OT: Update - Cruncher is DEAD

[deerslayer]

I got home tonight after grilling out with a friend, and another friend wanted to try some BF1942. I set up my server to serve the game, and got him going in the game, and sat down at my main rig to get in the game myself. I double clicked the icon, and the screen went blank. Nothing.

So, I rebooted. It went through all it's usual stuff, the loading screens for Windows 2000 and everything, and then when my desktop should have showed up, my monitor went to the orange light, and nothing came up.

After a while I got a message saying I needed to repair the installation. When I tried to do this, it told me the hard drive was either new or had been erased :Q

I now have a fresh install of XP Pro on it, and it's crunching away again, but it gave me a scare. I need to get it overclocked again soon, but that can wait till tomorrow. Has anyone else had a similar experience? I'm wondering if I picked up a virus somewhere

Update:

It kicked the bucket tonight. Installed the new Matrix game and it started freaking out. Tried fixing it and I started getting BSOD's on bootup. Tried a different video card and ram. I'm guessing it's the hard drive. I'm not really sure. I will have to try a different hard drive tomorrow.

 

[Soggysocks]

Yes...about a week back. I had started getting scripting errors. Tried updating my Virus scan and then it happened. Also tried to repair the system, but ended up having to reinstall. This was shortly after a security update at the windows update site.

 

[awarberg001]

Nasty indeed!

The weirdest thing I've tried with harddrives was two partitions changing letters (when I was installing win2k several times).

-Andreas

 

[Confused]

Nasty!

I had my P4 machine go bad last Thursday, and it wasn't until yesterday afternoon I was able to look at it (was out of town for the weekend), but something had screwed Windows XP up, and it wouldn't get to the desktop

I'd just re-installed on Tuesday night, and I took a Ghost Image of the HDD onto CD on Wednesday night, after basics had been installed and few things tweaked, so I had to restore to the image I made.

Not good, but at least it was better than a hardware problem, which I thought it might have been! I'd reset to go into BIOS and try to put slightly faster RAM timings (ie CAS2 instead of 2.5) and it wouldn't boot after that! I tried relaxing the timings, knocking the FSB back from 162 to 133 then 100, changed the RAM, changed graphics card, unplugged CD/DVD drives, nothing!

As I said, in the end something had screwed with Windows!!

Garry

 

[Intelligence3]

:Q

 

[amdskip]

You guys should have seen him when this was going on, just like me when something happens to a computer. I calmed him down and helped with XP so all is better now

 

[Assimilator1]

lol

 

[deerslayer]

I thought I was going to cry. One of my babies was sick!

What program do you guys use to make an image or ghost of your basic setup so that I don't have to redo everything again?

 

[ken008]

You should check the capacitors on that board. Bulged or leaking capacitors can cause many strange errors. The power supply can have the same problem.

 

[deerslayer]

Hmmm...I have an Epox 8k5a2+ and an Enermax 350w....i think it's 350 anyways.

I'm not quite as concerned now as I have moved my file drives over to my dually. I'll have to give the board a good look though and see if anything looks leaky.

 

[winr]

Best of luck to you!!!

 

[amcdonald]

Originally posted by: ken008
You should check the capacitors on that board. Bulged or leaking capacitors can cause many strange errors. The power supply can have the same problem.

Just last week at work I was trying to determine why a workstation was rebooting before it fully loaded windows. All but two of the caps on the shuttle av11 v.2 had leaked. A brief google search showed this to be a common problem with the board. Oh well... its not mine

 

[RustyNale]

Originally posted by: amcdonald

Originally posted by: ken008 You should check the capacitors on that board. Bulged or leaking capacitors can cause many strange errors. The power supply can have the same problem.

Just last week at work I was trying to determine why a workstation was rebooting before it fully loaded windows. All but two of the caps on the shuttle av11 v.2 had leaked. A brief google search showed this to be a common problem with the board. Oh well... its not mine

OUCH!!

 

[Confused]

Originally posted by: LyNx01
I thought I was going to cry. One of my babies was sick!

What program do you guys use to make an image or ghost of your basic setup so that I don't have to redo everything again?

Norton Ghost or PowerQuest Drive Image


Garry

 

[JWMiddleton]

Originally posted by: Confused

Originally posted by: LyNx01
I thought I was going to cry. One of my babies was sick!

What program do you guys use to make an image or ghost of your basic setup so that I don't have to redo everything again?

Norton Ghost or PowerQuest Drive Image


Garry

Which is the best, or recommended? I need to do something to backup my main boxes.

 

[deerslayer]

I think I might have a copy of Norton Ghost !

Are there any free ones out there?

 

[deerslayer]

 

[winr]

Condolences.

Hope it's something easy to fix.

 

[SinfulWeeper]

My condolences to your loss .
If all else fails, I can always mail you the fix all solution... the BFH.

 

[deerslayer]

Wasn't the hard drive either.....

I've tried different ram, different video card, different hard drive, and I pulled my sound card and it's still doing it. I guess my motherboard is kicking the bucket? Anyone else have any other ideas?

 

[Confused]

PSU?

Even a good quality PSU can fail, my 350W Enermax (that cost me £60 2 years ago) bit the dust a couple months back, browned out 4 of the ATX connector pins!


Garry

 

[Huntress]

I had always thought PSU. Switch it out with another real quick, with minimal stuff actually hooked up. And yes as Garry has said, good one puke too... and they are a bitch to determine.

 

[deerslayer]

Well, it seems to be running okay now. I swapped video cards and ram and it's working for now.

 

[Huntress]

hmmmmm.... something sounds weird about that.

I still think your PSU maybe suspect, but keep us up to date on that

 

[Huntress]

I think you should monitor the rails on the PSU while it is up and running.

Not sure what program you should use for that, the ASUS boards have a nice program that allows recording of things, which was how we finally determined we had a bad PSU.