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Thread ID: 49902	2004-10-04 11:16:00	A nightmare, how to kill four computers in one day :(	Gimmee (6238)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
278261	2004-10-04 11:16:00	Hi there Just seeing if anyone has had a bad day like this, heeeeeh . My main computer is a amd 350mhz cpu, 64Mb RAM, whole 32Mb TNT2 Video card, 8Gb hard drive and running win98SE . Yes I know it aint the latest but it has done everything I need with a lot of maintenance and tweaking till recently when I needed to compile some J2ME prorams and everything was just too slow compiling a small J2ME program . My girlfriends computer is even worse, 200Mhz pentium, 79Mb RAM, s3 Virge video card, couple of hard drives, 1 . 2Gb and a 2 . 5Gb . It had gotten to the stage where just trying to keep these two machines going was a full time job in the sense everytime you wanted to do something in a hurry something would need adjusting, reinstalling, for no real reason at all except both computers seemed to want to make computing a course in frustration . Fixed a few friends puters over the last couple of months and they wanted some parts upgrading so I kept any parts they didn't want to make a reasonably nice machine for my girlfriend . Well she ended up with a AMD 1600+ athlon, 512Mb DDR RAM, GEForce2 graphics card, 40Gb hard drive, nice upgraded monitor, 5 . 1 sound card and speakers . One last one to add . Her friend asked her if I could look at there puter that died with a power surge . Some shop in pukekohe looked at it and said $500 to fix which is fine but young family and all, sometimes $500 just wont cut it . The machine was about 1 1/2 year old 900Mhz duron, msi version 5 motherboard, integrated video, 256Mb RAM, all bare bones but clean and tidy . Back to the girlfriends computer . This all happened a couple of weeks ago and over one day . Finally had her Athlon all up and running with XP pro installed and all accounts up and running, all software installed . Her old 200Mhz puter I decided to get a photo and sell on trademe for a dollar pickup if someone wanted it otherwise I was dumping it . Mine I decided to do the same and build myself a nice custom computer with a charter stating that it must be silent after having to put up with my one almost rattling to bits everytime I fired it up . Her new puter was quite a nice setup in the end . Decided to install SP2 which went without a hitch, except when rebooting a flash of a blue screen and then a continuous rebooting . You could finally get it to work sometimes after 15 to 30 min of continuous rebooting . From what I read this could be a bios problem with ASUS motherboards . Her motherboard was a Chaintech though . Downloaded the bios upgrades then decided for no good reason to just uninstall SP2 . This is where my day went downhill fast . After SP2 was uninstalled on rebbot there was another blue screen telling me about fatal errors . On trying to reboot this was all I got continuously . Safe mode booted up alright and I decided to do a restore . All seemed to work well but again at boot up just get a nice BSOD with the same problem . Never the mind I reasoned, would just get on the net and see what this error was and hopefully I wouldn't have to reinstall all the software . Her friends compter was there so before going any further I decided to do some component swapping and see if maybe some parts were salvagable from the duron900 system . Popped both units open, yes I do use a anti static wrist strap, and decided first stop was hard drive . Installed the hard drive from the dead duron900 into the crashed 1600+ machine and fired up . Ran the normal checks on the hard drive and found it was all go . Day looking good . Couldn't test the RAM as it was SDram and wouldn't go into the DDR ram slot so left that for later . Decided to see if the duron900 CPU had any life in it so swapped it with the Atlon cpu . Turned on power and the power supply fan ran up to about 1/2 speed and started pulsating and then the smell of smoke . Quickly turned of computer as a nice wift of smoke came out of power supply . The cpu was roasting hot when I took the heatsink and fan off and that was a couple of secs . Damn never had that before . Also on off chance tried the power supply from the power spiked duron but that would not start up the nice athlon machine I had put together for the girlfriend . The power supply was going in the dead duron machine in respect to it was powering hard drive and cpu fan but I don't know about motherboard voltages . The athlon1600+ would not give me any bios screen at all with the power supply from the duron machine although I still don't know if that power supply was faulty or not . I treated the power supply as faulty and thought it best to get a new one anyway if the machine had been hammered by a power spkie . What had i burnt out on the girlfriends computer, motherboard, RAM, cpu, videocard? Now I had two computers sitting dead with two power supplies and a duron cpu in rubbish bin . Have not been able to test the athlon1600+ cpu, ram, or motherboard to see which parts I have fried on that one if any but I suspect art least the cpu anyway . Video card and modem (modem was a newish pci 56k from my amd 350khz machine) worked out alright . Needless to say when I picked up my loved one and all she wanted to do was to get home and try some CD creating on the burner and I had to tell her ummmmm yeah about that, she thought I was kidding her and was the least impressed when she found out I wasn't kidding . Decided better off ditching the motherboard and out of the duron900 as well and get another motherboard and cpu off trademe, friend had a nice power supply and a RAM module I could use and I just needed to check the PCI modem then . Will still be well under $500 to repair . In the mean time as I had pinched my PCI modem for girlfriends computer I might as well take the PCI modem from the dead duron900 and test that in my machine and if good I would be able to cruise the net and look for parts . Installed the modem into my 350Mhz machine and turned on and and and and nothing . Power supply rattled away, cpu fan buzzed away but no video screen . What now . Third computer not working . Was at the stage that I wanted to smash something now but never mind will take the girlfriends old 200Mhz pentium back to her place so she could at least still do emails and likewise . Plugged it all in fired it up and it worked, until until until no mouse connected, you can connect one now blah blah blah . There is a mouse connected, it is the one that has always been with the computer, work damn it . Tried rebooting, mouse connections etc . Nothing worked . Popped case open and checked all connections . Still nothing worked . Now I had the fourth and final computer at least working but troublesome to operate without the mouse and said girlfriend even less impressed that I had managed to wreck four computers in one day . Obviously I was dreaming of computers all night long and wondering how this cluster you know what had kicked me you know where . I was not a happy chappy to say the least . Well as I am on the net again I have solved some problems . Would take another story this long to go through what I had to do to get my ole 350Mhz computer and her mouse problem sorted . Parts coming for the power spiked duron as well except now it is going to be a 1600 duron and the athlon is still dead in the water waiting for me to brave it again with some component testing . My confidence took a hammering and I just needs a couple more weeks before I brave it all again . It was a hell of a day . Can I blame it all on SP2 as that is when the day started to go downhill, probably not, hehe . Laters Darrin :):)	Gimmee (6238)
278262	2004-10-04 11:29:00	Not a good week to buy a lotto ticket then ? By the way, welcome to f1.	the highlander (245)
278263	2004-10-04 11:33:00	Well, after that tale of woe, it seems like rather a come-down to merely welcome you to Press F 1... I'm sure many of us hope your future posts won't involve so many troubles at once - and send sympathy for your disasters. Do let us know how the continuing rescue efforts work out.	Laura (43)
278264	2004-10-04 11:40:00	I got lost somewhere in the middle, did the hero get the girl, was the alian invasion defeated? was the world a better place when apple pies came outta the oven rather then out of a cardboard box?........meh....i'll wait till the movie comes out. oh yeah,welcome to F1,ignore my ramblings, And if it makes you feel any better Growly could destroy all that hardware twice as fast.	metla (154)
278265	2004-10-04 11:56:00	told you sp2 was bad news... :D "Why, that windows xp.... it's the devil! The devil I tell you!"	willie_M (5608)
278266	2004-10-04 17:16:00	Hi Gimmee You ought to read this (pressf1.pcworld.co.nz), and you might be able to redeem yourself by winning a prize - pity you have run out of computers to run the Norton software on though :D You might need to compress your tale of woe down a tad for the article. :)	Jen C (20)
278267	2004-10-04 17:21:00	stick to 98SE like i do for older PCs and dont install sewrvice packs on XP at all	kiwibeat (304)
278268	2004-10-04 19:38:00	>From what I read this could be a bios problem with ASUS motherboards. Her motherboard was a Chaintech though Please tell me you didnt flash a Chaintech motherboard with a ASUS BIOS?	Pete O'Neil (250)
278269	2004-10-04 20:54:00	Well, talking about compatibility issues...it's a silly thing to uprade to xp serv pack2 for old computers...	FeuerBrennt (5971)
278270	2004-10-04 21:14:00	>You might need to compress your tale of woe down a tad for the article. OK, Jen C, I tried to compress it for a trial, I tried gzip, tar ARJ, ARC, ZIP, Pkzip, and it doesnt seem to post too good. Thinking about small file sizes, I tried a photo of the monitor with the camera on a very low resolution, then put the jpeg to the lowest resolution but it still doesn't post. I will try again using flat batteries in the camera and see if that will shrink it. Maybe I should try with a slower processor and a smaller PSU in the 'puter and see what that does. R2	R2x1 (4628)
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