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Many problems w/computer... even after formatting!

X

x0lution

Member
I have a computer that I have come to believe is evil.

Originally when you turned it on the microsoft registry checker would come up and say that it's fixed the registry and tell you to reboot. You'd reboot and the same thing would happen. I fixed this (edited scanreg.ini in windows directory), and was able to get into windows, but got blue screens all over the place. So I decided to format the drive and reinstall windows. I formatted the drive and when I tried to reinstall windows, I'd get to about 20% of the file copy process and one of three things would happen-

1) I'd get an error about SUWIN
2) It'd ask me for a file that was in precopy1.cab, I'd select precopy1.cab and it'd say that file isn't there. So I extracted the file from the cab and reran the install, pointed to that file and it STILL said that that wouldn't work.
3) It'd go back to a DOS prompt and say something about a bad stack (?) or something...

It's a computer at work and I'm at home right now so I can't give you the exact message for that third thing. But if you have any ideas, please reply. Thanks.
 
Format, do a thorough scandisk. If that does not turn up bad sectors, then replace RAM modules and/or power supply. I am guessing RAM first.
 
I've had similar problems before, after fixing them, I could only conclude that the computer gods smiled upon me since I didnt' change anything...

Forgive me if this is too obvious, but make sure that the BIOS doesn't have any sort of a virus detection enabled ... Windows installations are a lot like a boot sector virus, and it will cause all sorts of strange problems...

Other than that, fdisk, format, reinstall, and pray to the computer gods.
 
I would use the disk that came with (or didn't) your hard drive and repartition & reformatt it with that. You can download it from the manufactuers site. If that doesn't help I'd go back to fdisk/reformatt/reinstall windows...can't help you much.
 
this is the way I learned to do a full version new install
now this only applies to a hard drive with one partition C
fdisk delete partition
create new partition and format
make sure you don't have any thing other than keyboard an mouse an monitor connected as some times will mess up install if other things are connected reconnect them after the install an let windows find them
 
i've tried fdisk/format/install several times and the SUWIN thing continually pops up (the other two haven't recently). I too thought it might be the RAM, I tried two other sets of RAM and none of them showed any improvement...

An interesting thing happened though, I was running the computer, trying to reinstall windows and I had the case off. I smelled some sort of god-awful smell, looked and there was smoke coming off the motherboard! I don't mean just a little haze, I mean full blown thick, white smoke! Anyway, the computer has a new motherboard now 🙂

As well as the new mobo, it also has new RAM (the other one only had 72pin SIMMs, this one has 168pin DIMMs), as well as a new processor. Again though, the same problem is still occurring (SUWIN).

I was thinking that perhaps the hard drive itself was just plain bad, so put a new hard drive in it (20gb western digital). started the computer with a win98 boot disk, fdisked the drive, rebooted the computer, and when i tried to format the drive, it said that the c drive was an invalid media type.

Anybody have any clue as to what the problem here is. Replaced the motherboard, ram, video card (had another one laying around so i just decided to use it), re-partitioned and formatted the drive and the same error came up. New drive gives 'bad media' error when trying to format. Any ideas?
 
what ever the problem turns out to be don't turn around the devil is sitting behind you laughing
last suggest then I all out of ideas have you done a fdisk/mbr to clear the master boot record and have you tried clearing the cmos
I'm done no more suggestions from me I hope you get it to working I know what a pain it can be to have one like your working on
GOOD LUCK
 
In a situation like this you go backwards. Take the part you suspect and put it in a known-good-system. I put a system together for a friend and went thru 3 hard drives before I go one that worked, ended up putting each drive in my system to verify it was bad. Couldn't believe I was getting so many bad units.
 
Alright, I guess I'll swap out the hard drive for a known-good one on monday then. Thanks, I'll let you know what happens.
 
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