Joho the Blog
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June 23, 2003
The PC shop installed XP onto my 120GB hard drive. I took it home. It's working beautifully. I install the basics: Office and Outlook. I'm rebuilding my directories from my backups. I'm on the phone for a minute so I know my hands are off the keyboard, and Boom, it goes to black and reboots. I have the minimal peripherals plugged in: USB mouse and USB keyboard, ethernet cable, monitor. I am running a minimal set of stuff. No virus protection, no ad blockers, no fancy dancy drivers. And yet I still got a big, scary crash. It's a new motherboard and RAM. Suggestions other than to get a Mac? I'm at my wit's end. (Fortunately, that's a short walk for me.) Posted
by D. Weinberger at June 23, 2003 11:12 PM
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Comments
I had the same thing happen and it was the power supply. But I imagine the shop has already been down that path.
Posted by: Ryan | June 23, 2003 11:43 PM
its the drivers. it is probably the motherboard drivers specifically, though it may be video or other primary hardware. but to me it sounds like the motherboards front side bus driver. here is what i would do, i would go into the mobo bios and turn as much off as possible, i would change everything that i could from autodetect to the precise setting (you will need the manual), turn off particularly the auto assigning of interrupts, you probably don't need more than 15 and they can be assigned pretty easily. once those are turned off, reboot and reinstall the mobo drivers with the newest mcsoft versions, then see how stable it is. i used to have to do this to an occasionally flakey mobo that i had, but then it would be stable.
if it were me, i'd just put linux on it, and if i needed windows, and i wouldn't, but you might, i'd install it on a vmware virtual machine under linux. it'd be useable.
Posted by: jeremy hunsinger | June 23, 2003 11:46 PM
I was going to guess power too.
Posted by: chip | June 23, 2003 11:46 PM
you can run the mobo diagnostics to see if the power supply is fluctuating significantly. if you have a 220 or 250 and a bunch of new internals, the gentleman above could be right, but i too suspect that it should have been tested already.
Posted by: jeremy hunsinger | June 23, 2003 11:48 PM
Same hard drive as before? Did you have the HD tested? Yeah, yeah, SOP and all that, but I've had similar problems in the past, sent the computer in for repairs, got it back, still having problems, went through the process three or four times only to find out that the morons at tech support never once checked the HD for problems despite the fact they listed it as one of the things they did the first time they looked at the system.
Another possibility... you said things were running great up until "I'm rebuilding my directories from my backups". Perhaps you've got a virus lurking in your backups?
Posted by: James Snell | June 24, 2003 12:27 AM
My brother had a similar issue and it was a USB hub. DO you have a hub? If so, can you connect minimal stuff w/o it? Make sure your usb peripherals are good.
Posted by: Howard Greenstein | June 24, 2003 03:13 PM
Have you tried running Linux on the box?
I'm not advocating a permanent switch, or trying to Strike a Blow against The Monster. It's just that a different OS will exercise the box differently, and the intersection of the behaviors may give your shop more information to go on.
If you don't want to commit the hard drive to Linux, try the Knoppix CD (http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html).
No installation, no mess, no fuss.
Posted by: Jeff Licquia | June 24, 2003 03:15 PM
Hmm. Thanks to everyone for the advice and ideas.
I don't have an external USB plugged in, but the mobo has 8 usb ports as standard issue. The driver is up to date.
I do have a knoppix CD. I think I will try it out.
Posted by: dweinberger | June 24, 2003 03:37 PM