We experienced guys get screwed up too.

[fstroupe]

This may not belong in this forum, please move it if it doesn't. This story will be long.

I have been around computers a long time, and have been building for over five years. But, to be honest, I have had very little hardware death problems of my own. I have had one piece of hardware die, a power supply on an old HP Pavillion. If you have ever seen the article where someone duct taped a regular ATX power supply to the side of an HP, it was mine. Most troubleshooting on forums is pretty easy if you really stop, take your time, and read what the person with the problem has to say, and ask the right questions. It's a little different when the problem is your own, and you are frantically trying to figure out what is wrong.....

The story all starts a couple of months ago, I had some pretty nasty malware. I eventually got it all cleaned up, excepting my mouse gets a little slow. Occasionally, it causes the "USB device unplugged" noise. It has been over a year since a clean install. I had a lot going on during the malware problem, and really didn't have time to set things back up after an install, so I have been planning a clean install since then, just haven't done it. About that time, a friend borrowed my Windows disk...he had a key, just not the disk. He hasn't returned it, and I let him know Thursday that I would be needing it soon. I really didn't need the disk, just my key.

Friday, I get home from work. My wife tells me that my rig is acting weird, cutting off. After sitting in front of it for maybe 30 minutes, I get a random reboot. Well, I say reboot...everything cuts off, but I have to turn the PSU off long enough for the mobo LEDs to die, then turn it back on. It reboots fine, and lasts for another 30 minutes or so.

After a few hours, it gets worse. I narrow it down in my mind to two culprits...O/S, or a too-hot Northbridge...I had replaced the noisy, crappy, Abit chipset cooler for a Zalman passive one. I check AbitEQ, and it says my NB is 30C.

So, I decide to do a System Restore. Yes, I know many people do not like it, but I have used it many, many times will great success.

When rebooting after the Restore, I get the message "NTLDR not found, pres Ctrl-Alt-Del to reboot". Huh? What the hell? Never seen that one before, but I suspect what it is.

So after a little research to find out about the error and how to cure it, I sit a while and think about what happened. (Its about 8:30-9:00PM, I've been up since 3AM and worked for about 12 hours) I realize that it was very likely that I had picked a restore point prior to my last Windows Update, and that was probably the culprit.

So, I decide to do a repair on Windows. There were some other options, a few using a 3.5" floppy, but my floppy drive was in the bedroom, and my wife had already gone to sleep. I had done repairs before, sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn't, but never any problems. I do a long repair, which takes nearly as long as Windows installation. I've never done one before.

So, everything's going well, I have passed the point where Windows reboots and you don't "press any key". Suddenly, it asks for my mobo drivers. NP, I put the disk in, and it gets them. Then, it asks for my sound card driver, and tells me that it isn't approved, and do I want to proceed. That's when the problems started. The mouse didn't work, and neither did the keyboard. Obviously, after my last CMOS clear, I didn't enable USB support for either. I have a PS/2 keyboard I keep around for that purpose, but there ain't a PS/2 mouse in the house. The repair seems to be continuing, at least the stupid messages that XP gives while installation was going on were still changing. So, I take a shower to kill a little time to see.

Of course, nothing had progressed while I was gone. So now, I have to decide whether or not to reboot so I could enable USB support for the mouse. It is after 11PM by this time, I am usually in bed by 10 after a hard day. So, I say what the hell and go for it.

Of course, it takes nearly 30 minutes to get back to the point I was at, so now its after midnight, and I'm getting a little stupid. The repair continues fine, a pleasant surprise. Until I get to the point where I need to key something in and the keyboard doesn't work. Damn. Did I forget to enable KB support? I don't remember. NP, I'll reboot again.

This time, after the Windows splash screen, I get a blank screen in Windows XP blue. Only the mouse cursor shows. It works BTW, so the system isn't totally locked up. I wait awhile, watching the HDD LED, and nothing else happens. It is pushing 1AM by now. I try it again to no avail, and decide I better sleep on it...if I could sleep at all.

About 4AM, my dogs wake me up to take a whiz, so I decide to go ahead and get up. Dammit...the screen is still blue...I was kind of hoping it would start back working while I was asleep.

So, I start deciding whether or not to go ahead and just do a clean install. I keep very little on C:, and had recently backed up "My Documents" (which I put nearly nothing on except for some labels my wife uses in her business) on an external drive I had recently reviewed. Really, there were only two things I hadn't done that I always do before a reinstall besides unstalling as many programs as I can....saving email, address book, and bookmarks. My bookmarks were no great loss, but my wife's were. As far as the email, I do save some, but no great loss. There are some addresses I'd hate to lose...actually, loss of an address book once made be lose touch with an army buddy for years. The most important thing to be lost were three or four emails from my wife's brother to her. He died back in Feb, and these were his last ones. I had found them a few months ago while I was cleaning things up. She is still pretty devastated by his death, and I told myself that I would go to the nth degree before losing these.

I go back to my research, and decide to use a NTLDR fixit program that uses a bootable floppy. It worked...but got me back to the pretty Windows blue screen.

Next, I try using the floppy to copy NTLDR and the .exe that finds it while in the repair console. They copied, but didn't work. I decide that their being missing or corrupted probably weren't the problem...the registry was looking for older versions of them. It hits me to use the repair console to copy the valuable files to floppy. Unfortunitely, you can't use the repair console for that without a Linux program designed to do so.

All during this time, I am going back and forth between the repair console and Setup....each time eating up many minutes. Before I know it, it is 3PM, and I still haven't accomplished a damn thing.

Finally about 4PM, I decide I need to stop and cook dinner, and decided I was through for the day.

I get up extra early before church this morning to look at it again. Everything is like before.

My wife is sitting behind me. We are discussing when it happened, and she mentions the "pop" that the computer made when it died the first time. Now, I'm sure that she had mentioned it before, but it finally sunk in. The thought that had crossed my mind before finally came to the front...that the mobo was damaged.

I waste enough time that I have to rush to get ready, and am late for choir practice before service.

So, we get back home, I sit down. I have decided screw it, I'm just going to reinstall. While I am getting to that point, I get the first random reboot that I have gotten in over 24 hours. It happens a couple more times. Damn. It stops doing it for a while, so I decide to go ahead and reinstall. If it reboots during, so what, nothing but time is lost...and I have wasted around 30 hours by now.

So, Windows goes thru the process. Of course, you have to tell it a couple times if that is actually what you want to do, and I hesitated a few seconds the first time. The second time, I stop. What's the hurry...I still don't have my key.

I have a much clearer head, and rethink the whole thing. I'm thinking about that damn "pop". It just doesn't make sense...if it was a mobo component, it most likely would have just died. Then I started thinking about the PSU. I don't know much about the construction of a multiple-rail PSU, but what if one rail died?

So, I try another PSU. (don't have a spare, took it from another rig) I'll be damned, that's it.

While I was messing around with PSUs, I decide to try connecting the HDD to one of my other computers. I had nearly done it before, but thought I'd confuse the other system by there being two C: drives. The drive hadn't been configured for a "hot plug", but thought I'd try it, maybe that wouldn't confuse the system.

The first try didn't work, it froze the computer up, and I decided "screw it". As I made that decision, my wife was sitting there. She said go ahead. I once again mentioned what we would lose...including Ted's emails. She hadn't thought about them. The look on her face told me that I had better try extracting those files again.

So, I reconnect the SATA power and SATA cables. That's when I realized that the SATA power connector was broken. DUH.

It actually worked, the computer renamed the C: drive, and I got the files I needed. I am supposed to have a review PSU on the way, though the site owner isn't around this weekend to confirm it.

What a screwed up weekend.

[fstroupe]

LOL...in recalling the story, I forgot to add the points I was trying to make by writing it. The moral of the story:

First, when troubleshooting, make sure you listen to the person with the problem, and ask the right questions. Before doing anything, I should have spent some time asking my wife exactly what happened, and listening to what she had to say. Even write it down, looking at it sometimes is better than just listening. Not a problem on the forum.

Second, don't go in with preconcieved notions. I already knew that I needed a clean install, and I really didn't have that much faith in the passive NB cooler. So I "knew" that one of the other was the problem.

Third, STOP!!! Think about each thing that happened that caused the problem. Maybe get a second opinion before acting. Having to turn the PSU off before reboot was the key in this case. If nothing else, it should have told me that it wasn't an O/S problem. My rushing to judgement caused all of the unnessesary drama that trashed my weekend.

Finally, stay calm. LOL...yeah, right.

[Jokerswild]

Great story. I have banged my head against the wall several times before over computer issues. Good to hear you got it all worked out.

[Hitman]

Are you kidding me? You actually expect me to read all that? You didn't even post pictures.

[Jokerswild]

Just a heads up. Hitman is not capable of reading more than 4 words at one time so I'm sure he will never read any worthwhile posts. But if you post pics he will look at them all especially if they are in the form of a cartoon.

[fstroupe]

Kind of hard to post pics on something like that...except maybe a pic of one of my dogs flying across the room after I really got pissed.

Hitman, you oughta try reading sometime...good for the brain synapses.

[Hitman]

Originally Posted by fstroupe

Kind of hard to post pics on something like that...except maybe a pic of one of my dogs flying across the room after I really got pissed.

Hitman, you oughta try reading sometime...good for the brain synapses.

It's all good, I have ADD, so if it doesn't grab my attention in the first 4 lines, I stop reading. Pictures help keep me interested.

[Jokerswild]

Pics of hot women work best with him. ( congrats to me for not saying hot men )

[Telexen]

Did someone say 'pics of hot women' !?

[Jokerswild]

Originally Posted by Telexen

Did someone say 'pics of hot women' !?

Crawl back in your hole and stick you tongue back in your mouth.