First of all, things SEEM okay now, so this isn't an emergency or anything. Still, if anyone can hazzard a guess as to WTF happened.... you'd be my hero.
So I was playing around with CPUIdle and 8RDavCore (an AMD software OCing program, basically) and was about to play Doom III, but when I open My Computer the explorer window locks up. Everything else works fine, but the explorer window was locked. So I closed it, and Explorer itself shut down. No biggie, it's happened before.
So I give the ol' three finger salute, go to "Shut Down", but nothing happens. Meanwhile, I notice that my DVD drive's access light is flickering like NUTS, it's flashing so fast it almost looks solid, but there was definitely some flickering indicating it was trying to access something. I tried pushing the eject button a bunch of time, nothing, nada. So eventually I say "screw it" and power the computer down with the power button. It wasn't shutting down otherwise.
I go to start it back up, and after the boot-up screen and POST, nothing happens. Huh. So, thinking something more serious might have gone wrong, I use F8 to choose Safe Mode, and the first module it tries to load up (something like NTOSKRNL or something, I'm assuming that means NT Operating System Kernel) the thing locks up again. So I restart it, try Last Known Good Config, Debugging Mode, everything, this thing will NOT start up.
"Well goddammit" I say to myself, "something messed up the boot sector" So I go to the BIOS setting, and while I'm looking through stuff there, the BIOS freaking locks up. This happens several times, so eventually I decide I'm in above my head. I have two hard drives, one of which is just music and porn, so I decide to yank out my primary drive, switch the other drive to primary, and install my less than legal copy of Windows 2K onto it to see if I can look at my primary drive and see if it's corrupted somehow. (I can't boot from my Win XP disc because that's ALSO less than legal and also isn't boot-able. So to reformat, I have to reformat the drive, boot it from the Win2K install disc, install it, then upgrade to WinXP. Less than ideal, but until I can afford to get a real copy (something, believe it or not, I am in the process of doing now) it's easy enough to put up with)
So I try to do that like twenty times, each time during the process something effs up. Sometimes the system never tries to boot from the CD and just sits there. A few times it would lock up while trying to read the installation files.
Now I'm REALLY panicking. There's some irreplaceable stuff on that primary drive, and it's looking more and more like it's either fried or the mobo might even be crapped out. Eventually, though, Win2K installs onto my other HD. I boot it up, re-attach my primary drive as a slave, and run a scan on it. Comes back A-OK. I take the irreplaceable stuff off it, put it onto my storage drive with Win2K on it, then decide to take a deep breath and switch them back around.
Presto. Win XP boots up normally, everything's golden. I took Win2K off my old system but kept the irreplaceable stuff (the now extra copies of it) on that storage drive. Now I'm mostly sitting here praying.
So, any ideas what went so horribly wrong? If you held a gun to my head I'd say power spike or something, but that doesn't sound right. I'm sure one of your far smarter and clever people can at least hazzard a guess as to what in God's name happened.
Thanks ya'll. Anyone who figures it out will get a small church built in their honor.
So I was playing around with CPUIdle and 8RDavCore (an AMD software OCing program, basically) and was about to play Doom III, but when I open My Computer the explorer window locks up. Everything else works fine, but the explorer window was locked. So I closed it, and Explorer itself shut down. No biggie, it's happened before.
So I give the ol' three finger salute, go to "Shut Down", but nothing happens. Meanwhile, I notice that my DVD drive's access light is flickering like NUTS, it's flashing so fast it almost looks solid, but there was definitely some flickering indicating it was trying to access something. I tried pushing the eject button a bunch of time, nothing, nada. So eventually I say "screw it" and power the computer down with the power button. It wasn't shutting down otherwise.
I go to start it back up, and after the boot-up screen and POST, nothing happens. Huh. So, thinking something more serious might have gone wrong, I use F8 to choose Safe Mode, and the first module it tries to load up (something like NTOSKRNL or something, I'm assuming that means NT Operating System Kernel) the thing locks up again. So I restart it, try Last Known Good Config, Debugging Mode, everything, this thing will NOT start up.
"Well goddammit" I say to myself, "something messed up the boot sector" So I go to the BIOS setting, and while I'm looking through stuff there, the BIOS freaking locks up. This happens several times, so eventually I decide I'm in above my head. I have two hard drives, one of which is just music and porn, so I decide to yank out my primary drive, switch the other drive to primary, and install my less than legal copy of Windows 2K onto it to see if I can look at my primary drive and see if it's corrupted somehow. (I can't boot from my Win XP disc because that's ALSO less than legal and also isn't boot-able. So to reformat, I have to reformat the drive, boot it from the Win2K install disc, install it, then upgrade to WinXP. Less than ideal, but until I can afford to get a real copy (something, believe it or not, I am in the process of doing now) it's easy enough to put up with)
So I try to do that like twenty times, each time during the process something effs up. Sometimes the system never tries to boot from the CD and just sits there. A few times it would lock up while trying to read the installation files.
Now I'm REALLY panicking. There's some irreplaceable stuff on that primary drive, and it's looking more and more like it's either fried or the mobo might even be crapped out. Eventually, though, Win2K installs onto my other HD. I boot it up, re-attach my primary drive as a slave, and run a scan on it. Comes back A-OK. I take the irreplaceable stuff off it, put it onto my storage drive with Win2K on it, then decide to take a deep breath and switch them back around.
Presto. Win XP boots up normally, everything's golden. I took Win2K off my old system but kept the irreplaceable stuff (the now extra copies of it) on that storage drive. Now I'm mostly sitting here praying.
So, any ideas what went so horribly wrong? If you held a gun to my head I'd say power spike or something, but that doesn't sound right. I'm sure one of your far smarter and clever people can at least hazzard a guess as to what in God's name happened.
Thanks ya'll. Anyone who figures it out will get a small church built in their honor.
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