KurskKnyaz
Senior member
I?ve been working with computers since I was 14 and now at 25 everything I know is from hands on experience. I?m not any kind of certified tech; I have no A+ or MCSE, and I know enough code just to italicize text in HTML. However, when it comes to hardware I consider myself very good. I?ve had to flash dead BIOSs by booting through ISA video cards, I?ve identified sources of system instability by touching the plastic on an ATX power connector (it was very warm because of poor connectivity and therefore the electrical resistance caused the temperature to go up and voltage down), I once solved someone?s buzzing PSU fan problem by disabling ACPI, and I?ve build stable systems out of nightmare hardware in the K6-2 and VIA MVP3 days. But the sh1t that happened today is just weird.
I?ve been doing freelance PC servicing for a long time now. One of my clients called me today to tell me she has another problem with one of the computers at the medical office; it suddenly started locking up. It only happens when accessing the internet in Windows XP so I figured the problem is software related. I didn?t scan for malware because there wasn?t anything unusual in MSCONFIG and Task Manager and because I assumed she learned from her mistakes of letting workers use office computers for non-office activities. I launch FireFox and everything is fine. I go on a web page and the PC locks up. I boot up to XP and reproduce the same results. I boot up again and now it locks up while loading XP. To make a long story short the PC appears to lock up under internet activity at first, but then the lock ups became more and more random. Eventually the PC would not boot to XP at all, not even to safe mode, and not even after CHKDSK. I disable the onboard NIC, finally boot to XP, and everything works fine (except the internet). I install a PCI NIC thinking my job is done and the problem was with the on-board NIC of the Celeron-supporting-VIA-based-no-name-motherboard. Then the problem happens again while accessing the web. My guess now is that something is wrong with the hard drive because the PC also locks up when I manually try to delete the files in the temporary internet files folder (all of them, even the ones Windows hides from you). I figured either the disk is on the verge of crashing because sometimes CHKDSK finds various errors and sometimes doesn?t (and ALWAYS scans very, very slow). Another thing that points me to the hard drive is that it only locks up when deleting specific files. Another possibility is the cheap, 300W-but-paperweight Award PSU that can?t handle the extra load during a certain disk operation. This is where it begins to get weird: I take out the exact same Award PSU from another working PC and try to use it in this one but it does no POST at all, even though it is the exact same PSU and works fine in its original PC. I tried a dell PSU and it works but the original problem persists. Once again the PC locks up and then won?t boot into XP or XP safe mode. I disable or remove all unnecessary hardware and enable/add them in one-by-one and narrow the problem to the Iomega drive. I remove the drive and now only part of the problem persists: the PC always boots to XP but locks up while accessing the web or deleting specific files. I clone the HDD to another drive using ghost and everything seems fine for a while. With the new HDD I was able to delete those files without the PC locking up and FireFox doesn?t lock-up the PC on any web page except WebMD. WTF? In safe mode with networking the same thing happens. To make an already long story short: after removing/disabling all sorts of hardware the random lock-ups and restarts (with no BSOD - even though I disable the option to automatically restart on an error) seem to decrease in frequency after something is removed or disabled. WebMD began to work after I removed the CD-ROM but the computer still experiences random lockups. The experience is like this: remove Iomega drive = XP loads; change hard drive = internet works/ files erase; remove everything off the secondary IDE channel = www.webMD.com doesn?t lock up or restart the system. I explained to her that it is probably her motherboard that is shot but the problem is still weird.
This is why I will never by anything with a VIA chipset; the silicon they use comes from cursed mines. This is what happens next: Remember (it has been a long post, I know, plus the woman has been filling me up with alcohol) that other Celeron-supporting-VIA-based-no-name-motherboard-bearing-PC from which I borrowed the Award PSU? When I put the PSU back in the PC worked fine, as it should since it was working fine before and all I did was remove its PSU, use it in another computer, and then put it back in. I even used it to copy some files from a CD to my flash drive. All of the sudden it does not want to boot at all, then it boots telling me some message about being unable to boot to an operating system, and now when I press the power button there is no POST and no beep-code; just fans spinning, and strangest of all: it won't power off no matter how long I hold the power button for!
Any advice?
Note the following:
-No error logs of any kind
-office power is good
-if office power wasn?t good back-up battery power would be.
Here are the possibilities:
-The room has carpeting so I somehow damaged some components further through static discharge. This is unlikely to begin with and I hardly ever contact onboard circuitry.
-The motherboard from the first PC killed the PSU from the second PC.
-The cheap PSUs and motherboards (I believe they are also the same in both PCs) failed simultaneously because they were manufactured, purchased, and installed at the same time and outlived their lives together. I know that some companies use different brand drives for RAID to avoid simultaneous end-of-manufacture-specified-operational-hours crashes, but what are the chances of that happening?
I?m coming back to the office tomorrow to fix the problems; I don?t know where to start.
I?ve been doing freelance PC servicing for a long time now. One of my clients called me today to tell me she has another problem with one of the computers at the medical office; it suddenly started locking up. It only happens when accessing the internet in Windows XP so I figured the problem is software related. I didn?t scan for malware because there wasn?t anything unusual in MSCONFIG and Task Manager and because I assumed she learned from her mistakes of letting workers use office computers for non-office activities. I launch FireFox and everything is fine. I go on a web page and the PC locks up. I boot up to XP and reproduce the same results. I boot up again and now it locks up while loading XP. To make a long story short the PC appears to lock up under internet activity at first, but then the lock ups became more and more random. Eventually the PC would not boot to XP at all, not even to safe mode, and not even after CHKDSK. I disable the onboard NIC, finally boot to XP, and everything works fine (except the internet). I install a PCI NIC thinking my job is done and the problem was with the on-board NIC of the Celeron-supporting-VIA-based-no-name-motherboard. Then the problem happens again while accessing the web. My guess now is that something is wrong with the hard drive because the PC also locks up when I manually try to delete the files in the temporary internet files folder (all of them, even the ones Windows hides from you). I figured either the disk is on the verge of crashing because sometimes CHKDSK finds various errors and sometimes doesn?t (and ALWAYS scans very, very slow). Another thing that points me to the hard drive is that it only locks up when deleting specific files. Another possibility is the cheap, 300W-but-paperweight Award PSU that can?t handle the extra load during a certain disk operation. This is where it begins to get weird: I take out the exact same Award PSU from another working PC and try to use it in this one but it does no POST at all, even though it is the exact same PSU and works fine in its original PC. I tried a dell PSU and it works but the original problem persists. Once again the PC locks up and then won?t boot into XP or XP safe mode. I disable or remove all unnecessary hardware and enable/add them in one-by-one and narrow the problem to the Iomega drive. I remove the drive and now only part of the problem persists: the PC always boots to XP but locks up while accessing the web or deleting specific files. I clone the HDD to another drive using ghost and everything seems fine for a while. With the new HDD I was able to delete those files without the PC locking up and FireFox doesn?t lock-up the PC on any web page except WebMD. WTF? In safe mode with networking the same thing happens. To make an already long story short: after removing/disabling all sorts of hardware the random lock-ups and restarts (with no BSOD - even though I disable the option to automatically restart on an error) seem to decrease in frequency after something is removed or disabled. WebMD began to work after I removed the CD-ROM but the computer still experiences random lockups. The experience is like this: remove Iomega drive = XP loads; change hard drive = internet works/ files erase; remove everything off the secondary IDE channel = www.webMD.com doesn?t lock up or restart the system. I explained to her that it is probably her motherboard that is shot but the problem is still weird.
This is why I will never by anything with a VIA chipset; the silicon they use comes from cursed mines. This is what happens next: Remember (it has been a long post, I know, plus the woman has been filling me up with alcohol) that other Celeron-supporting-VIA-based-no-name-motherboard-bearing-PC from which I borrowed the Award PSU? When I put the PSU back in the PC worked fine, as it should since it was working fine before and all I did was remove its PSU, use it in another computer, and then put it back in. I even used it to copy some files from a CD to my flash drive. All of the sudden it does not want to boot at all, then it boots telling me some message about being unable to boot to an operating system, and now when I press the power button there is no POST and no beep-code; just fans spinning, and strangest of all: it won't power off no matter how long I hold the power button for!
Any advice?
Note the following:
-No error logs of any kind
-office power is good
-if office power wasn?t good back-up battery power would be.
Here are the possibilities:
-The room has carpeting so I somehow damaged some components further through static discharge. This is unlikely to begin with and I hardly ever contact onboard circuitry.
-The motherboard from the first PC killed the PSU from the second PC.
-The cheap PSUs and motherboards (I believe they are also the same in both PCs) failed simultaneously because they were manufactured, purchased, and installed at the same time and outlived their lives together. I know that some companies use different brand drives for RAID to avoid simultaneous end-of-manufacture-specified-operational-hours crashes, but what are the chances of that happening?
I?m coming back to the office tomorrow to fix the problems; I don?t know where to start.
