Problems with my hardware.

1098 Views 13 Replies 8 Participants Last post by StriderVM, Nov 30, 2009

Dieseldahl

Discussion Starter · Nov 29, 2009

first of, my setup.

OS: win xp pro sp2
Motherboard: MSI P45 Diamond
CPU: Intel Core 2 duo E8500 (stock)
GPU Radeon HD4890
Ram: pc10666 2+2 gb (dont renember the brand)

Sound card: (dont matter, but anyways) Creative SB Live! 24bit (from my first pc, Several years ago)

OK, so here is my problem, 2 actually..
first of, "booting"

my pc will not boot on the first try, nor the 2nd... it always boots after x number of times.
what happends is: i get past bios screen, and on to the loading screen for windows, then it freezes, same thing happends 5-8 times, then it boots and works "almost" perfectly.
Ive noticed that if i boot, and dont do anything after it freezes, just let it run for 5-7 minutes before i hit the reset button, it boots normally.

as far as i can work out, its either the HD or my os thats corrupt, but its wierd that my HD works perfectly other than when im booting.
(if i reboot after it has booted sucsessfully it boots like normal)

2nd thing thats not working at all is updating GPU driver, when im about to install the latest driver, it seems to be going fine up to a point, then the HD powers downs and my pc reboots. cant work out why.

i have never used the os im using now, so i fear its the problem, used my old xp pro on the same computer earlier and worked, other that it was really old so it didnt work 100% with my new parts.

Tired right now so im sure im missing some details, anyway, thanks for any reply that might solve this problem.

(i have NOT tried to format and install another os verson, have some backuping to do first)

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Princess Garnet

· #5 · Nov 29, 2009

Enermax is the opposite of crappy PSUs, but even quality PSUs can go bad.

The first thing I'd check is the RAM.

If the motherboard has onboard video, try removing the GPU.

After that, try a clean install of an OS on the same hard disk (this rules out the HD and the OS). Make a new partition for it if you must.

The motherboard or PSU are also possible causes.

The bit that really confuses me is the whole "old" and "new" XP. It's all the same thing, so I don't know why you installed XP over XP to cure the issue that it didn't support everything. I'm not getting that. I could understand reinstalling it just because it's been a few years and may be starting to act funny, but functionally, it's the same exact thing.

Unrelated, but is there a reason you're not running SP3?

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Princess Garnet

· #7 · Nov 29, 2009

What's to hate about SP3? It doesn't really add anything over SP2 besides updates, and, oh, one important feature of actually performing better due to improved memory management. Seriously, microsoft could have listed "improved performance" as a feature of this service pack (but they didn't because then people would blast them for every case it didn't, and it's hurt their campaign for trying to sell Windows Vista against it at the time). There was actually a thread in the PCSX2 forums made about how SP3 improved frame rates in PCSX2, and that is saying something. Otherwise, it's your call. I just see how you can hate it when it adds nothing on the interface end that you'll see or notice. It's nothing but some updates and a performance boost.

Also, if Windows Update is messing up for you on a clean install, there are some more pressing issues at hand here. It sounds like the whole PC has issues.

Edit: Oh, I started replying before I finished reading the entire post. If the OS came from online, then there's two reasons it's messed up.

1. Illegal copies can't be run through the Windows Update site (unless you circumvent that, too, I suppose).

2. You don't know what else is wrong with them.

I'm pretty sure talk of piracy isn't allowed here either since threads involving such in the emulation forums always get closed.

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Princess Garnet

· #11 · Nov 29, 2009

I wouldn't buy Windows XP right now, even if your current one isn't legal. If I were to buy now, get Windows 7, and with that hardware, make it 64-bit.

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