This may help someone.
I, very recently, built a system for a friend. I delivered it and plugged it into the TrippLite 4000 joule surge protector that I had bought for his wife, about a year ago, to use with here old system. What I did not know was that the surge protector was plugged into a non-grounded 2-prong wall outlet, that was hidden behind a book case. He used one of those 3 to 2 prong adaptors but did not secure the little metal ground ring to the center outlet cover screw.
The system took an electrical surge, the very first night, and started running very unstable. It turned out that the Power Supply had been damaged, and that the hard drive and ram were compromised as well.
System Specs:
CPU Athlon XP-1700
Mobo Biostar M7NCG-400
Ram OCX Performance PC-3500 / 256mb (one stick)
Hard Drive Maxtor 40gb 7200rpm
DETAILS:
With a new Power Supply installed, I attempted to run a clean install of WinXP, bur could not get it to install. It would go immediately to a black screen, or it would start the initial inspection and file transfer, and error out. I tried a lot of things and found that if I ran the Mobo and CPU at 200x7, and dropped the Memory speed to 166, I could get windows to actually go into an install.
It would go all the way through the format process, and upon beginning to load, it would hang and spontaneously reboot. I tried this hard drive in another system, and had the exact same results.
I put a spare hard drive into this system, and installed WinXP with no problems. I was also able to run Prime 95 for 18 hours, at which time I stopped it to move on with the project.
I had taken the system to a computer shop, to have it tested, and all they found bad was the Power Supply. The scanned the hard drive and found no problems. I then downloaded Maxtor?s MaxBlast utility and ran there full scan and it also passed.
This led me to believe that there was no damage to the actual drive, but that the Low Level Format may have been messed up. I ran the MaxBlast Low Level Format, and VIOLA, windows installed perfectly, and it has been running Prime95 for several hours now.
I hope this is of help
Herkulese
I, very recently, built a system for a friend. I delivered it and plugged it into the TrippLite 4000 joule surge protector that I had bought for his wife, about a year ago, to use with here old system. What I did not know was that the surge protector was plugged into a non-grounded 2-prong wall outlet, that was hidden behind a book case. He used one of those 3 to 2 prong adaptors but did not secure the little metal ground ring to the center outlet cover screw.
The system took an electrical surge, the very first night, and started running very unstable. It turned out that the Power Supply had been damaged, and that the hard drive and ram were compromised as well.
System Specs:
CPU Athlon XP-1700
Mobo Biostar M7NCG-400
Ram OCX Performance PC-3500 / 256mb (one stick)
Hard Drive Maxtor 40gb 7200rpm
DETAILS:
With a new Power Supply installed, I attempted to run a clean install of WinXP, bur could not get it to install. It would go immediately to a black screen, or it would start the initial inspection and file transfer, and error out. I tried a lot of things and found that if I ran the Mobo and CPU at 200x7, and dropped the Memory speed to 166, I could get windows to actually go into an install.
It would go all the way through the format process, and upon beginning to load, it would hang and spontaneously reboot. I tried this hard drive in another system, and had the exact same results.
I put a spare hard drive into this system, and installed WinXP with no problems. I was also able to run Prime 95 for 18 hours, at which time I stopped it to move on with the project.
I had taken the system to a computer shop, to have it tested, and all they found bad was the Power Supply. The scanned the hard drive and found no problems. I then downloaded Maxtor?s MaxBlast utility and ran there full scan and it also passed.
This led me to believe that there was no damage to the actual drive, but that the Low Level Format may have been messed up. I ran the MaxBlast Low Level Format, and VIOLA, windows installed perfectly, and it has been running Prime95 for several hours now.
I hope this is of help
Herkulese
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