Crashed, no bios, after opening new editor.

[JuliaSet]

I was so happy to see the new editor as part of the patch. I opened a scenario in it, poked buttons, did not save, returned to menu and then selected "create" and the editor slowly opened.

That was, for just a moment, because I then crashed and autorebooted with the message that there was no bios. I unplugged, let the computer stop making noises, reinserted the plug and the computer now always gives me the message in dos.

"reboot and slect propper boot device or insert media in slected boot device and press a key."

It looks like my computer died. Any suggestions guys.
I have never had problems with Caesar4 running on that machine. Its a athlon 3200, ati 9800-256, and a G of ram.

The drive is new, so I'm stumpped on what to do.
Julia

::edit:: I am using the old computer now.

[MarkDuffy]

Yikes!

So sorry, JuliaSet. :(

[Mike Gingerich]

Sorry to hear :(

The drive is new

How new? A hard drive failure could explain the symptoms you describe (or if one of the cables to it worked its way loose). I assume you've also checked that there's nothing in your CD/DVD/floppy drives.

[JuliaSet]

Thanks for the reply Mike and Mouse(PM).

The guys in the shop inspected the new drive (found it running properly) and got the rig to boot.

The Tech had to do something to make the drive seen for booting, and it came up nicely, but slowly as usual. Then he showed me how to get in to myComputer/Manage/Event Viewer/System and we saw that there were events listed for every time I boot up.

Some of them were about sensing the drive to start on (partitioned) and others were ati messages.

All in all we are rather stumped, even went through the startup list and got rid of a lot of that, still getting some errors. The next step was to get the new ATI driver from Jan 10th?? and I don't have an ati control panel yet. grr.

====
Some messages still around are :
0000000004: 2007-01-26 15:56:26:671 client Shell failed to initialize
Error Called by: ATI.ACE.CLI.Implementation.CLI::Main processID:00568 threadIDCLIRuntime ) domainNameCLI.EXE ) assemblyNameCLI.Implementation, Version=1.2.2460.36578, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=90ba9c70f846762e)

========
Event Type: Error
Event Source: W2gtcc
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1
Date: 1/26/2007
Time: 11:20:02 AM
User: N/A
Computer: A3200
Description:
The description for Event ID ( 1 ) in Source ( W2gtcc ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: .
=====
It is still doing this
Event Type: Error
Event Source: Disk
Event Category: None
Event ID: 15
Date: 1/26/2007
Time: 4:06:45 PM
User: N/A
Computer: A3200
Description:
The device, \Device\Harddisk1\D, is not ready for access yet. (I boot from D:)

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
======
After a few jokes, and knowing that testing season will be arriving sometime later in the year, I was encouraged to order a new computer which will be ready next week.
Intel P4,Dual Core 3.4 Ghz Processor, 512 PC4200 DDR-II 533mhz with maybe ATI X550-256 and a gig of ram. might beat this old one as its an athlon 3200 with ati 9800-256
==
I'll be ready to play or test anything that comes my way. I got a nice price on the new one, cause I have sold other computers to walk in customers in their shop. $500 is not bad. They never have failed to get me going and are ready to fit me in while I wait. A happy customer in the shop is always good news! Meanwhile, I'm living with this poor old dobbin till the new toy is ready.

Since all of this excitement crept up opening the editor, its my guess that its rather resource intensive and just broke the back of this lagging machine. I want at that editor for CBC's custom maps! Hopefully we will have our first C4 contest this season when several other events are over.

If anyone has any ideas for me to adjust this rig, I'd really appreciate it a lot.
Thanks,
JuliaSet
==
PS: The drive was replaced Dec 18th 2006, (Flaky booting again)

[Blizzardicus]

Do you know if the techs reset the BIOS? I would try BIOS defaults with only the devices you know you won't be using disabled (integrated video, snd, etc). And out of curiousity, why booting from D? Dual-boot? Is your D drive a separate drive or is it a partition on the first drive? Also, there are viruii that can and will destroy the BIOS, or at least render it ineffective. Maybe a BIOS update could be had. Does your motherboard support Dual-BIOS? A lot of the post Athlon M/Bs have that capability just due to the fact some fart figured out how to corrupt the BIOS.:mad:

You could also run msinfo32 from the run box. Then click on Software Environment, then click Loaded Modules. After a couple of seconds a list of files is listed in the right pane. Scroll through that and see if there are any modules that do NOT have a Manufacturer listed. If so, boot into safe mode and physically deleted those files, or at least move them out of whatever directory they are in (Windows\system32 is where must crap get stored). If the Manufacturer doesn't display their company name here, it's more than likely spyware, malware, trojan, or some other anamoly that probably shouldn't be there. IF you do find something, also search the registry for the file name and delete the key, or export it in case it is needed and can be restored. As don't forget in Safe mode, caching is not enabled so everything will take a little longer to do.

You could also try the Microshaft utility bootvis. It monitors your startup from boot 'til Windows is fully loaded, then allows you to look at a file it creates to see where the lags are during bootup. It can be had here (http://www.soft32.com/Download/Free/BootVis/4-19687-1.html) or do a search for it in your favorite search engine. I use Metacrawler as it queries several other search sites.

[The Tech had to do something to make the drive seen for booting] Would be nice to know what the something was!

Oh! [PS: The drive was replaced Dec 18th 2006, (Flaky booting again)]. Two drives with flaky booting! Could be a faulty data cable or the onboard controller. If that's the case, another M/B is the answer.

[JuliaSet]

Hello and thanks!

That's quite a lot of stuff to check up. My computer is a dual boot. The last time I crashed, I got my files off by going to C and picking vital infos off.

My first fixit today is to uninstall the ATI driver. Something is not working properly cause I cant get the control panel to boot up. I used to have that working well. At the ATI catalyst page it showed the proper UNINSTALL and im not sure the tech went in and removed the last files.

The new computer is due by tuesday, so then I can risk playing with this one extensively.

Sorry I should have put this thread in tech help... but the opening of the editor triggered the events. :)

[JuliaSet]

Grr.. It repeated the problem so there is something definetly wrong with the rig. The computer has lost its bios again. I am so glad a new one is expected shortly. This is also a lesson about keeping ones old computer around cause I have a way to report in.

Jeremy, its not part of the editor, it is my rig. Could you please move my thread to the tech forum?

I'm going to point out this thread when I take the old computer in tomorrow.
(maybe they have the new processor in and I will return home with two computers.)

More notes about the failure of the computer.

Yesterday I got the new ATI driver, carefully uninstalled all ati on the computer, even the registry, as the uninstall didn't get it all. When the driver was properly installed, I cleaned up my busy desk top. Put the Graphics programes in a desktop folder. Saw all of the icons with their program images.

Later in the day I needed a certain graphics program, one on my storage drive. When the shortcut was seen, there was no icon for the link. When I clicked it, it said no file associated with it. After opening my computer, the storage drive had dissapeared from the list.

Later in the evening, while playing a game, I locked up and used control alt delete and generated a "dump" file.

I reopened my game and save, played a while, then retired. Next morning there was the dos message looking for a drive.

Any tips on this? Maybe the problem can be tracked down eventually!!

[Pat D.]

Well, I've been replaying C4 for a couple weeks and just friday, with the new patch installed, I, too had my entire Windows XP OS freeze and die...had to rebuild my entire Alienware lappy...took a while...it seemed to have something with a file corruption in my boot sector leading up to Windows fully engaging...

odd! Hope it's not a problem w/ C4 because I have no intention of stopping playing until EU3 is in my hands!

pat!

[wodinoneeye]

A bad/faulty battery can cause the BIOS to lose lose its data.