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Troubleshooting Advice Needed

B

bobber205

Member
Trying to rule out everything.

The machine does not currently take keyboard input so booting off a CD is not currently possible. I do not know if a USB keyboard would work because we don't have one/can't find one.

The two 512 sticks are being mem tested in another machine. I have tried various configs, taking one out, booting up etc. Those are still running. 🙂

The problem is that it takes about 3 to 4 minutes to boot up windows. And it takes about the same amount of time to log in it does at all. Something is extremely wrong.

Also when the machine is rebooted, it doesn't want to entirely reboot. It will shutdown, but the power light on the front will flash and it won't completely reboot.

Any ideas on what else I should do? Maybe the power supply is an issue?
 
A P4, it's a IBM ThinkCentre 8189 with what I think is the original power supply (probably sort of old now) and 1 gig of ram. a 40 gig WD HDD.
 
Sounds more like a motherboard issue to me rather than power supply. Have you tried clearing the CMOS? (Probably gotta pull the battery and let it sit out for 30 mins. press case button a few times to discharge caps. and put battery back in as I doubt there is a jumper. Of course do all this without PSU plugged in.)
 
if that doesn't work, try a usb keyboard. They should only be 10 bucks or so. and if it doesn't work, then return it
 
Clearing the CMOS did the trick with regards to the keyboard not working! 🙂
Awesome.

However, when I try to log in as administrator, and later I noticed after windows start to boot, the CPU fan stops spinning... 🙁
 
reimaged the machine. now it's worse off.

won't boot windows. When it gets to the "want to do safe mode" prompt or when I try to boot a rescue CD, the keyboard stops working and the scroll lock, caps lock and num lock lights flash one to another. Like a christmas tree.
 
...why would you try something else unrelated to the problem at hand when more problems are showing up?

Use the CD version of dBan and completely wipe the hard drive. Now that the installation is thoroughly fucked.
Next after that, check to make sure nothing clogging the CPU fan, perhaps it's time for a new heatsink/fan.

Then make a 100% clean install.
 
I had similiar problems when I had a CD/DVD-ROM that was going. Also, if it's IDE and the ribbon cable is faulty or not inserted completely, it will cause similar hang ups. First, try taking out the Optical drives and see if it boos up like normal.

A hard drive that is going will also take forever to boot and initialize but may still work, thus hanging the system every step of the way with erratic behavior. If you have a known good spare drive, try a fresh install of WinXP and see how it goes from there.

Also, if you can get into windows on the original drive, try using speedfan's S.M.A.R.T. utility to check the fitness of the drive. If the diagnostic comes back with an 'Iminent Failure', or key parameters are way out of spec. you know the drive itself is the cause and needs to be replaced.

Get back to me with your results and we can go from there. Hope this helps. =)
 
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