaming SP3 into an XP install disk.

W7 behaves similarly; it does one hundred-plus updates in several
'batches' then install SP1 at the end. It takes around three times as
long to update as it does to install, even with a 60Mb connection.

Chris

In fairness, when W7 does that, the SP1 update it downloads is much
smaller as it's dynamic and only contains updates which haven't
previously been installed - I just did it that way and SP1 was only
87MB.
It's still quicker to install (the full) SP1 first though, as you
say.

 

[Terry Pinnell]

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4019461/Devices-1.jpg

Geforce2 MX/MX 400

Go to geforce.com/drivers (that's where the nvidia.com driver
link took me this time).

Use the settings shown here. I think that matches
your Geforce2.

http://imageshack.us/a/img560/77/drivers.gif

Legacy
Geforce 2 MX Series
Geforce 2 MX/MX400
Windows XP
English
All

That still leads to the 93.71 WHQL driver. It appears I got here via
a slightly different path.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_93.71_2.html

Check the Products Supported tab, assure yourself it matches
your card, then download the installer.

Thanks Paul, I found it shortly after, using the 'Legacy tip you gave me
in alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia.

Initially I intend to just try it over the top of whatever has been
installed by the fresh XP installation, as that motherboard and DirectX
stuff looks mighty complicated.

BTW, after the last crash/reboot I reduced the resolution a bit, to 1024 x
768 and FWIW in the many hours since then haven't had a repetition.

Also, I wonder if monitor refresh rate influences it?

 

[Paul]

*Frequently*? What environment are you working in?

Since losing yet another ZX Spectrum to dodgy 4-bit RAM chips back in
1983, I didn't have another memory failure until 2009 (DDR2).

Cheers - Jaimie

I found the FPM/EDO era to be very reliable. And
I had a couple machines here with eight sticks of
RAM in them, of that type.

SDRAM, DDR, and onwards, not so much.

I bought eight 512MB SDRAM sticks, and three of them
died. And those died, while sitting in a motherboard
and not being used, in a (dry) house. Not in the
garage or anything. The remaining five sticks, still
stored in their antistatic tray, all tested good.
(Sticks in antistatic tray, stored in same environment.)

I've also lost two batches of "generic" RAM which
was on sale at local computer stores. Needless to
say, there have been no local purchases of that type
since. The RAM in that case, died at the 1.5 year mark.
One of the computer stores went bankrupt, so no opportunity
to discuss it with them.

I've had one stick of a four stick set of Ballistix die on
me. That was DDR400 CAS2. Other Crucial (non-Ballistix)
purchases were OK.

None of the systems had overclocked RAM. The Ballistix, with
nominal 2.5V chips, was running 2.65 or 2.7V or so (as instructed
on the tin). Not really an excessive voltage. Those particular
DIMMs were known not to tolerate higher voltages, and I didn't
try. The other generic RAMs, were all running nominal.

All in all, I'm not impressed.

The FPM/EDO, I just can't figure out why that stuff was
so much better. One difference in that era, was extra
care and attention to signal undershoot. It was after
that era, that inputs were changed on RAMs, to allow them
to tolerate rather large undershoot (up to -2V ?). Hard
to believe that would have anything to do with it, but
I can't see what other factor might come into play. The
geometry is getting smaller, but yet, we have processors
with 22nm features, that are as reliable as can be. Same
with video card GPUs, with large silicon dies, small
features, temperature stress, the whole bit, and they
aren't dropping like flies. GPUs still die, but generally
as a side effect of a dead and melted cooling fan, and the
GPU gets damaged through no fault of its own.

The RAMs aren't cool to the touch, so probably not
a condensation issue of some sort.

Paul

 

[Darklight]

Re the sudden display-related reboot issue I reported yesterday, the
graphic driver does indeed seem the likely cause:
http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/cs-004260.htm

I'm searching the Nvidia site for the driver for my 'Geoforce2 MX/400'.
Not as easy to find as I'd hoped.

Whats the temp of you cpu?

 

[Paul]

Thanks Paul, I found it shortly after, using the 'Legacy tip you gave me
in alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia.

Initially I intend to just try it over the top of whatever has been
installed by the fresh XP installation, as that motherboard and DirectX
stuff looks mighty complicated.

BTW, after the last crash/reboot I reduced the resolution a bit, to 1024 x
768 and FWIW in the many hours since then haven't had a repetition.

Also, I wonder if monitor refresh rate influences it?

Refresh rate is part of the bandwidth calculation.

http://www.csgnetwork.com/videosignalcalc.html

But other than that, I don't know if it really stresses anything.

On analog outputs, modern DACs can handle a pretty high resolution.
(Perhaps 2048x1536 @ 60Hz on a 400MHz DAC bandwidth, going from memory.)

On digital, you can see the rules in Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvi

Single link 1,920 × 1,200 @ 60 Hz CVT-Reduced Blanking
Dual link 2,560 × 1,600 @ 60 Hz CVT-Reduced Blanking

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hdmi

HDMI 1.3 increased that to 340 MHz, which allows for higher resolution
(such as WQXGA, 2560×1600) across a single digital link. [Probably 60Hz]

Some of the oldest video cards, you had to accept a change
from 32 bit to 16 bit or 8 bit color, to get the highest
resolutions and refresh rates. I don't think that's a problem now.
You can use 32 bit color for just about anything now.

HTH,
Paul

 

[Terry Pinnell]

No, too much else to do! And I don't think memory really seems an issue,
do you?

Now done and pleased to find that MemTest86 reported no errors.

 

[Rob Morley]

Now done and pleased to find that MemTest86 reported no errors.

That's a good start ... er ... middle?
Did you get the service packs installed and graphics and USB drivers
sorted?