Whoey's IT weekend blowout...

victordomingos · **Reply #30 on:** October 13, 2013, 12:54:56 PM

Quote from: mvyrmnd on October 13, 2013, 11:38:48 AM

Quote from: Whoey on October 13, 2013, 11:37:50 AM
yes, windows XP

Tell her to buy a Mac.

That usually is a very good advice, indeed.

Whoey · **Reply #31 on:** October 13, 2013, 01:05:55 PM

yes, fantastic advice to someone with no money to spend...

mvyrmnd · **Reply #32 on:** October 13, 2013, 01:07:06 PM

Quote from: Whoey on October 13, 2013, 01:05:55 PM

yes, fantastic advice to someone with no money to spend...

I hope you took my comment in the jest it was offered...

How's the testing coming along?

victordomingos · **Reply #33 on:** October 13, 2013, 01:38:13 PM

Quote from: Whoey on October 13, 2013, 01:05:55 PM

yes, fantastic advice to someone with no money to spend...

Well, that is a different problem, which requires different action. Even if that advice can't help right now, it may prove very useful along the way.

I really hope you can fix the problem without spending a lot of money.

Whoey · **Reply #34 on:** October 13, 2013, 01:42:50 PM

Things seem to be progressing, I'm following some guides to restore after a botched repair attempt.

It's a bit of a PITA, but this whole process has been.

Something I do not understand is that my DDR2-800 dimms are showing up as DDR2-232 in memtest.

The bios reports them as 533 (which coincides with CPU/mainboard docs)

With swapped (albeit noisy) PSU and ram things seem to be more stable than before. Still trying to get it to log back into windows however...

Whoey · **Reply #35 on:** October 13, 2013, 02:34:04 PM

I think I may have figured out the issue with repair installs failing. When I first opened it up the SATA disk was plugged into port SATA2 rather than SATA0 (the first one) I usually populate SATA ports in order, so I put it in SATA0... I suspect that may have been the HD issue as I've put it back in to SATA2, and the repair install has happily plugged along far past where it bailed out before.

Of course it still has my PSU vs the one it normally runs with, but I'll test that theory once this repair install finishes... it could also be some of the other fixes I've been trying, but I think that may be the main cause of further headaches and hopefully I can finally log in again once this repair finishes...

detron · **Reply #36 on:** October 13, 2013, 04:34:31 PM

That is great news. Keep us posted.
Yes sometimes computers do nor follow the rules. I just finished fixing my coworkers old lenovo T61. You press the part button. ....... Nothing. 10 seconds to 7 minutes later it turns on. ( actually time this stupid issue about 15 times) that is not the issue I was working on, and I could not fix this delay.

Sent from my SPH-L720 using Tapatalk now Free

Whoey · **Reply #37 on:** October 13, 2013, 05:23:08 PM

So the repair install actually finished this time... mostly. It stalled on the "please wait" XP loading screen after reboot, which led me to a post suggesting to run "chkdsk /r" from the recovery console... it's been running quite a while now, and it's taken ages between 51-61% (but at least it still seems to be progressing)

detron · **Reply #38 on:** October 13, 2013, 05:24:59 PM

Sweet, progress is always good. Nothing worse than plugging away and nothing changing

Sent from my SPH-L720 using Tapatalk now Free

Whoey · **Reply #39 on:** October 13, 2013, 08:01:54 PM

Turns out my 2x512mb dimms are not liked by the mainboard either, so the system is down to 2GB.

After much faffing about as I had to use a VLK as the OEM key wasn't valid with my SP3 CD and then change the key back to the actual key, unactivate it to reactivate it properly, which I had to download IE8 first as with the repair install it drops back to IE6, and breaks windows update...

However, the system runs now, better than when I got it, CPU seems warmish, will still recommend we change the cpu cooler at least...

detron · **Reply #40 on:** October 13, 2013, 08:04:32 PM

That is great news. Glad you got it to a working status.

Sent from my SPH-L720 using Tapatalk now Free

Whoey · **Reply #41 on:** October 13, 2013, 08:17:07 PM

Now the install updates, reboot, repeat process...

Thankfully my 100mb connection will make that somewhat less painful...

detron · **Reply #42 on:** October 13, 2013, 08:20:12 PM

Yeah, I know your not done, but now you know what to do, versus the aggravation of "why is nothing working" and "how many different issues are there"

Whoey · **Reply #43 on:** October 13, 2013, 09:32:32 PM

split this off the main topic as it was corrupting the nature of the pinned thread.

Things looked a lot better, but every reboot seems to hold new headaches...

detron · **Reply #44 on:** October 13, 2013, 09:34:58 PM

Probably a good idea to move it, I did not care, it did not bother me, however some people may have thought so

Whoey · **Reply #45 on:** October 14, 2013, 11:34:20 AM

And just when it looked like I was on the other side of it, windows reared it's ugly head and went into a boot loop. BSODs are great, especially when they appear for a microsecond, just long enough to see the blue flash, but not long enough to read the error

Again Ram & PSU swapped to mine, seems better, and could recover system by replacing a bunch of registry files from a system restore.

I noticed the CPU temp is down in the 40C range now all of the sudden... wonder if the PSU really is a culprit...

mvyrmnd · **Reply #46 on:** October 14, 2013, 12:16:28 PM

Quote from: Whoey on October 14, 2013, 11:34:20 AM

BSODs are great, especially when they appear for a microsecond, just long enough to see the blue flash, but not long enough to read the error

On startup, press F8 as if you were going to safe mode, and select "Disable Automatic Restart on System Failure" It will stop it from rebooting after a BSOD and let you see the code.

Whoey · **Reply #47 on:** October 14, 2013, 04:39:24 PM

Quote from: mvyrmnd on October 14, 2013, 12:16:28 PM

Quote from: Whoey on October 14, 2013, 11:34:20 AM
BSODs are great, especially when they appear for a microsecond, just long enough to see the blue flash, but not long enough to read the error

On startup, press F8 as if you were going to safe mode, and select "Disable Automatic Restart on System Failure" It will stop it from rebooting after a BSOD and let you see the code.

Hasn't reoccurred since the system restore/psu/ramswap...

detron · **Reply #48 on:** October 14, 2013, 04:51:09 PM

Quote from: Whoey on October 14, 2013, 11:34:20 AM

And just when it looked like I was on the other side of it, windows reared it's ugly head and went into a boot loop. BSODs are great, especially when they appear for a microsecond, just long enough to see the blue flash, but not long enough to read the error

Again Ram & PSU swapped to mine, seems better, and could recover system by replacing a bunch of registry files from a system restore.

I noticed the CPU temp is down in the 40C range now all of the sudden... wonder if the PSU really is a culprit...

when I made the statement *paraphrased* shot in the dark, but if everything is hot, check power supply, it was from personal experience, and I spend too much time figuring that one out. it was in my early IT days

Whoey · **Reply #49 on:** October 14, 2013, 05:27:56 PM

yep, it's defo looking more and more like the PSU is the culprit for a lot of woes... the dust I cleaned at the start was another factor, but there's a lot more ailing this machine than helping it along.

Whoey · **Reply #50 on:** October 14, 2013, 09:50:16 PM

I'm calling it for now.

The older PSU I have in it works great, but the fan is noisy when it's first powered on, once it's been running a bit it quiets down, and it sometimes randomly makes noise when always running, which is why I replaced it.

I added a smart fan blowing on the passive heatsink of the video card, should help stability a lot.

In the end I think I may have set the dimms in Dual Channel wrong as I had put the 512MB in channel 1, and the 1GBs in channel0... according to the manual I had them reversed, seems ok now, ie 512/1024/512/1024

Windows Update seems broken. I've tried a number of things including some MS Fix it! tool, that did not work entirely. Sad, but there's so much wrong with the OS that the only real fix is a clean install.

Interestingly, there seems to be a pile of leftover user accounts from the previous owners wasting space. In any case it's at least stable enough to return to the owner so she can extract whatever it is she needs before it packs in again... judging by the state it was in when I got it, she may use it as is for another year

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Whoey's IT weekend blowout...

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