Can someone give help on an old PC please?

[JrRacinFan]

Nice sounds good, dear! Glad to hear you got it working!

@candle

Female .....

 

[Black Panther]

Well, this pc is still testing my sanity.
Sometimes I power it up and it works perfectly.
Other times, it appears to work perfectly yet 'freezes' while no software is running except XP.
Still other times, after powering up it posts and goes till the window loading screen with the blue bars, then restarts as if someone pressed the reset button. It could do this for like 8 or 10 times before getting to windows.
Still still other times, it appears to load normally but I get a nearly black and white picture on the monitor (16 colours?).

Believe me this pc did all sorts of crazy things. Another one for example is this: it powers up normally then I get the message that new programs have been installed (duh???) and when I press the Start button it lists nearly all of the stuff there as 'newly installed' and highlighted.

I was checking on the SMART thing for the hdd. Admit I never tried it before and I was checking the rig in my system specs which brought me to 92% both for fitness and performance.

So I thought to check the old maxtor in the Pentium.... it was a phenomenal 99% performance but only 18% fitness.
Duh I have no clue whether that means just because the HDD is old and can't compare to today's modern systems, or whether it means the HDD's got one foot inside the grave...

Anyway, I'm currently in the process of formatting the HDD and doing a clean install on that pc. Hopefully I'd be getting a better performance and none of the crazy stuff it used to do before?

 

[Black Panther]

I put in the Windows CD, and instructed for a format, wiping out the whole of the HDD clean, and installing a new OS as a clean install.

During the installation I got the following messages, not just once but one after the other alternating:

"Windows could not load the installer for DiskDrive. Contact your hardware vendor".

"Windows could not load the installer for CD-ROM. Contact your hardware vendor".

"Windows could not load the installer for Battery. Contact your hardware vendor".

All this happened before I was asked to input the product key for the Windows XP.

After all that I inputted the product key and everything appeared to be proceeding normally.
However, when all the installation finished, I got this screen:

And whatever option I kept choosing, normal, safe mode or whatever, I keep getting that screen and the computer keeps rebooting ad infinitum, windows xp cd-rom still in the drive, and keeps giving me that image on the monitor!

Wtf should I do now? Replace hdd? If I choose to do so I have to get an old IDE drive, not Sata or sata2. I can use it on my present pc if it doesn't work on the old one but just for storage...

If I have to replace the mobo it's another story. I don't think it's worth to try and get from somewhere a socket 423 mobo with AGP. Prolly I'll get a better mobo, end up with pci-e and having to get a new vid card, new proc.... new ram.... and I really don't want to buy another new pc just right now.

Because you see this pc is just for my 5 year old to play her simple games and watch some dvd cartoons. As long as it does that I'd be happy. I've gone over budget already with getting a new gfx for my own rig, and a new monitor, and anything else pc-related is out of budget.

 

[Black Panther]

I re-tried the format and clean install a second time. Only creating a new partition of 39XXX MB (That HDD is 40GB).

This time it gave me no errors before inputting the product key, unlike what happened the first time as illustrated in my first post.

So far I've inputted product key, set up my time region as brussels,rome etc being gmt+1, and pressed 'next' and so far so good...

*prays*

 

[candle_86]

ok got an idea for you. Format it to FAT32 with a windows 98 boot disk or the CD. Then run scandisk

 

[Black Panther]

Sorry I have to bump this up since I haven't as yet found a solution apparently.

Due to the fact of programs disappearing, or trying to open them gives me the 'corrupted' error, I purchased a new HDD for this pc.

Installing Windows... I started getting the message 'cannot install battrey' and 'cannot install cdrom' and 'cannot install system' during the XP installation.
I used to get those type of messages before.

My installation is still 'in progress' though I am seriously doubting if its gonna work.

Now I got a new message which I never got before (precise quote):

"The instruction at "0x7c925c88" referenced memory at "0x0000010b", The memory could not be "read". Click OK to terminate the program."

Doesn't sound nice at all.
Heck it can't be the other memory stick failing now?!? I checked memory running memtest for over 4 hours?!? I'm using a brand new HDD.

And I'm definitely not in the mood for spending 42 Euros to buy a new DDR 133Mhz memory stick for this...

The Hi5 link in my signature gives a complete history of this computer. I don't want it to die. I have plans for it. I was even dreaming to mod the case in a Winx Pink theme for my 6 year old daughter...

I hope it's not the mobo. Heaven knows from where I can get a socket 423 mobo now... how much it'd cost and whether it'd be worth upgrading to keep the same socket 423 P4 1.6Ghz...

Edit: I've definitely bought the HDD in vain.
The pc is giving the same results as it had with the old HDD. Apart from the above-mentioned errors during XP fresh install (which also used to happen when using the old HD) I am still getting a pc which POSTS but reboots just before it gets to the black Windows XP screen with the blue bars moving horizontally. I never get to see that screen on the monitor. The pc just reboots every time, just before it reaches that point.

Do you think it's a RAM problem or a motherboard problem?

*feels very disappointed*

 

[Steevo]

Duh.

Nevermind.

I got it working.

I ran windows repair under the MX440.

I cleaned all gfx drivers, put in the FX5500. Normal desktop. Installed the old 5500 drivers from its original diskette, and voila...

I had already done the driver thing before and it hadn't worked. And if I remember correctly even had run windows repair too...

Anyway, what I know for sure is that the 256MB RAM module's kaput. After I got everything working I put it in. If I try to switch on the pc with it inserted in any of the 3 slots, I get no POST, no beeps, and monitor remains on standby. But during the while I had been trying to repair the pc it hadn't been inserted, so it wasn't interfering.

This pc's funny though. Always been weird from the start.

After I got it working I got no sound because AC97 Audio device could not start (Code10). I rolled back the driver and it worked.

Caps going out, I built a few from Willamette cores around that same time (1.7Ghz) and they are dieing as the caps on the board are starting to bulge and that causes very strange and hard to trace issues. Mouse wouldn't work sometimes, keyboard others, printer randomly available, anything connected to USB pretty much. Then random lockups, aand other wierd unreproduceable events like random reboots and drives not responding, stalling in audio and one TV tuner card.

 

[Silverel]

Possibly your mobo battery dying off. Can't hold a charge anymore even when everything is powered on. Try replacing it, they're cheap. Reason that I pull this from is the random restarts, and the "new" programs installed. Sounds like that battery cleared itself out, the date/time was reset, and everything appeared to be brand new.

Just another possibility, but at least a new battery will only cost ya 2-3$

 

[Black Panther]

Steevo: I checked the caps one by one. They appear proper and neat like new caps should be. No bulging tops, no abnormality at the bottoms, no leakages. I even sprayed a special coolant specifically to locate cracks on electronic boards just in case, and I found no cracks on the pcb.


Silverel: I hadn't thought about the mobo battery since my date and time had been working perfectly before the start of all this muck-up. I have a couple of new and newish batteries lying around. I'll test them out after I finish the second attempt at a fresh re-install (it's around half-way now).

Edit: Come to think of it I did have that brand-new syndrome. Previously when my computer was at least loading windows, at random I'd find programs which had been installed a long time ago marked up as new. You know how when you press the Start button and select 'All Programs' the new ones would be highlighted? I was getting like 75% of the stuff there highlighted as new, even though it wasn't and I had accessed those programs before.

2nd Edit: I managed to get Windows to install properly. I don't think it's the mobo battery.
Whatever it is, it's something which is getting either hot or humid (probably caused by corrosion). I can say that the cpu temperature is OK, and so is the FX5500 (I had same problems with onboard graphics), the HDD can't be the problem because I'm using a new one.

I am now sure it's a hot/humid component because I placed the tower on the desk, with both sides open and with a very powerful house fan (the high-rev ones with metal blades) blowing at it.

Windows installation went flawlessly. Pc is functioning flawlessly.
Now we'll see what happens when I unplug the 23" fan......

Edit 3: As I said XP fresh install went flawlessly... only to discover I got no mouse pointer. I could navigate through windows limitedly using the keyboard.
I went into the bios and made sure the settings were still correct. Still nothing.
I plugged a PS2 mouse, just in case (PS2 port had called it quitters some years ago). Still nothing.
Rebooted.
Keyboard doesn't work now.
Rebooted like 6 times, in vain.
While POSTing the keyboard LED's light up but nothing else functions. I can't even access the bios now.

Apparently Steevo has got a good point. I'm sure that there is a capacitor or maybe some other component in the motherboard which is giving up. I think I managed to install XP only thanks to the freezing blowing wind of the fan...

So now I have a pc which at least doesn't keep rebooting by itself before loading XP. XP actually loads but I have no mouse function, no keyboard function, no bios access.

 

[lemonadesoda]

Sounds to me like the memory controller / chipset is going out.

1./ Memory errors can also occur with CPU conflict in BIOS. Make sure you are running the latest BIOS firmware.

2./ Make sure you set RAM timings to manual and select the SLOWEST options.

3./ Sometimes trying to fix a very old PC isnt worth the time and effort. If you really want a second PC, consider starting with a better chipset and CPU. You can get an 865 P4 Northwood for less than $30 on ebay. Althernatively, if you dont need AGP, try something like this:http://cgi.ebay.de/Intel-D201GLY2-M...oryZ1244QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem . Cheap, small, silent, perfect for a NAS or media server or internet of "office productivity" machine. Just not for gaming.

 

[Black Panther]

1) Can I flash the bios without keyboard function?
I've never flashed a bios but I had seen a friend of mine do it, on this same pc just after mouse PS2 socket quit functioning. He copied the bios file on floppy... and well I'll search for info on how to do the rest. After all this pc can't get any worse it seems...

2) RAM timings are stock. I never oc'd this pc.

3) I know fixing an old pc isn't really worth time, money and effort but I just detest having a pc die on me. Call me stupid but it makes me really depressed. It's a bit of an obsession of mine...

 

[Steevo]

You might be able to use a version of Winflash to do it, but check with the board maker to see what procedure they reccomend. Also get copies of drivers as some BIOS flashed change the way devices are seen and used by Windows and have caused me grief in the past.

 

[Black Panther]

I think my motherboard's gone.

I checked it really thoroughly. The caps seem OK but there are a couple of those parts which look like a small black square with 3 legs coming out on the left and one connection on the right (I don't know what they're called in English), and there is like bleeding from them into the layers of the mobo's pcb...

 

[keakar]

I think my motherboard's gone.

I checked it really thoroughly. The caps seem OK but there are a couple of those parts which look like a small black square with 3 legs coming out on the left and one connection on the right (I don't know what they're called in English), and there is like bleeding from them into the layers of the mobo's pcb...

yes your motherboard is going, if i understand what you described those are called mosfets and work to control voltages. fluctuating voltages are whats causing you computer to be spastic on you.

it is possible you could replace the bad parts if you see numbers on it but for the time and money you spend doing it is cheaper to find another board that you can use. post in the "for sale" section asking for someone to donate a board you need and im sure you will find a free replacement you just pay shipping costs. many here like you hate to let working computers go to waste. if not the same as yours then maybe they will donate the cpu with it.