My computer is dying, what to do?

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[City Builder]

I'm quite frustrated, I can't get my damn WIndows computer to boot up.  Im posting from the server itself instead of my normal windows computer.

Let me tell you whats been going on......

1.  MOst of the time the computer boots up perfectly.

2. Occasionaly the computer gets to the "verifying DMI Pool data" or some such thing and then just gives me a blinking cursor.

I got home tonight after my dads 83'rd birthday (congrats dad) and tried to boot up my computer, but no go.  I tried everything I know, I even tried to reinstall windows itself but it just wouldnt happen.  Every time I tried to reinstall windows it went through it's normal routine and then sat at "starting up windows".  I let it sit for about 5 to 10 minutes and it never went any further.

Im quite frustrated by this point and I have a huge load of work coming in tommorrow (because I went into the office a day early this week and a day early actually means that I get about an extra 4 hours work on Friday which would be fine if the damn DHL truck showed up on time, (before 10 AM) but he never shows up on friday until 3:45 PM) AND my work must be submitted to the auto mfg's by 6pm)

Anyway, no matter what I tried to do, the computer failed to boot.  SOmetimes it got to the boot screen then just rebooted other times it would get to the "load safe windows with network support" and then lock up.

IM about ready to go down to the CIrcuit CIty or Best BUy or PC Club tommorrow and buy another computer, the shame is that thsi computer is barely a year old (though out of warranty because the CPU was upgraded and the MB was put into a new box).

I really don't know what to do at this point.  I can't take the chance that the computer *might* start up normal in the morning but theres nothing I can do till morning when the stores open.

I can't use my wifes computer because it has to have the key that is on this computer amongst other things.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH  Im so frustrated at this point!

I also can't use the linux server to do my work because the auto mfg's websites need windows to do the work, they wont let anything be submitted through anything but a windows machine (Thanks HOnda, Acura, Subaru, etc).

Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[MaxBeta]

   OH NOoooo CB  That's just awful to hear.

I suppose if I was in your shoes I'd start checking the basic things that might cause a reboot.  Since you've been running OK..then all at once this problem started..I'd check to see if you have any heat sensors uplugged (fans all working).  MB, and PSU that can't get their normal Temp readings will cause restarts.  That's the simple stuff..to check.. Failing Power supply??..would do it too. Could something be overheating?

Now on the software side.. all those items that dig their heels in on boot..Firewalls. (I had a Linksys hub that "failed" caused this).. and obviously killed my Net connectivity.  If your deal is a bonafide system failure ..it seems like you would be getting a message to that affect. 

I would firstly double check to see that the Hareware side is ruled out.  Then use the "repair" option to if it does anything.  Of course if you're like me I always leaving the total reformat as a last resort...<gasp>  I like to refresh my systems on my own terms..not be "forced" into the task

I'll check in on MS's site for other ideas..hopefully we'll get you back to normal ASAP!! 

[City Builder]

Well, I gave up at about midnight last night or shortly thereafter and went to bed hoping that it would boot up properly this morning but no go.

It gets the loadscreen of WIndows then does a reboot again.

I went into the bios to see if all the temps are correct and all the readings are there to make sure that something isn't uplugged and it all seems normal.

THe other funky thing that I've had for as long as I can remember with this computer is that it used to just freeze up for like 10 seconds or so every now and then.  THis usually happened after it's been running for a long long while (hence why I wanted to reinstall WIndows last night figuring that if I reinstalled maybe it would take care of both problems), so yesterday before going to dads party I was playing WOW and the computer started to freeze up every couple minutes, and I had to hard power down because it finally got to the point where it was locked up.

I don't think it's overheating, in the bios the CPU temps are spot on.  I suppose it could be a faulty power supply though it's only about 5 or so months old.  Id really hate to think that was it since it's a very expensive high watt power supply.

Well, I'll keep trying things for the next half hour (till the stores open) then I'll pop down to the 2 chain stores that we have in my city and see what it would cost me for another computer.  All I need is a basic computer that accepts the same stuff I've already got so that I can just add my ram to it and my cpu so I've got to find a computer that has the same stuff like the 939 socket and pci-e

Frustration, frustration frustration.

[City Builder]

Latest update.....

I went to the couple different (2) stores that sell full computers and neither one of them had any great deals.  The least expensive model was about $597 and it was far inferior to what my computer is/was so I passed on them and went to the PC club and bought a new motherboard and hard drive.

I just finished installing the motherboard and thankfully all worked out well.

Windows on the other hand had me stumped as to why it wouldnt install.  Kept giving me a cycllic redundancy error message. We have two copies of XP Pro here, mine is the upgrade copy and my wifes is the full copy but both copies caused the same error.

After retrying for about an hour I finally searched my memory (mind) to when this happened before and I remembered that the Lightscribe dvd drive was the culprit before so I ended up trying from the old sony dvd drive and it installed fine.

So Im back up and running again and now just intalling the drivers to get this working fully.  Then I'll have to really bust out my work and at least submit the most expensive of claims, though now that I think about it, it's not the end of the month yet and it's not a payday week so it really shouldnt matter if I submit them today or on monday next week.

Oh well....  At least I have a clean install of Windows XP Pro and a new motherboard (mainboard) which I needed because mine was definately the culprit since it wouldnt even get to the post screen sometimes.

[MaxBeta]

  Ahhh Great to hear CB

I'm sure sorry you had to go through this ordeal..especially when you're all alone, as that seemed to be enough on you plate.   Hope the fix gives you flawless performance..after the extreme pressure to deal with it asap.. my hats off to you..I'd probably sulked and whined for a couple of days ..and finally get my act together and deal with it.   My way of attaining maximum sympathy..if anyone is paying attention  of course..hehe

[Lengo]

Latest update.....

... I passed on them and went to the PC club and bought a new motherboard and hard drive.

I just finished installing the motherboard and thankfully all worked out well.

.....

So Im back up and running again and now just intalling the drivers to get this working fully.  Then I'll have to really bust out my work and at least submit the most expensive of claims, though now that I think about it, it's not the end of the month yet and it's not a payday week so it really shouldnt matter if I submit them today or on monday next week.

Oh well....  At least I have a clean install of Windows XP Pro and a new motherboard (mainboard) which I needed because mine was definately the culprit since it wouldnt even get to the post screen sometimes.

Ack! When I saw your original post I knew exactly what it is, and hoped I wasn't too late,but you did right. The mobo is fried. I've had the same problem with a rig.

Always trouble shoot this way:

1. Suspect your memory
2. Suspect yuour mainboard
3. Suspect a peripheral (drive, monitor, etc).

Always fix this way:

Buy the part and install it! Don't buy a complete rig! You'll save 60% of the cost.

Whew!  I'm glad you got it fixed.

p.s. Get a load of this:

1 mainboard, socket 939 ready, PCI Express, nvidia nforce bus, 400 FSB  -- $80
1 AMD Athlon 64 Venice processor  $80
1 Graphics card, Geforce 766 GT, PCI Express, 256 Mb -- $189
1 powersupply, 500 W  - $50 or even less

Do the math! It comes to $400.

Now go to Tiger direct.com and look for a similar rig -- $1200 or more!

Well done, Mr CB! I'm glad you got it fixed and didn't waste your money. 

[City Builder]

Yeah, I actually got a really nice motherboard it's a DFI Lanparty  nF4 Ultra Expert board for $139.00 they had it listed at $179.00 but it was previously bought by the customer then returned to the store saying it was broken so the store sent it back to the factory who did all the testing on it and repackaged it and sent it back to the store telling them that there is nothing wrong with the board at all.

I was a bit leary about buying one like this but since it holds the same warranty I figured I'd give it a shot.  I know why the other person returned it as defective now.   It's cosmetics, the mainboard has a slight warped area that doesn't affect how it mounts or it's usage, it's just a cosmetic thing that you can only see if you are looking on the same plane as the board, and even then it's only slightly noticible.

Works flawlessly.


The lowest priced computer that I found was really inferior, I think it was something like
AMD 64X2 3800+
512MB Ram
Built in video chip from Nvidia
160GB hard drive
Windows XP Media center edition (apparently it's what all the mfg's are shipping their computers with)
$597.00

My new Lanparty mainboard which as SLI as well as 2 extra pci-e slots, I think they are something like pci-x4 and pci-e8 or something like that.  They are really tiny slots and I've never seen anything that would fit in them, then it's also got 3 or 4 pci slots which is perfect for me.  Comes with some interesting software like things to monitor the temps of the cpu, case, mainboard and chipset, nice to see that my cpu runs consistantly at 90f after it's been warmed up a bit.  The board also has 5 fan plugins on the mainboard which are also monitored.  Overall it's a great board supposedly.
160GB hard drive
$199.00 and I get to use my 3GB memory, and my AMD 64X2 4600+ CPU and almost all my existing hard drives except one that was giving me trouble.

So a good savings though I did lose quite a bit of data that was on the hard drive like all my emails that I've had since 1996, but I didn't lose all of them, I have a backup of all of them for outlook express saved on an external hard drive though it's not been updated since about May 2006, so basically I lost the email that I saved since May 2006 as well as my favorites folders.

Oh well, Im starting clean now so let's see how long I can keep it that way.

Now I just have to find a email spam catcher to reapply to outlook express as I opened up just one email account this morning and found over 600 emails, of which only 10 or 20 were legitimate because I havnt checked my email since this happened to my computer the other day, and I use to have a freeware spam preventer program that caught about 95% of the spam but I can't remember what the name of it was.


Oh and heres the link to the specs of the mainboard that I purchased if anyone is interested:
http://us.dfi.com.tw/Product/xx_product_spec_details_r_us.jsp?PRODUCT_ID=3872&CATEGORY_TYPE=LP&SITE=NA

[MaxBeta]

  Hey, that's a pretty good deal.  I'll need to upgrade sometime this spring, got a few boxes that starting to show their age..and will die soon if I don't.

I just hope I can find something locally..I've had such awful experiences with shopping online.  I usually goes to Wilsonville Fry's and do alright..but it would be nice to find the right items here in town.

[City Builder]

Spoke too soon on that last message of mine.

I was looking in the box because the hard drives that are in the box don't match the hard drives that windows lists and wouldnt you know it, I forgot to plug in one of the sata2 hard drives when I was reinstalling windows because I didn't want to take the chance that I might reformat the wrong drive.

So I have *most* of my favorites back as well as the majority of emails that I had prior.  Im quite pleased.  I've put the computer through it's paces playing some games and some serious net browsing (anyone ever get the message that says "Theres nothing more to see on the Internet, you've seen it all already"  ) and not once has my my computer stalled or froze, not even for a split second so it seems that my problems of where the computer would freeze up for 2 to 10 seconds is all over now.  Im very pleased at that to be sure. 

[MaxBeta]

   Always a pleasure to hear good news CB..  Most of us realize how important our "collected" materials are..so Bravo. 

Hope your current PC has a long and productive existence, and serves you well.

<Max pours a splash of Bailey's into coffee cup..ahhh!!... life is truly good>