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Has my PIII finally died??

M

Mynzaboxer

Member
I have an older ...but reliable until now ... PIII clone.

My CD drive did stop working....it could read but no longer write. It was primary to my newer DVD drive. When I opened Event Viewer at the time I was seeing lots of acpi errors, so I ended up just disabling it ... thinking that I would take it out 'later'.

In any case, things have been going along ok for the last six months. This week, when I try and boot up, it reaches the point in the boot where it gives the PCI device listings, then hangs up. For a while there I was able to hit F8, and start it in Safe mode to see if there was a program that was causing the problem. Once there I ended up doing a system restore and for a couple of days I was able to boot up ok .... though it would take a longer period of time to get past the PCI device listings than in the past.

Once in, I did check the Event Viewer and still found one acpi error, but also about five 'Service Control Manager' and one 'Dcom' error.



This morning it started hanging up again. I restarted and tried hitting the F8 key, but nothing...I could not even enter the Windows Advanced Options Window.

Any idea what might be going on? Any suggestions on what I must do to have the boot up continue? I'm operating off my Laptop and have been thinking about getting a new Desktop system, but now I just want to get some important files off of it (fortunately most were backed up).

(added note: sometimes, if I leave the boot up screen ... hung up at the PCI Device Listing ... after about 5-10 minutes, it will start to load Windows ... freeze off and on and finally load up) ... somethings amiss, yes?? 🙂

 
Could be a dying HD. That's sometimes the culprit if things actually move, but go really slow. Can you tell if the HD is attempting to read or not?

 
When the boot up screen freezes at the PCI Device Listing screen, there are no sounds, no blinking lights, etc., that would indicate it's doing anything. Only the power light is on. As I mentioned earlier, 'sometimes', if I just let it sit there for 5 to 10 minutes it may start acting as if the HD is being accessed, lights blinking, sounds, etc...and WindowsXP will load up ... though slowly. In the error 'Service Control Manager' or 'Dcom' indicate anything?

Something else I thought of was perhaps a virus...but I keep my virus def's up to date and also use Zone Alarm as a Firewall.

Thanks in advance for any input.
 
Could also be a flaky PSU. Try borrowing one or bite the bullet and buy a cheap reliable one. It comes down to how valuable are the files on your old computer? There are also data recovery programs that have had reasonable success on even toasted hdd's.
 
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