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Post by alexham36 on Nov 16, 2013 20:34:31 GMT
 Hi, I think my WinXP is crashing, but it gives no error messages. The screen breaks up as in the attachment and the only way to recover is to re-boot, which gives me no indication as to what is causing this. I have been using Win XP, Service Pack 3 on this HD and the computer for 6 years and it has always been remarkably stable. No problems in Linux Puppy, which I am in now, nor in Win7, which is on another physical HD. Advice and help would be much appreciated. Best regards, Alex |
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Post by johnnybee on Nov 17, 2013 0:52:26 GMT
Almost certainly an XP-related VGA driver problem there, Alex - or whatever GFX system you're using.
The breakup on the screen is fairly obvious; if you have a standalone GFX card installed, then uninstall it, shut the rig down and reinstall the drivers on reboot.
If there's an updated driver available, use that instead; however from experience, it's possible that if a third-party expansion card is involved, it might well be poorly seated in its slot OR be suffering from overheating - check the fan etc for the usual fluff, dust and general detritus. Whatever, it IS deffo a GFX problem - best of luck, mate!
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Post by alexham36 on Nov 17, 2013 13:21:16 GMT
I am using NVidia that came with the computer and there is no expansion card, so it is all on the motherboard. The position now is that only Puppy-Slacko is working off an USB stick - Mikkh will be doing cartwheels when he sees this! Win7 is on a 160GB SATA HD and it will not start at all. Goes as far as "Starting Windows" and then freezes. WinXP is on IDE 250GB HD and it takes ages. It goes as far as "Starting Windows" with the 3 blue squares running across in a rectangle and then it carries on doing that for 5 minutes or sometimes longer and than the screen appears offering me options to start normally, safe mode, etc. Eventually, but not always, it starts.
Even the BIOS stops when it gets to "Detecting Drives" and stays frozen for a 30secs or so.
It works normally with all HDs unplugged and just Puppy running off a USB stick.
However, on a few occasions when I managed to actually start WinXP I clicked on Properties of the SATA HD where Win7 is and it showed the message that the drive is working normally.
On one occasion when WinXP was working I installed NVIDIA drivers, so I did not have the monitor crash as in the picture I sent earlier, but my gut feeling is that there is more wrong here.
What do you think?
Alex
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Post by alexham36 on Nov 17, 2013 14:02:10 GMT
Attachment DeletedAttachment Deleted An update on the above. Just run a Repair CD on Win7 and what if found is in the attachments. It seems to be telling me that there is no OS on that HD, which makes no sense to me. Does it mean anything to you?
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Post by alexham36 on Nov 17, 2013 14:25:26 GMT
  An update on the above. Just managed to start Win7 normally, but before that I run the "Repair CD" and what it found is in the attachments. I don't know what to make out of any of this. Does it make any sense to you? |
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Post by vikingken on Nov 17, 2013 14:42:00 GMT
How much is stored on the SATA drive? My laptop has a very clean installation of Windows 7 Pro and hardly anything saved on the C:/ drive. Its has a custom installation of MS Office 2003 and PSP Photo Pro X2, everything else are small programs. That is 70 GB, my main computer is over 150 GB with nothing stored on it. Windows needs room to work, it cant move stuff around if there's nowhere to put it. You need about 1/3 free space and the more you fill it up after that slows things down, until it grinds to a halt.
The fact the other drive is IDE means its past its sell by date. I haven't used a motherboard with an IDE connector for over 4 years. A well used computer the drives are good for about 5 years and they can go for much longer, but they cant be depended on. Get a new computer every 4 years and you probably wont have any trouble. There is nothing wrong with keeping old stuff going, but there are days when you just have to throw bits away. Have one good computer for general use and a hotrod for messing about with Linux on. The good computer doesn't have to be Windows, just up to date hardware. A lot of the Linux distros will run on just about anything. If you are just trying out stuff, it doesn't matter if you crap out a few computers. Keep the experiments away from your serious stuff and you wont go wrong. |
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Post by vikingken on Nov 17, 2013 14:47:23 GMT
The attachments might contain a vicious code. Just because your antimalware doesn't find it, doesn't mean its not there.
They like to give you all these magic numbers, but I have never met anyone yet who knows what they mean. |
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Post by alexham36 on Nov 17, 2013 15:15:05 GMT
Well, I am pleased to report that all is working well again, but I don't really know what that was all about.
When the screen started freezing, I did a scan of all drives with Microsoft Security Essentials and it discovered a Trojan autoloader, which I removed. I was playing with Linux OS yesterday and for that I use old (15 years)IDE drives and to make sure no grub is installed I unplug all my other drives. When the computer is running normally,i.e. not experimenting, I also have a 4GB IDE drive jumpered as a slave just for storage. When the problem started I went back into the box and found that drive's power lead not fully home. Could that have caused all the trouble?
My computer is not all that old (2007). I bought it from Power Computing in Bedford and I specified a IDE slot because I had a nearly new 250GB HD. I also specified a Floppy drive. None of the drives are too full. The Win7 partition on SATA HD is just over half full, but there is 100GB on that HD empty. WinXP is in a 100GB partition of IDE HD and that is about a third used.
I note your advice on the life of HDs, but my experience is different and I have never had a HD crash yet. But my computer is turned off when I am not using it.
Anyway, thank you for the advice and encouragement. If anyone can make any sense of this whole thing, I would be very grateful to hear it, because as far as I am concerned I did not do anything to repair the damage, yet it all now works normally.
All the best,
Alex
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Post by mikkh on Nov 17, 2013 21:19:39 GMT
Yes the power not fully in could cause some of those problems with missing OS messages. Did you say a 4GB drive is also in there? did you mean 40 - either way, you're making problems for yourself with what is a very old drive that is too small to be of any real use. Remove it and keep it for emergencies maybe I'm not a fan of multiple drives and don't see the point unless you're using a RAID type setup. I certainly wouldn't mix SATA and IDE either. With USB pen drives and external drives getting bigger and cheaper, you're 4 or 40 GB could easily be replaced with a 32 USB stick for under £20 or a 320 GB 2.5 inch portable external drive for about £35. You could even push the boat out and get a 1TB for about £60 or 2TB for around £80. Basically if you want extra storage, make it external and USB3 so it's full speed on your next PC - it will still work fine on your current USB2 machine Now you've got more RAM, you could run XP inside Win 7 or Linux or just forget it altogether unless you've got programs that only run in the venerable XP. .... as for doing cartwheels, I'm too old for that, but good old Puppy  |
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Post by alexham36 on Nov 17, 2013 23:13:37 GMT
Well, Mikkh. If it had not been for Puppy, I'd be talking gibberish now through Raspberry PI for all the fine OS that Mr Windows sold me! That old drive is only 4GB; probably 20 years old and you are quite right, I should put the data onto an USB stick.
Thanks again,
Alex
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