Serious computer issues

[imhotep3147]

Ok, I'm posting this in OT because I don't want to clog up the CotN tech forum with questions wholly unrelated to the game.

Here goes, my best recollection of the serious of events leading up to this post:

Computer works fine but a number of things made me decide to upgrade various components. I upgraded my RAM from 2x256 to 1x1gig. Had no trouble with computer. Decided that since I came into a small bit of money I'd go the full monty with a new video card and power supply. Upgraded from a radeon x300 128mb w/ 350watt Dell generic psu, to a radeon x1600 512mb w/ an Antec NEO HE 550watt psu. Installation went fine as far as I know but I do have a couple of issues.

1. When I first boot up the computer my monitor gets a few blacks lines and shapes associated with flickering. This disappears after about 10-20 seconds and doesn't reappear until next bootup...I'm attributing this to the card not being "warmed up" yet?

2. Three times now I've gotten the BSOD...with three different stop errors. After googling and searching microsoft's support site I don't get anything useful as none of the explanations seem to apply to my computer or what was being done at the time.....a little confused about this.

3. The game Black & White 2....somehow I think this may be the crux of my problems. I installed it two days before upgrading my video card. It worked fine (I have my reservations about the quality and playability of the game, but that's personal preferences not tech related.). I patched the game (now this is after upgrading) hoping it would fixs some of the gameplay issues. I played the game fine immediately after patching. Computer has been running fine and I decided to give the game another shot today. I put in the disk and it gives me a fatal error. Went to lionhead's site and followed their instructions for solving my problem...eventually resorting to uninstalling. I go to reinstall and when it asks for the 2nd disk, I put the proper disk in (no scratches, dirt, etc.) it tells me a file is corrupted. What the??

4. After the 2nd & 3rd BSOD when I had to power down and restart, my tower emitted what I can only describe as a high pitched feedback sound. I thought it might have been the harddrive but I've never heard of a HD making that type of sound....metallic screeching yes, feedback no.

Any one out there have any insights??

[imhotep3147]

Yes I did install both the card and psu by myself. But I had our IT guy at work right there on the side of me so I know it got installed properly (that and the fact that for the most part, everything works). After the second BSOD I cracked open the case and blew out all the dust, and made sure all the connections and cards were firmly seated and in their proper places. I also confirmed at that time that my video card fan, case fan, and psu fan were all working properly. I have to admit I'm a bit stumped. I've run several online diagnostic tools all to no avail. I'll give you all a crack at the dxdiag though before I call it quits for the night.

1st dxdiag is just after the memory upgrade, the 2nd is my specs as it stands right now after all upgrading.

[Keith]

Two things you can do online that might help:

Microsoft On-Line Crash Analysis (http://oca.microsoft.com/en/welcome.aspx)

Microsoft On-Line Safety Center (http://safety.live.com/site/en-US/default.htm?s_cid=sah)

[MarkDuffy]

Any one out there have any insights??

Take it to the hospital in a basket.

I'm not kidding.

Good luck, Imhotep! :)

[Keith]

Did you get your new power supply from Dell? If not that could be the problem. I'm told that Dell wires their power plugs different than the standard and even though the plug fits standard hardware the pinout is different. If you are connected to any Dell hardware the new non-Dell power supply might be the problem.

[wodinoneeye]

Did you get your new power supply from Dell? If not that could be the problem. I'm told that Dell wires their power plugs different than the standard and even though the plug fits standard hardware the pinout is different. If you are connected to any Dell hardware the new non-Dell power supply might be the problem.


Dell does that ??? That sounds incredibly stupid (no real reason to wire 'differently'....)

[Keith]

Dell does that ??? That sounds incredibly stupid (no real reason to wire 'differently'....)

That's what somone told me that supposedly knows.

[imhotep3147]

@wodinoneeye: Yes, Dell does, or rather...did do that. However, I have the dimension 8400 which I confirmed with dell does not have the psu issue that Keith mentioned.

I'm beginning to think that it is indeed my HD in the early stages of kaput-dom
It has now moved on to making very faint clicking noises and my computer is beyond sluggish. Like 3 minutes to start up and another 2 to open IE alone. That sucks! By the time it's all said and done I really will have a whole new computer in an old case. :eek: I will look into a new HD asap. Anyone have a clue how to easily change that? I understand how to literally plug it in, but data migration is a whole other story......can I hook up the two and copy everything or what?

EDIT: Oh yeah, and B&W2 is going back to the fiery pits of hell (best buy) from whence it came. :D

[Keith]

Start dumping your hard drive to other media like RW DVDs or other devices you may have. When I moved from my old P2/450 to my present system I emailed myself a lot of zip files and put a lot of things on Iomega ZipDisks. I then downloaded them all from email and off my parallel port ZipDrive on to my system.

Either that or get yourself a external USB HD and dump to that. I think I just saw a USB 2.0 external Seagate 300GB HD (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=2205174&sku=TC3T-1010) for $90 on TigerDirect.com today.

Did you try running that Microsoft Online Safety Center system scan I mentioned above?

[imhotep3147]

Well, I just spent 3 hours running the scan and my computer decided to stop responding at the results page, all I got out of it was that I had like 5 minor pieces of spyware that I always have when I do a spy/ad scan. It didn't seem to pinpoint anything else that would cause me major problems. I think I'm just going to let someone a little more technical (read: pay someone) to have a look under the hood so to speak. One thing's for sure, something is definantly wrong. Figures that everything would start to go just 3 months after the warranty's up. :(

[wodinoneeye]

That being the case, that does leave three possibilities for the high-pitched squeal as that sounds like either something going to ground that shouldn't, or an open ground. That and the scenario of a gone/going bad fan. Being as she had someone there, the install is probably eliminated, so that leaves the plug confiruration OR the fan as I had said. The fan could also be attributed to the brief gaphic problems if the card is overheating. If it gets worse, worth looking into.

Sincerely,
Phil



Fan Bearing going and bad airflow leading to overheating. leading to flakyness -- exacerbated by Graphics card that can put out more heat than the CPU when its run heavily (like when playing a 3D game).

[imhotep3147]

I've been running the computer with the case open for a few hours now and I'm pretty confident in saying it's not a fan issue, case fan, psu fan, and video card fan are all spinning in good order--and rather quietly I might add. I downloaded a free harddrive monitor utility and it's saying that my hardrive is fine and it's got a handy little temp gauge that'll yell at me if I start to overheat.

At the same time I have to wonder what the hellingirly brown could possibly be wrong because the harddrive has actually behaving itself, not causing any BSODs or making any real noise at all. I think I may just back up necessary data on a 1gig usb drive I have laying around and burn my pictures and music onto a couple of dvds and hope that the damn thing doesn't blow up. If it should fail, at least I'll have my personal data and I can always reinstall...every...last...game...I...own. (eeggh.) I kept the XP reinstallation cd that came with the computer and I still have my Home to Pro upgrade cd as well.

Sigh....the battle continues. :rolleyes:
New optical drive: $39
New RAM stick: $120
New power supply: $150
New kick@$$ video card: $260
Having the harddrive melt before I can migrate data.....AAACKKKKGGHH!

[MarkDuffy]

Take it to the hospital. Tell the doctor to copy your drive & save your files if he has to.

:)

[imhotep3147]

:o Ehehe...discovered one of my problems today. When I installed the power supply I had to do a bit of "adjusting" to the back of the case. (Stupid Dell, they gave up polarizing the psu plug oddly but still doesn't make the case any more friendly). I hacked off the grid that was covering the original psu fan and continued the hole across to the other side, leaving only my screw holes. Apparently there was a liiiittttllle ittttyyy bitttttyyy tiiiinnnyyy sliver of metal (or two or five) that were still clinging for dear life onto the back and they were just long enough to where, when I have the case closed, they grind up against the new psu fan. (And by grind I mean microscopically touch) With the case open these past few days I wasn't hearing it. After round 2 with the tin snips my noise issue is gone. But the new card is making my hd run a bit hot still (highest it's gotten so far is 42C but that seems a bit excessive for surfing the net). I ordered a new hd from mwave.com (anyone heard of them?) but I don't know if I'll stick it as a secondary or just replace the Dell p.o.s. Either way, now all I have to do is replace the processor and mobo and I *WILL* have a whole new computer in a Dell 8400 case. :rolleyes:

[MarkDuffy]

So that's good, no?

Yeah, anyway! :)

[Keith]

What's the one Dell supplied you with? They use brand name stuff. Mine's a Western Digital.

If your original is not giving you a problem, I'd leave it alone and use the other as a secondary.

[imhotep3147]

Yeah it's a western digital. I just want to make sure I don't lose anything important if it goes. I can actually transfer all my files to the secondary drive and just leave the OS on the original can't I?

[Keith]

Yeah it's a western digital. I just want to make sure I don't lose anything important if it goes. I can actually transfer all my files to the secondary drive and just leave the OS on the original can't I?

Yes, you could do that. Or if you have a DVD burner burn the backup on to a RW rewritable DVD disc(s). How many you might need will depend on how much stuf you want to backup on your system, of course.

I would trust anything to a hard drive for long-term storage, even if the drive is new. I try to move things off my hard drive onto CD and DVDs for storage when I can.

[imhotep3147]

The amount of stuff I absolutely don't want to lose is running about 12 gigs. That music, videos, pictures, documents, and other downloaded content for games and such. That's quite a few dvds. On the other hand, I'm about to get an Ipod...so that takes care of the music, the pictures, videos, and documents I can burn on considerably fewer dvds, and the other content I can stick on the usb drive...that stuff shouldn't exceed 1 gig. Hmm....much thinking to do now.

[Keith]

I moved 20GB of MP3s and other filesfiles via 100MB Iomega Zip Disks from my old system over to this one. That took roughly around 200 zip disks.That 12GB is about 3 maybe 4 DVDs. I then burned all the MP3s to CD-Rs from this system for permanent storage and backup. I still have all those zip disks that fully loaded too.

Well, whatever you do, don't trust to luck that your second hard drive will be safe for things you really want to keep.

[imhotep3147]

I'm not. I am going to grab some more blank dvds and start burning when I get back. The digital pictures I have stored on my computer are my main concern, those are the things that I can't replace. The music I do have burned elsewhere so that can hold off another month or so until I get an Ipod. And my actual documents and stuff I just finished loading onto the 1G usb drive. Actually, I may just grab another one of those, only 29$ at office depot (after 10$ rebate....). They don't take up as much space as dvds.

[JuliaSet]

Do you have the most recent driver? DO they support the card you bought? What does the mfg have to say about this? I had wonderful support from ATI when I changed cards to the 256 unit.

[JuliaSet]

And I have ghosted my drives to six DVDs.

Believe me, thats a whole lotta stuff!