Should Installing a New OS Totally Kill a System?

[Mnemonic Knight]

Athlon 1.4
Geforce 3 (Ti200)
SBLive! Value
Generic Network Card
Abit Via 133 MB
256 RAM (Speed Unknown)


Hi all, have encountered some serious issues with my younger brother's PC and I'm about ready to throw the damn thing out of the window.

Here's the thing. A few weeks back I upgraded his system with some ol parts of mine after I treated myself to a processor and graphics card overhaul, and his system now includes the above specs. Now this system had been running fine for about a week, until I decided to upgrade his OS from Win98 to XP (Home edition). All of a sudden I've been getting spontaeneous reboots and system crashes accompanied by Physycal Memory dumps - and I have no idea what the hell is causing the problem.

I've tried underclocking the RAM, reinstalling with his old processor and graphics card (although that would not even finish the install before crashing) with no success. Tried removing any possibility of conflicts by removing the sound card and Network card but the problem persists.

The only thing I can think of is that originally I installed ot whilst he was still connected to the net through our home LAN, and for a few mins his system may have been unprotected.... ( a brainfart on my part) And since we all know how wonderfully vulnerable windows can be i thought that maybe his system had contracted a virus. Thing is I dont know of any viruses that may cause the problems I'm encountering which is why i think it must be a hardware issue.... But what puzzles me the most is that I can not understand how simply changing the OS would suddenly cause such difficulties.

If anyone can shed some light on the situation the please do. I'm more or less ready ot give up on the whole thing. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[MrChad]

Did you perform an upgrade of 98 to XP, or did you wipe the hard drive first and then install XP? Instability on upgraded XP systems is not uncommon, especially since Windows 98 and XP are so fundamentally different architecturally. Here's what I would recommend.

1. Backup any critical files that are located on the PC (email, favorites, documents, etc.)
2. Have SP2 handy on CD, or, even better, create a slipstreamed XP install CD. If you choose not to slipstream XP, make sure you are not connected to the internet until you have installed SP2 on your machine.
3. Boot using your XP setup CD, delete the existing partition and create a new NTFS partition.
4. Proceed through setup.
5. Run Windows Update.
6. Download and install the latest 4-1, Live!, network, and nVidia Detonator drivers for your system.
7. Reinstall your applications and restore your data from backups.

Good luck, and if you have any questions along the way, we'll be glad to help.

BTW, welcome to the forums.

 

[Mnemonic Knight]

Thanks,

I did actually formatt the HD from scratch and do a fresh install of XP. I'll start again tomorrow and run through your suggested list of toubleshoots and let you know how it goes. If i struggle along the way I'll certainly ask for more advice!

Thanks for the help.


Edit - Forgot to mention that I tried reinstalling Win98 after all the trouble with XP. However, ecen that didnt seem to work, kept giving me protection errors and crashing....... Will try all suggestions above and hopefully it will work.

 

[mechBgon]

The motherboard could simply be failing, too. Or the CPU, or the memory. Anyway, your system can be compromised in less than 30 seconds by Internet worms if you're unfortunate, so get your firewall up before you plug the network cable in. A hardware firewall plus WindowsXP's firewall or ZoneAlarm basic, is what I'd do if I had broadband.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: Mnemonic Knight
Athlon 1.4
Geforce 3 (Ti200)
SBLive! Value
Generic Network Card
Abit Via 133 MB
256 RAM (Speed Unknown)


Hi all, have encountered some serious issues with my younger brother's PC and I'm about ready to throw the damn thing out of the window.

Here's the thing. A few weeks back I upgraded his system with some ol parts of mine after I treated myself to a processor and graphics card overhaul, and his system now includes the above specs. Now this system had been running fine for about a week, until I decided to upgrade his OS from Win98 to XP (Home edition). All of a sudden I've been getting spontaeneous reboots and system crashes accompanied by Physycal Memory dumps - and I have no idea what the hell is causing the problem.

I've tried underclocking the RAM, reinstalling with his old processor and graphics card (although that would not even finish the install before crashing) with no success. Tried removing any possibility of conflicts by removing the sound card and Network card but the problem persists.

The only thing I can think of is that originally I installed ot whilst he was still connected to the net through our home LAN, and for a few mins his system may have been unprotected.... ( a brainfart on my part) And since we all know how wonderfully vulnerable windows can be i thought that maybe his system had contracted a virus. Thing is I dont know of any viruses that may cause the problems I'm encountering which is why i think it must be a hardware issue.... But what puzzles me the most is that I can not understand how simply changing the OS would suddenly cause such difficulties.

If anyone can shed some light on the situation the please do. I'm more or less ready ot give up on the whole thing. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Edit: Nevermind. Hardware issue, esp. if it happens with the extras popped out. Sorry; can't help too much with that.

 

[McMadman]

It could be a memory issue or some other weak hardware issue that win98 was coping with.

windows 2000/xp are both more sensitive to faulty hardware, try doing a memtest loop?

 

[Mnemonic Knight]

Yeah,

One of my first thoughts was that maybe some of the hardware is faulty and hence XP simply doesn't like it (Forgot to mention that I even tried installing 2k which i borowed from a friend, and that suffered from the same issues).

However, as i mentioned in an earlier post, after reinstalling Win 98 similar problems occured. This is what led me to beleive that it might not be the hardware issue but a virus problem.....

I did in fact initiate a memtest cycle but it being the first time I've used it didn realise quite how long it takes to complete and ended it prematurely.

So my question is: if the problem is a hardware issue (i.e. failing Motherboard) the why would 98 cope with the fault before XP installation and not post XP installation?

I think my next course of action will be to try and get XP up with all updates and hope that helps.....

However - asuming the problem is a virus, how do i go about getting rid of it? I've scanned the entire hard drive with Norton Antivirus software from my system over the LAN and it came up clean. I did the same from within his system using AVG as I realise that one antivirus software package may not detect something 100% of the time and others might (had it happen to me before). Again, the test came up clean.

Does anyone have any other suggestions for this?

Thanks.

 

[fuzzynavel]

My advice would be to try the components 1 by 1 in your rig to make sure that they are functioning correctly.....then put his HD in your machine as a secondary slave and format and virus check it thorough windows(after making sure your system is adequately protected first) you could then put the windows install CD in your CD drive and install windows on his hard-drive using the advanced options i.e you get to select where the OS is installed.... Make sure that it works then try to transplant it into his system....

If it works then great..problem solved.....
if not then you have a hardware issue somewhere.....try swapping bits from your PC into his and see if you can get it to work....this is just trial and error hope it works for you!

 

[Mnemonic Knight]

Ok, great.

Swapping the Hard Drive over is something that hadn't occured to me. I have session planned this afternoon (UK) to try and get the damned thing sorted. Thanks for the advice guys, will let you know how things go.

Edit - The main limitations i have are in swapping components with his sytem. Unfotunately, his system is still operating with SDR RAM, I have DDR and i dont think that his motherboard accepts DDR. That is kind of a problem. I did try and switch the memory with some SRD RAM a friend lent me, but unfortunately for that guy he didn't realise his memory was dead - all i got upon booting were memory error beeps from the BIOS.... He wasn't too happy when he found out

Another constraint is actually parting with cash to aquire replacement parts. He doesn't have that much to spare, and although I wouldn't mind picking a few things up for him, without actually knowing what may be faulty i can't easily go out and buy what he'd need...... I think that for the moment im stuck with the possible software fixes and hope they have an efect. Otherwise it may be time to give it up to my local Computer shop for them t do a sys analysis on it where they have swapable components more readily available.

 

[fuzzynavel]

apart from the ram and processor....most of your components should probably work in his system.....no point in paying someone £50 per hour to tinker with your pc when you don't need to!!

Try the hard disk swap and see if it works......then try and work out which components may have a problem....not the easiest but definately the most fun bit

 

[daveybrat]

Check all of the capacitors on the motherboard. Check to see if any of them have a "puffed" looking top on them. It could be that the motherboard is going bad. Either that or maybe the cpu is overheating since the Athlon 1.4Ghz was probably the hottest running chip of all time. check the temps in the bios.

 

[Mnemonic Knight]

Ok, I have checked all the capacitors beofre and none were bad, so I'm not convinced that the motherboard is at fault. Regarding the CPU, as I mentioned in my original post - It had been running fine for about a week on win98, so i don't think it's a problem unless XP stresses the CPU more.....


One think I will mention here; I received an error message on several occasions on a black screen of death and haven't posted it yet cause I lost the transcript I made of it. I managed to dig this out now and thought I'd list it before I begin to tinker with the system again. Starts off as follows:

A problem has been detected and windows has been shutdown to prevent damage to your computer....

(Follows with further useless talk)

Technical Info:

***STOP: 0x0000008E (0x000001D, 0xBF8B0104, 0xF38C7510, 0x00000000)

***win32k.sys Adress BF8B0104 base at BF00000, Datestamp 3d6d35e5

Begining dump of physical memory
physical memory dump complete

Contact you system administrator or technical support group for further assisstance.





Does anyone know what this acutally MEANS?

Thanks.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: Mnemonic Knight
Ok, I have checked all the capacitors beofre and none were bad, so I'm not convinced that the motherboard is at fault. Regarding the CPU, as I mentioned in my original post - It had been running fine for about a week on win98, so i don't think it's a problem unless XP stresses the CPU more.....


One think I will mention here; I received an error message on several occasions on a black screen of death and haven't posted it yet cause I lost the transcript I made of it. I managed to dig this out now and thought I'd list it before I begin to tinker with the system again. Starts off as follows:

A problem has been detected and windows has been shutdown to prevent damage to your computer....

(Follows with further useless talk)

Technical Info:

***STOP: 0x0000008E (0x000001D, 0xBF8B0104, 0xF38C7510, 0x00000000)

***win32k.sys Adress BF8B0104 base at BF00000, Datestamp 3d6d35e5

Begining dump of physical memory
physical memory dump complete

Contact you system administrator or technical support group for further assisstance.





Does anyone know what this acutally MEANS?

Thanks.

On a newly installed system with no non-MS stuff on it? Hardware. A Compaq/HP XP3000+ system is $300 or so in the States on sale, and a motherboard/CPU combo is $49-$99 for the Duron replacement -> AMD 2800XPs.... I'd certainly rather do that than have you pay 50 UKP to someone per hour to look at this, and then charge you to replace the MB/CPU/RAM/etc. on top of that.

 

[mikeford]

I suspect two things, power supply, and sound card (mostly software issues on the later).

Two things I would try, remove the sound card, and make sure everything is fully seated (memory, cards etc.).

 

[Mnemonic Knight]

Ok, so here's an update.

I may have been lucky, because as I went to play with the faulty system earlier, the first thing i did was change the RAm with a stick i managed to find spare (although I only founf a 128 DIMM). However, as soon as this was in place, the PC now seems to boot normally into XP, and what's more it has been basically stable for a few gours now.... Before it could only manage a few minutes.

So the good news is that it appears that I have found the problem almost straight away when I was in fact preparing myself for a bit or an ordeal. I can't test the system as strenously as I'd like because with there only being 128 MB of RAM there is very little memroy for XP to work with (Im aware that the miminum recommended amount is 256)

However, I'm going to leave the system running on this RAM for most of tomorrow in the hopes that it runs fine. If that is the case then I can be more certain that the RAM was the problem. The it's a case of whether or not my brother wants to shell out for new memory.

Anyways, this is the situation as it stands. I'll keep every one updated on how things turn out. In the mean time if anyone has any further suggestions then please feel gree to contribute.

One question I do have is this: If the problem is as it appears and the RAm was the culprit, why would changin the OS suddenly cause it to fail> Is it that XP is more sensitive? I didnt think that would have ben the case becasue it was still causing trouble when I tried to reinstall 98.....

Im just wondering if it has simply been the case of bad luck and poor timing - that the memory just happned to have failed when I instralled XP....


Anyone have any thoughts on this?

A big thanks to everyone who has contributed so far.