PC in need of help

Noodles

As far as the the re-install if they are XP SP2 the the damn WGA is going to make that very difficult.

It actually sounds like cold solder joint problem on the motherboard.

Sparky_MarkyUK

The copy of Windows on there is legit, the version I've got with me isn't but WGN doesn't pick up on that (it's a good copy we got)

I'd rather just do a repair then re-install, gonna be loosing alot of data even though I partitioned most of it this time

Noodles

If you have a spare hard drive you can run it as a slave and get all the data off.

I was not implying that XP was not legit, but the activation numbers won't match and may render Windows useless.

Sparky_MarkyUK

Noodles

The jumper on the second drive should be marked as to which one tells
it to be a slave drive.

I guess I misunderstood that the machine won't even go into safe mode.

Here is what a friend did. Forget the stuff about SP2 and make a bootable CD
to copy the important data from one drive to another.

Sparky_MarkyUK

Hmmmm well I think I located the problem, CPU won't run at the temperature it's putting out and I got a CPU FAN ERROR when I tried a work around earlier (plugging in the old hard drive to format and install the home copy of Windows, it didn't come up with any drive for me to select)

Cheers for your help guys, I'm just gonna have to leave it till Saturday and I'll get a new heat sink and fan and possibly change the chassis fan to a larger one

Oh and Noodles, forgot to mention this but the hard drives are SATA drives and for some reason, unlike with the IDE drives I used to have in my old PC they don't have jumpers to set Master or Slave which is weird (had this problem when I installed my new hard drive last year)

Sp00k

Seems you may have it sussed out, it may well be your graphics car overheating too, or at the very worst some kind of bug. Its really a process of illumination. What would really help is a boot CD with all the different utility programs on to assist with all diagnostics.
Something like Hirens boot CD or Ultimate Boot CD. I would gladly send them to you by msn messenger but if your pc is kaput well...

Unless you want them posted?

NEWSOME

I say put a grenade in it and drop it in a river, OR

Try buy a new Hard Drive, after installing it re install your OS. Be ready to call Windows and advised what occurred and they will give a proper number. More than likely You have a Virus.

Sparky_MarkyUK

Well I just need to get my discs from my flat on Monday after rebuilding parts of it over the weekend, shopping list is Heatsink, larger extraction fan for the rear of the case, thermal paste (reapplied some today as the heatsink was pretty bare - Note this has dropped the temp but not by a hell of a lot) and I need a new power box for the two cathode tubes in the case (sad, I got a see-through window )

Looking at £50-£70 depending how expensive the good brands are.

And sp00k, cheers for the offer but I'll try with the XP disc next week and if no luck I'll be in contact.

Newsome, Hard drive that I was running off is under a year old (11 months) so I don't think it is that though nothing can be ruled out, but just in case it is ask G for my details and send the grenade (or just send one anyways )


And last point, thanks for all you input guys, it does help as I can eliminate more and more factors each time

Sp00k

Did you make a restore point on your computer? Xp has this and the only thing is , is that when it restores to a a point you made earlier when everything was working fine, it literally restores the computer exactly as it was on that particular time you made the restore point.

So for instance you might have made a restore point with only Windows XP and office and antivirus/firewall installed. (good starting point for your first restore). The problem is there is if you had a lot of other programs on before it went tits up you'd lose all of them when it restores.
This is why it pays to do several restore points. You can have as many as you like (do one after each program install) as long as your computer is running fine when you make a restore point.

To make a restore point: ( Make sure Control Panel is in "Category View" not "Classic" go to Start - Control Panel - Performance and Maintenance and on the left side of the pane you'll see System Restore. Click on it and you'll see "Restore my Computer to an earlier time" or "Create a restore point" Pretty simple really.

Obviously this will only work in the first instance if your computer is running...just something worth considering.

You can also make an image/backup of your whole hard drive. (again do this when you know your computer is running smoothly preferably after a clean fresh install of all your programs . Norton Ghost or Drive Image to name a few will do this and are quite cheap to buy or unless you know some way of getting it cheaper. *cough cough*

So many ways of eradicating issues but you know nothing is foolproof , its just we have to make things easy for ourselves.

Anyway I'll leave it there before I digress and bore you too much with too many parameters and semantics.

Noodles

My latest Mac has SATA drives in it and I forgot that it is just has a master or slave
switch, but I just looked at the PDF for the drives and they are that way.

Sparky_MarkyUK

Right, just so you know what I did it went as follows:

I woke up this morning and first of all thought about *Fast forwards*

The car was handling well along the nice *Fast forwards*

Sorry, I'll stop clowing around now (in a good mood)

Ok, I ended up buying the following:

New Heatsink - £8 (funny, the guy working at that stand said £10 but the other guy charged me less)

New 120mm fan - £6 (old 80mm fan wasn't powerful enough)

That, was really all it needed

The extra stuff I had to get was compressed air can at £5, thermal paste at £1.50 and as the neon lights had failed I couldn't just get the power box so had to fork out a whole.... £8, for the power box and two crystal blue neons

So as I saved some money I got a 1GB Micro M2 memory card for my phone at £16 (the guy said it was £17 earlier but the lady charged me less )

All we had to do was install the new heat sink and rear fan (which is sucking air in so I'm getting two PCI extraction fans next week as they're £3.50 each) and fired it up, left it sitting in monitor mode in the BIOS and the temp was running between 45-50c with the heatsink fan at 3150rpm (the old one wasn't going higher then 2700rpm)

Exited out of the BIOS and it asked me if I wanted to load the last good Windows settings, said yeppers and Windows loaded up, done several restarts and am now running it fine.

Got some more software to install so will be busy for a while but should pop back later on

Thanks for your help guys