Posts by Chaky

The wattage you see declared is the power output, so buying $50 PSU or $150 PSU that gives 500W of power shouldn't make any difference with the PC in a short run. In a long run, you can expect that the cheap one won't last as long as the pricier one, for the difference of materials used. Price difference can also be because of over-voltage protection and such extras that are not free.

If I understand it.... You want to install OS without CD... Only one way, if you have Windows Server 2003 (or any OS with RIS service) on another machine and hook them up in network. You would also need RIS (Remote Installation Service) running and configured. Then, if you have the option of booting via LAN (Intel boot agent, PXE ROM, Remote Boot disk) in your BIOS, you should set it up so it boots using LAN.

That is the general info. I don't have details, for I never installed OS that way.

Cumulonimbus... it makes tornados

Ferrari or Lamborghini?

*Wroom-wroooom*

I think that 12V and 5V should not be higher than declared on the PSU. If they were, it would represent a danger for the peripherals. I've heard that the measuring volts by BIOS is very inaccurate. I have ASUS mobo and my ASUS PC Probe reports, and sometime alerts of 12V going too low (-10%), but after I press the sleep button, and awake it just after everything stops spinning, 12V line comes back to "normal" 11.9V. If I repeat the sleep-awake cycle, it drops below 11V and alert goes off again. Like a clock-work. No changes with the drives that are powered with molex..
I doubt that the readings are accurate at all.

BTW, in a electronics world, if you measure the voltage, than the voltmeter closes the circuit and, therefor, it measures the volts for almost-no-load-at-all state.

Pitched roof.

Flat roof=pool wannabe

River or sea?

I think, that if you ask a shark "Booty or brain?", the answer would be "Yes."

Don't worry, nobody messes with a shark.

Hmm... Booty is a limb of some sort.... still hanging on the topic.

He he, "booty or brains" have a different sound to it now.

I can smell a 1000 it's close... real close now

... and you become the SHAAAAAARK! Thassit. No parties, no presents, no public speaches, no nothing. Not even ppl screaming when they see you swim. That Jaws movie is a hoaks! Hoaks, I tellya!

The battery needs to be replaced. It is 6 years old and it is a miracle that it served you this long. Batteries can not be recharged indefinitely. They have life-span well under 6 years.

Unless, you mean that it flashes WHILE the adapter is plugged in...That would mean that you have faulty adapter/jack/charging circuitry.

If you mean that the AMD is power-hungry CPU, I doubt that it makes significant difference on the whole PC consumption.
350W should be enough to run the machine you described, but USB devices (if not powered from outside source) can be quite a load on PSU.
Some older VGAs are real loads (ex. NVIDIA 6600), while newer ones (ex. NVIDIA 7800) have such technology that is not so power-demanding. I suppose that you have on-board VGA.

Anyway, PSU is the cheapest part of bare-bone PC..$50 tops. Maybe more, but not much more.

I don't think it needs a speaker to make the beep on post but it does sound like a power problem do you have a spare psu to test it with?

Speaker MAKES the beep sound. Some motherboards have on-board speaker. Looks like a big capacitor with a hole. The speaker connection is usually in the same row of pins where the connections are for the HD led, power button, power led and so on. Posting the model of motherboard would help.

Dead new PSU is possible. Also is possible that the motherboard fried it. To test the PSU you would need another machine with a same power conn. standard.

If it is stripped down to CPU PSU motherboard and 1 stick of RAM, you can go further. You can remove the CPU to see if there is ANY change in behavior. If not, that would be indicator that either CPU isn't getting power (ignore CPU fan... different source) or it is fried, but nothing is certain there. All speculations. Only way to be certain is to test it with known-to-be-good CPU.

Mangoes for me.... Bananas are for chimps

Chimps or gorillas?

Looks to me like a problem with HD. Either it is dying or there is a bad cable connection. I suggest that you check on your drive's cable and plug out - plug in the cable.

If the errors reappeared after that, do this:
Boot with setup CD and choose repair console (I think that's how it is called with 2k... XP calls it recovery console) type in admin password and type

chkdsk c /r

It will scan for errors + look for bad sectors, which you probably developed. This might take hours to complete, depending on the HD size and amount of bad sectors.

If you are still getting freak errors, then your attention should shift from HD to RAM.

Reseating is a first step there.
Second step is (if possible) running with 1 stick at a time, to figure out the faulty one.
Third step is replacing it...

Hope it helps.

i'm a hot woman

You got flu?

Half-boiled, hehe

Ham or cheese?

And you won't see anything on the screen until the BIOS is flashed and laptop rebooted. It will be done automatically.

That was outside the discussion here... Just a thought. Nevermind.

You should get in BIOS and see what wakes it up.... It might be that nothing can wake it up.... I wake my machine up with power button.

Adding .rar, .uha and .7z extension to the list would be a good idea. They are much more powerful archives than zip.

Please explain:
Did it work before or you received it this way?
Is RMA possible? Did you try reseating RAM chips?

Does the HD spin up? If not, and if it is IDE, it is possible that it is faulty or the 40-pin cable is plugged upside-down on one side.

You should strip off all except CPU PSU and VGA. No memory, no drives, no PCI cards...
That is the only way to know if the motherboard, CPU, PSU and VGA are working. If it gives you no signal, then it is one of those 4. It can be either one of them.
It would be great if you could test it with another VGA, PSU and CPU to rule those out. Also, getting beeper would help diagnose the problem too. It could give you beep code of the faulty part.
If this machine you recently purchased and it was not turned on for long time, you should clear CMOS. There is a jumper and the instructions in your manual for that.

Hmm... there must be a solution for the floppy booting for flashing the BIOS, otherwise the manufacturer wouldn't offer such flashing utility. I guess you would need external floppy drive. PCMCIA or USB.

Anyway, to explain the situation, BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) is program stored in a EPROM chip that has primary function to connect motherboard with peripherals (VGA, Floppy, PCI cards, IDE controller, ISA - old school cards). It is designed in such way that Floppy and ISA cards are universal, and that is stored in the first portion of BIOS. Every desktop and laptop has the same first portion. Goal is to make the system somewhat bootable for re-flash in case of bad flash. Having BIOS password removed is very similar procedure. Your BIOS was flashed, but only a small portion of it (apparently wrong portion) that stores the password setting and/or password itself. Your BIOS is apparently corrupted beyond normal boot, so flashing bios via floppy is the only option that doesn't include technicians that charge $$$ for services. I suggest that you get hold of a floppy drive and try flashing the BIOS that I posted.

Most of the BIOS chips are replaceable, and can be ordered online. You will have to contact either AWARD or the laptop manufacturer for the chip replacement. I remember the price of $20 for the chip, but you will have to check that yourself.

correction...

If that fails, get back to the recovery console and try these, but one at the time, and exit (normal reboot) after each one:

Try booting into recovery console.
It is done by booting from windows setup CD.
It will eventually give you an option for recovery console.
You will be prompted for administrator password. Giving that it can not read the HD, there will be none. (just hit enter)
in the command prompt type

chkdsk c /p

If you suspect bad sectors, then use /r switch, instead /p
After it is done, type EXIT and it will reboot. Remove the CD, so it would boot normal way.

If that fails, get back to the recovery console these, but one at the time, and exit (normal reboot) after each one:

fixboot c:

giving that you have one HD and C partition is the primary.

map

you will be listed with installed HD's and partitions.

then type:

fixmbr <-- followed by the HD in question from the "MAP" listing

example:
fixmbr \Device\HardDisk0

That might help.
If all that fails try removing the partition altogether via setup process and making new one. That would mean loosing ALL data.

With laptops - no. There are only two ways to fix it. Replace the motherboard or get new laptop. New laptop is much better and much more cost-effective solution.

I can not rule out faulty RAM, though. It is one of few replaceable parts. You should first try to reseat the RAM. If you have more than one stick, my advice would be to also try running with one at the time, to see if one of them is faulty. Hope this helps.

Looks like a dog.

I suppose that the VGA is on-board, so you can't remove it. Only way to tell if it is CPU, PSU or motherboard is to have another one in working condition for the test.

Edit:
Did you remove the RAM also?

If it has a beeper, it should give you beeps when you try to boot with no VGA plugged in. Usually 7 shorts and 1 long beep, but depends on the BIOS. That way you would know that either the VGA is faulty (99%) or incompatible (1%) with the mobo/BIOS.

You'll need to write down the stop error you see in that BSOD. name, numbers, filename... anything you see specific to that error.

Edit:
(doh!) ...and post it here.

It is apparently VGA-related issue. If it was display issue, it wouldn't freeze. It would keep running with those lines on.
No quick fixes there, I'm afraid. You bought faulty laptop.
For the external monitor use, if it doesn't have any signal on the monitor jack, then you would have to boot into OS and configure your VGA to use clone display, or set the external monitor as the primary display. I recommend the later if it is CRT monitor. First option would give you 60 Hz display, and 60 Hz is a very unpleasant thing to look at on CRT.

You'll need to flash your BIOS. Here is the self-extracting zip archive that contains both windows-based and floppy-based flashing utility and newest BIOS. You need to make a floppy, insert it in your laptop and boot. It will flash your bios and reboot back to normal.

You probably got the software that came with the modem. There must be configuration utility that prompts you for your user name and password. Try running that utility. I had the same problem last week. All of the drivers and hardware worked perfectly, but my modem somehow "forgot" the user name and password. I was about to reinstall the OS altogether, but I ran that utility and here I am. I have 2 PCs connected to that modem. One running XP and one running W98. Both were cut from the net. Once I ran the utility both came trough.

Hijack this will not help. You need to go through that procedure of manual removal of Vundo because there is something left in Connie's registry that is preventing you from changing the wallpaper. No one but makers of Vando can know exactly where of what it is. Your only chance is to follow the procedure, or get some PC expert to do that.

That is called damage control. "Damage" as the $$$ they would lose.
They compare the costs of total recall of the product versus the lawsuits that they would lose. If lawsuits tip the scale, they give in, admit it is junk, and replace with other junk. Otherwise, if you are not gonna get killed or lose a limb, you're on your own.
Only recall that I recall (he he) is with inflammable HP batteries.

Other companies deal with it by making better stuff.

... grrrr ...

Can't make the fix. The guy that posted the procedure for manual removal, failed to put the backslashes between the registry keys and subkeys... impossible to guess from MACHINESOFTWAREClassesATLEvents.ATLEventsCLSID is it MACHINESOFTWARE\Classes\ATLEvents.ATL\Events\CLSID
or MACHINESOFTWARE\Classes\ATL\Events.ATL\EventsCLSID without being at Connie myself.

You will have to see your registry yourself. The whole procedure, minus \'s is there.

Point of all this is to find a leftover from that trojan that is keeping you from changing the wallpaper. Just go step by step as shown, and skip missing parts until you find something that kaspersky left behind.

It is obvious that kaspersky didn't remove all of the damage from Vundo. Your desktop being locked is part of that damage... there is a manual way to fix this.

Hold on... I'm making the fix.

Maybe this will help.

That is vital info... Any chance you rmember which virus it was?

Came clean....

Try this:

In Start/Run type

GPUPDATE

Then, again in Start/Run type

GPEDIT.MSC

Group Policy window should come up now.

Under "User Configuration" locate this branch
"Administrative Templates/Control Panel/Display"

There is "Prevent changing wallpaper" setting that should be "Not configured". If it is "Enabled" then it is preventing you from changing wallpaper.

Hmmm... That is, if you are using XP Proffesional... Home edition has no Group Policy.

You can either attach the file here (go advanced, manage attachments) or open that text file, press ctrl+a (select all) and copy-paste it here

Some ribbons have plastic pins that are keeping it in place. You can pull those pins back to disconnect the ribbon. That would be proper way to reseat it. Don't try to push the ribbon back in without releasing pins first. You can only do more damage. Those wires are VERY thin.

Maybe you haven't properly plugged the working PSU in recently working PC back?
Also, the power connector solders could've got cracked while plugging in and out. Not uncommon. Check them from the other side of the motherboard. You might need magnifying glass.
And, unless you know the nominal volt values, there is no use of measuring the voltage output, unless you have some really high volts running through. Thing is, voltages are so low that conventional voltmeters wouldn't show them correctly at all. They might seem accurate, with all those decimal values, but the reality is they are very inaccurate. You would need pro equipment to get clear readings.

smog

Disregard the Background Intelligent Transfer Service part of this thread. It has nothing to do with your problem. Did the fix I posted here work?

It might be BIOS setting, set to work with original HD (one that used to be attached to the mobo). Try changing the setting to "automatic" or "auto-detect" for each IDE channel (usually, done by loading default BIOS settings), or use the HD detection utility in BIOS if available.
If you load default settings, expect that all accelerating features regarding HD and data transfer to be disabled. You might want to enable them.

Ribbons usualy can be reseated at both ends. Maybe dropping it shook one end a bit loose. Try reseating.

One of thiese components could be the cause:

- PSU - no way to tell unless you have spare one to test

- Motherboard - same as above

- CPU - same as above

- Memory - running on one stick at the time to see which one is faulty. Removing all would invoke booting with video feedback, but with POST error + beeping

- VGA - unless it is on-board, removing it would invoke POST error in a way of beeping. Also reseating it can resolve the problem.

some car companies in the use, Jeep, Chrysler, etc, are offering lifetime warranties, I mean, how crappy are their cars?

..and, yet, they all played dumb when ppl started to get killed in rolling SUVs.

;-)

Wrestling + hugs = cracked bones

I hope you have strong bones JB...