On going boot up problem

Discussion in 'Software' started by Boycie, Jul 16, 2005.

  1. Boycie
    Honorary Member

    Boycie Senior Beer Tester

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    Hi guys,

    Long story cut short (same PC Trip :oops: ). User complaining of randomly not starting. When I went there it wouldn't start in Last known good but did in Safe mode. Nothing in Event viewer and as the user wanted to upgrade to Pro (and 3 years of general clutter) we both agreed to wipe it. :D
    Booted to the Pro disk got all the way through the text based set-up and the partioning page only displayed half the drive :blink

    The second time around it produced a BSOD with unknown hard error. Went to MS and they said replace the offending file if you want a repair, reinstall and if the same happens again there is a hardware issue.

    Took my home disc around and it booted, went through set-up and the partitioning part saw the whole drive. I said it must be a faulty disk.
    Another copy of Pro later it installed, saw the whole drive partitioned OK,SP2 went on via CD, Windows Updates and antivirus fine, manually restarted a few times fine.
    Turned it off (by XP not Power supply) went to restart about 10 minutes later and hung again like the original fault on the XP screen with the zipper :(
    Don't know what it could be as there is only minimal software on there :cry:
     
    Certifications: MCSA 2003, MCDST, A+, N+, CTT+, MCT
  2. KeithNN

    KeithNN Byte Poster

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    Same PC? You thought of trying an Exorcist, Boyce? :evil:
     
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  3. Mitzs
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    Mitzs Ducktape Goddess

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    Boyce are you sure you have a good hdd? Or even a good MB for that matter? Do you have a spare hdd you could replace it with for a few days. If it will run it with a different hdd you could more or less count the mb and other hardware off your list. Does it give any beeps?
     
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  4. Jakamoko
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    Jakamoko On the move again ...

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    IMHO, bad HDD m8.
     
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  5. 808

    808 Nibble Poster

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    we have faults like this on the laptops we fix in work.likely hdd
    but i would not leave out the possibility of a faulty mb as has been mentioned.
     
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  6. Boycie
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    Boycie Senior Beer Tester

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    Thanks for the posts guy's I have a little updating for you:

    Took a spare IDE drive with me. Blank, formated and known to be working fine. I installed XP Pro fine, SP2, antivirus and then collected windows updates no problem.
    I then restarted the machine and it started to the desktop. For a brief moment a yellow balloon came up in the taskbar "USB surge". Strange, i thought as there were no USB devices plugged in :dry. (keyboard and mouse PS2).
    The machine then failed to start. :( Back to square one.

    I stripped the machine down to make sure everything was as it should be and as far as I could see it was. I removed the PCI card in slot 4 first of all- it was a firewire/usb card. The end result is that the machine starts up everytime without this. The driver is digitally signed by MS. Went into sigverif and all was OK.
    At least I have found the problem with all your help thanks!

    I have said to leave the machine for a few days on test and then I will find him another firewire capture card. Any ideas?

    Boyce is happy again. :D
     
    Certifications: MCSA 2003, MCDST, A+, N+, CTT+, MCT
  7. tripwire45
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    tripwire45 Zettabyte Poster

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    Might be a bad PCI card that was causing the problem all along. Next step as you say is to find a known good replacement and see if that does the trick.
     
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  8. Boycie
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    Boycie Senior Beer Tester

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    Thanks Trip.
    I am going to do some research as he has a soundblaster card which has a 1394 connection on it. Maybe he could use that to capture his DV camcorder home movies :dry

    So far so good. I have told him to turn the computer off whenever he isn't using it as the cold start brings out the problem-or should I say used to. :D
     
    Certifications: MCSA 2003, MCDST, A+, N+, CTT+, MCT

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