Post by: BlackNMild2k1 on March 08, 2007, 05:04:49 AM
what happened and how do I fix it?
Post by: UltimatePartyBear on March 08, 2007, 05:08:52 AM
Post by: BlackNMild2k1 on March 08, 2007, 05:50:54 AM
Ctrl+Alt+Down Arrow rotated my screen till it was right side up. Thanks for the response though.
Post by: matt oz on March 08, 2007, 06:44:00 AM
Post by: UltimatePartyBear on March 08, 2007, 07:22:06 AM
Post by: Ceric on March 08, 2007, 08:57:29 AM
Post by: Artimus on March 08, 2007, 01:47:06 PM
Post by: BlackNMild2k1 on April 22, 2007, 08:44:03 PM
The Problem: My computer is in an endless reboot cycle and won't boot from the CD drive no matter how many times I tell it to.
As soon as its about to load windows, it reboots.
How it happened: I recently upgraded my computer to try and get around other computer problems that I had been having. After the upgrade, I kept ketting blue screen errors that cause the computer to restart. I downloaded some stuff and the problem went away.... sort of. Everything seemed to be working fine, but at start-up I would get 2 windows errors, one that said I need to either update my video drivers for the new motherboard and/or take off all hardware graphic acceleration, the other was some random window file "www.ocra.windows.blahblahblahwhateverthismay-be.itsjustsomereallylongnametoafileillneverfind." couldn't be found. Not to mention that the computer would also do random restarts.
So I upgraded the driver from the Intel site that the board is from(just took the newest driver for a range of board series) and turned off all HW acceleration, and then the errors would still show up. So I backrolled the driver back to the original one and installed the latest one specifically made for my board. Now I couldn't display anything above 4bit color at 640x480. *Sometimes when I tried to change the monitor support or the resolution the computer would do a random restart.*
I tried everything in the Help pages, and decide that I should try a System Restore after none of it works. Which is what leads us to the current problem. The endless reboot cycle.
Solution: I should have bought a Dell.
Post by: Shift Key on April 22, 2007, 09:22:11 PM
I can't see why you can't boot from a CD if you are able to start booting Windows, but obviously I'm only going by what you're telling me.
Normally pressing Del when you are starting up (well before you boot Windows) should get you into the BIOS - from there you can tell the BIOS to boot from CD first, then Windows.
Secondly, how valuable is the stuff on the Windows partition?
You've got a few choices that vary in terms of the work and luck required.
1. Boot into Safe Mode (F8 when you see the Windows screen, then a bunch of startup options appear). This will give you some debugging and load a minimal Windows environment so you can isolate the source. Perhaps the resets will still occur, but perhaps you'll get to actually read the error message.
The other choices depend on booting from a CD. Not sure why you can't get into the BIOS and change the boot order as it always starts up before Windows does.
Anyway:
2. Reinstall Windows on the old partition - replaces the contents of C:/Windows with all the Windows-related files - including the registry - which means you will need to reinstall everything, but you won't lose any data outside of the Windows directory. This may fix the problem or it may not, but it could give you the time to backup your stuff and reformat.
3. Wipe the partition (Windows install CD or your average Linux live CD can help you with this) and reinstall Windows - clears everything on that partition. All the stuff that is on there will be gone, but the problem will be gone.
What concerns me is the error message. Do you have the original CD for the motherboard drivers? What often happens is that Windows installs the best match it can find for a piece of hardware, which may work fine, but is hardly foolproof. The best thing to install is the driver on the CD, as that is what the manufacturer recommends you use. If there is an updated version of that driver it would appear in Windows Update, but aside from that (unless you're using Vista - for example the nVidia drivers have some bugs which are affecting some games in Vista and Vista only) that the CD drivers are sufficient.
Post by: BlackNMild2k1 on April 22, 2007, 10:02:50 PM
I've been stressing alot over getting this computer to work over the last week and frankly I'm just fed up with it right now. There is nothing on the primarey HDD that I care to keep(I have two HDD's) and have already wiped everything off it (a week ago)inorder to get it working in the first place. I just don't want to deal with that computer tonite. I will probably open it up and do another clean install again tomorrow. or maybe I'll pack up all my new parts (motherboard, fan & ram) back in their boxes and ship them back to where the came from* and follow my original solution.
*I've invested too much time and energy now though to just give up, and I was doing this upgrade as a learning experience anyway. So I will play with it for another week and see if I can get this P.O.S. working right. Personally I think the case I have it in is cursed and this computer will never work right(which is why I upgraded in the 1st place), but that could just be my imagination.
If you think you can help me fix it, I will be forever grateful. Thanx for the reply.
Post by: Shift Key on April 22, 2007, 10:10:59 PM
Yeah, sounds like a terrible situation to be in.
Post by: BlackNMild2k1 on April 22, 2007, 10:28:11 PM
They had a BIOS upgrade on the INTEL site, but I don't think I installed it, though I did download it.
It was right before I wiped my HDD and did a clean install of windows, so I'm not sure how to check.
There was alot of installing stuff going on at that point in time, and I was getting the "blue screen" errors that were restarting my computer at that time too.
Oh, I got the motherboard about a 10 days ago.
Intel 946GZIS Express, it came with a 3.2ghz processor for about $150 ($75/$75 split)
You think I should return the motherboard and get a new one? I could afford a better/newer one, but I didn't think it would be necessary.
Post by: Shift Key on April 22, 2007, 10:47:08 PM
That's what I thought you did but considering it persistently boots to Windows (while you can access the BIOS menu normally) then I think its a hardware problem.
Yes, definitely replace it. I'm 99% sure that's the source of the problem.
Post by: BlackNMild2k1 on April 22, 2007, 11:21:38 PM
Post by: Shift Key on April 22, 2007, 11:24:49 PM
Post by: BlackNMild2k1 on April 22, 2007, 11:41:25 PM
*I woulda posted abou the IDE/SATA thing before, but I couldn't remember what they were called.*
Post by: Shift Key on April 23, 2007, 01:18:08 AM
You can plug a hard drive and a CD drive into the same IDE connection. The only problem is that IDE only allows devices to run as fast as the slowest device on the cable. In that case, it'll be the CD and both drives will run at ATA33, that is 33MB/s. So its not something you'll want to do regularly.
Post by: Smash_Brother on April 23, 2007, 02:03:33 AM
Quote
Originally posted by: BlackNMild2k1 Solution: I should have bought a Mac.
Fixed.
Post by: Ceric on April 23, 2007, 03:34:11 AM
Quote
Originally posted by: Smash_BrotherQuote
Originally posted by: BlackNMild2k1 Solution: I should have bought a Mac.
Fixed.
But my parsing program is a windows app. I'm lazy and I don't want to recode it with the Google Webkit, Java, Python, or figure out the funny Gelatinous Cube for a Cocoa app. I guess I could just rig it to compile with Mono and call it day though...
Post by: KDR_11k on April 23, 2007, 04:22:17 AM
Post by: UltimatePartyBear on April 23, 2007, 04:46:34 AM
Post by: BlackNMild2k1 on April 23, 2007, 06:32:27 AM
Post by: Ceric on April 23, 2007, 07:53:22 AM
Quote
Originally posted by: KDR_11k
While we're talking about Macs, which key executes the file you have selected with the cursor keys? That CG comp lab has only those retarded one button mice and the lack of a scrollwheel is a severe pain in the rear so I'm using keyboard navigation. Except I can't find the key that acts like a doubleclick on the selected file. Also there was something about the end key that annoyed me to no end but I don't remember what it was (I think it didn't work on single line fields or always jumped to the end of the file instead of the line or something).
Apple+O will open a file. Which I think is stupid because every other OS in existance "enter" is almost always execute. In general one of things I found most annoying when I started using a Mac was the lack of Keyboard shortcuts comparitively speaking. The whole Apple Speil for the one-button mice was that it was more ergonomic to use the keyboard primarily. I was expecting shortcuts out the Wazoo. I was sadly mistaken.
Post by: Smash_Brother on April 24, 2007, 05:24:34 AM
Luckily, they have a 2-button now with a scroll ball in the middle, but it's touch based and lacks the tactile "click" that I know and love.
I'll stick with my logitech. OSX is built from the ground up to use a 2-button mouse so it doesn't matter.
Post by: BlackNMild2k1 on August 19, 2007, 09:59:11 AM
Yes it took me this many months to finally get it to work flawlessly.
I got a another new mother board(3rd one) and I'm about to get more ram(1 RAM chip went bad), I got a new HDD (my 2nd one. it = 500gb), I bought a new case(cause I think the last one was cursed), and a got a new power supply(just because).
Now everything is working good and fast and my computer no longer freezes up on me anymore.
The nitemare is finally over.
Post by: decoyman on August 19, 2007, 11:49:52 AM
). But I have to say... it sounds like you didn't really fix the problem so much as just get a whole new computer
Last week I had a computer problem of my own... Yes, I ran into the dreaded Macbook Pro battery issue. The one where the battery starts swelling to the point that it can't get a connection to the pins anymore, and basically just doesn't work. You have to use AC power. Apparently, it's happened with certain early-model MBPs (which mine is), so they replaced it for free. Good customer service on that – they overnighted it to me with a pre-paid label so I could ship back my faulty one.
However, I've run into another problem that may very well be my own fault. My computer used to take ~35 seconds from the moment I hit the power button till the OS had finished starting up (things stopped loading and it was no longer accessing the disk or running the processor actively). NOW, it takes 3x as long, and sometimes longer, up to ~2-3 minutes. To me... that ain't normal.
I've heard that two of the things that slow a computer down the most are: 1) Anti-virus software and 2) having too many fonts loaded. Ok, so #1 is basically a non-issue for a Mac. However, I DO have like 2000 fonts (I'm a designer), and I haven't dished out the cash for a font management program.
So, do you guys think that the fonts are causing this massive increase in start-up time? It zips right through the gray screen, then the blue screen with the progress bar in no time flat, but when it gets to the desktop, that's when it starts slowing WAY down. Here's some other (perhaps not so) random info for trouble-shooting...
• I'm on a wireless network.
• When it gets to the desktop, just the upper right part of the top menu bar (so you can see the blue search icon) loads at first, followed by the rest after a long wait... I don't remember it ever loading that way before I started having this problem.
• When typing (in either a browser, Word/Pages, etc.), I easily get ahead of the text being displayed. I'm a pretty fast typist, but it never used to do that.
• I've recently repaired my permissions and scanned my drive for errors. There were many permissions needing to be fixed, and the drive passed w/ no errors, but it hasn't helped as much as I'd hoped it would.
• My hard drive has about 35GB free. The drive is 100GB.
• 2GB of RAM, 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo processor.
• Do I need to defrag? If so, can I do that on OSX (without resorting to a third-party program)?
Please help if you can... If anyone has any design-related questions, I'll try to reciprocate
Post by: Ceric on August 19, 2007, 02:56:40 PM
Post by: UERD on August 19, 2007, 02:58:39 PM
Post by: decoyman on August 21, 2007, 04:14:19 AM
UERD: Nope, no hard drive light. I don't remember ever hearing the drive making much noise at all.
I think I'll be ordering the font management utility today. Hopefully it'll be here by the end of the week, and I'll update to say whether it helped or not...
Post by: BlackNMild2k1 on August 21, 2007, 05:23:02 AM
but my computer sure does run a helluva lot faster, so that atleast makes it somewhat better than before.
Do you think it could be a ram issue?
Should I purchase 2GB of faster RAM?
Could it be a Motherboard issue like I thought it was last time?
I really don't want to swap out the motherboard again, but if I traded it for the exazct same motherboard, would I have to reinstall everything again?
Post by: Stogi on January 11, 2010, 05:09:41 PM
I'm trying to install XP Pro onto a computer. This is a Dell Studio 1737 and it use to have Windows Vista on it. Now I've done this sort of thing before, but this time I keep getting the same error message relating to the harddrive.
So let me tell you what I did (and normally do). I used Ultimate Boot Disk and inside, loaded a program called "Cute Partition Manager". I used this program to delete and create new partitions of a 250 GB drive. I made two partitions - one is 25 GB, the other 225 GB and made them both NTFS.
Then, I booted my XP Pro CD, but after awhile of loading, I get this error: STOP 0x0000007B (...., 0xC0000034, ...., ....)
After doing a bit of Googling I found out that my error message might have to do with my harddrive drivers not being up to date. But that's bullshit since it was just working before I deleted everything. So now I'm not sure what to do....I'm thinking maybe this computer can't install XP for some odd reason.
Actually, I'm in the process of downloading Vista (not illegally...from my university), just to see if this is the case. If I can get past this error with a vista disc, then maybe I was right. However, the whole point was to go back to XP pro because it's a hell of alot better.
So any ideas?
Post by: ShyGuy on January 11, 2010, 05:25:00 PM
Post by: Stogi on January 11, 2010, 05:46:55 PM
I changed it to IDE. Let's see if that works.
EDIT: Worked like a charm. Thank you.
Post by: ShyGuy on January 11, 2010, 06:25:47 PM
(http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k302/shyguy70/000ghbyg.gif)
