Weird thing happens in Windows

[Muse]

I'm running XP on this old midtower system (gonna upgrade soon, new mobo, cpu, ram, OS... this mainboard won't even run Win7):
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Gigabyte GA-K8n Pro motherboard Specs: http://ee.gigabyte.com/products/page/mb/ga-k8n_pro/ PDF of manual: http://download.gigabyte.eu/FileList/Manual/motherboard_manual_k8npro_e.pdf
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (socket 754, FSB1600, E6, Venice, 90nm, L2-512KB, 2GHz)
BFG Tech GeForce 6600GT OC 128MB DDR3 AGP Dual DVI Video Card w/TV-Out
2 sticks Crucial 1GB PC3200 400MHz 184-pin DDR Memory - CT12864Z40B, 2 GB total
Corsair vx550w PSU
USR Model 2977 PCI hardware modem
Hercules GTXP soundcard PCI with breakout box
MyHD MDP-130 HDTV PCI
MyHD MDP-130 HDTV DVI daughterboard
- - - -
I made an HDTV DVR recording of the Blindspot pilot Monday night, but for some reason it terminated early, at 10:25. So, I just watched the network version from that point on, slogging through commercials (they don't let you FF those). I'm using Pale Moon browser, and my audio is with earbuds. About 10 minutes from the end a fairly loud even, I'm guessing ~500hz tone comes on, steady. It's not through the earbuds, it's evidently coming from the PC's speaker. I get to the end of the program, close my browser and restart the machine. The tone persists until Windows has completed shutting down and the boot process begins, I'm back in Windows, no tone.

I replaced the PSU 5 days ago, the last one, a Corsair 520HX burned out. The replacement is a Corsair VX550HX I bought in 2008 but never used until 5 days ago.

Any idea what might have happened here?

 

[lxskllr]

Driver crash/glitch would be my guess.

 

[Muse]

Driver crash/glitch would be my guess.

I like it. :thumbsup:

 

[VirtualLarry]

Driver crash/glitch would be my guess.

No, that's most likely the BIOS overheat / fanspeed warning.

OP, install SpeedFan, check temps and fan speeds next time that you use the PC for that again.

Edit: To test, run OCCT PSU test or linpack test on the PC, see if it starts making that tone again.

 

[JackMDS]

These old boards and their peripherals can work perfectly OK with XP and Win 7 as long as One does not use for uses that were Not in existence at their time of Glory.

Their performance/capacity to work was not design at the time of the current main stream usage in Gaming/Video/Internet streaming activities.

I had few Desktop from the AGP era working OK. I had to retire them 3-4 years ago because they could deal with the Need of current times.

As a further example Right Now Core2Duo with good Video cards can do almost every thing that i5/i7 do, but I start to feel thier future demise too. That is not because their is something going wrong with them but with the advance of computing activities they start to show their age of years ago Design.

------------------------------------
Similarly is the phenomenon here concerning people "Drama Queening about still using Win XP.

That does not has to do with XP vs. Vista vs. 7 vs. 10 as a technological entities

What the current glorifying of XP means is that there are many people (and nothing is wrong with it) using their desktop to do the same thing that they did years ago and they do not switch to current type of usage.

Nothing is wrong with old computers work habits but turning it to a technological superiority is rather "Silly"



😎

 

[Muse]

I think VirtualLarry and JackMDS might both be right on this one. Normally I use that PC for HDTV using the MyHD 130 HDTV card with its optional DVI daughterboard attached. The MyHD card has an onboard chip that takes the burden off the other PC hardware, which makes it pretty ideal for old systems. I have another MyHD card + daughterboard in an even older PC that's running Windows 2000 Pro! I get great results on that machine, actually better than the one that had this problem last night because it doesn't have the other machine's frequent bad lip synch issue.

But last night, as I explained in the OP, my normal HDTV recording shut down early and I streamed the remainder of the program, not something I normally do and that may have caused the box to overheat, resulting in that interminable tone (until shutdown/restart). I'm thinking that the CPU maybe had to decode on the fly causing it to overheat.

I plan to replace MBs, CPUs, RAM and OSs in both those midtower systems soon. Don't know what I'm going to get yet, I'm going to work up a list of requirements and post in General Hardware for ideas.

 

[JackMDS]

You can take a Fiat 500 and within certain parameters upgrade it.

As you can see 24 hours on News channels what the Pope did with his Fiat 500.

That said, you can Not Upgrade Fiat 500 to perform like full size Hammer Limo.

Same is with adding Newer more capable Peripheral cards to an Old Computer base.



😎

 

[SimMike2]

Really ancient computer. You should consider yourself lucky you got this much use out of it. Over time these things wear out. You can't expect to run all these electric signals through your hardware and expect it to last forever. And once it starts going, it is almost impossible to track it down to one replaceable component. Not worth your time or money.

 

[Muse]

Turns out the CPU fan wasn't turning! Today, I was timeshifting HDTV, came back to the machine and the tone was sounding. Took panel off case and there it was. When I swapped out the PSU 6 days ago I didn't make certain that no cable would hinder the CPU fan. So, it had been stopped for at least around 4 hours today (it wasn't before, but some cable had worked its way to the fan). Anyway, the CPU seems to not have been impacted, the machine works. I did have some bad problems with the HDTV DVR app, but that's not a rare occurrence. It's behaving now.

 

[Muse]

Really ancient computer. You should consider yourself lucky you got this much use out of it. Over time these things wear out. You can't expect to run all these electric signals through your hardware and expect it to last forever. And once it starts going, it is almost impossible to track it down to one replaceable component. Not worth your time or money.

Well, I haven't been throwing money at the machine. It's been on my todo list to get a new MB, RAM, CPU for the system and likely OS too for a few years. I just haven't because nothing forced my hand. There was no compelling reason to "do it now!" Really, the best reason is that a system upgrade is apt to very much improve the HDTV performance. I might even get into HTPC functionality instead of relying on DVDs played from set top boxes.

 

[Muse]

Same is with adding Newer more capable Peripheral cards to an Old Computer base.

Speaking of peripheral cards, I don't know if recent mainboards even support IDE. However, I have a couple Promise IDE PCI cards and could maybe include one to support my IDE HDs (actually, I probably won't bother doing that, I can copy anything I want from the IDE HDs off to external HDs or my NAS before swapping out the MB, etc). This darn machine's SATA controller sucks so bad, it's ridiculous. I really do need a new MB, etc. It's not compelling, it's just that my computing will very much improve.

 

[Z15CAM]

That GA-K8N Pro with an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ will run either Win7 32 or 64-Bit but as the MB only supports DDR1 with a MAX of 4 GB DDR1 I recommend you run Win7 32-Bit.

The PCIe nVidia GTX 280 was the hot GPU at the time.

I still run a GA-KN8 SLI with a GTX 280 and 3 sticks of 1GB OCZ Platinum DDR1 Dims at CAS 2.3.2.5-1T, 418 Mhz @ 2.8 Ghz's - Not many modern Tabloids can match that old DeskTop.

 

[Iron Woode]

my first HTPC was single core AM2 setup with 2GB of DDR2 800, PATA 160GB hdd and an ATI 550 pro tuner card. I ran Win XP MCE2005.

t had no trouble recording or playing TV and videos.

even though it wasn't powerful, it did what I needed it to do flawlessly.

EDIT: after looking at your MB, I would inspect your caps. you never know.

 

[Muse]

That GA-K8N Pro with an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ will run either Win7 32 or 64-Bit but as the MB only supports DDR1 with a MAX of 4 GB DDR1 I recommend you run Win7 32-Bit.

The PCIe nVidia GTX 280 was the hot GPU at the time.

I still run a GA-KN8 SLI with a GTX 280 and 3 sticks of 1GB OCZ Platinum DDR1 Dims at CAS 2.3.2.5-1T, 418 Mhz @ 2.8 Ghz's - Not many modern Tabloids can match that old DeskTop.

You mean this mainboard supports PCIe? That's news to me, I'll have a look. I thought I was stuck with AGP, not that I investigated it.

Hmm, I don't see it on the Spec page. 😕 Maybe the SLI version (yours) does support PCIe.

 

[Muse]

my first HTPC was single core AM2 setup with 2GB of DDR2 800, PATA 160GB hdd and an ATI 550 pro tuner card. I ran Win XP MCE2005.

t had no trouble recording or playing TV and videos.

even though it wasn't powerful, it did what I needed it to do flawlessly.

EDIT: after looking at your MB, I would inspect your caps. you never know.

I did take a quick look at the caps before replacing the PSU one week ago. At the time I didn't know if the mainboard had blown or the PSU. Around July 9th, I turned on the machine and it turned off in ~1/2 second. I thought maybe I hadn't pressed the right button or there was a glitch, pressed it again, same thing then the strong smell of burning electronics. Only got around to investigating a week ago, replace the PSU, it seemed to run OK. I used it yesterday for HDTV duty, seemed OK, but today the recording was weird. Something was wrong, evidently with the data saved to external USB HD. It was unwatchable. I have another midtower machine right next to this machine (actually, it's under it, they are bolted together and strutted to a window sill). The other machine has my other MyHD card, so I continued the recording on that machine, where it turned out OK. However, the recording made on the problem machine was unusable. This is very out of the ordinary. I've been using those cards for close to 10 years. There have been many many anomalies, but nothing quite like this one, IIRC. Maybe something is wrong with the hardware, don't know. Don't have time to troubleshoot it right now, not until Tuesday (i.e. day after tomorrow).