Joined
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86 Posts
Hi all,
I haven't posted in a long time since I havent had any major problems. Recently, however I have been experiencing a handfull of problems, which I hope are not too serious.
Short story: I bought a 500 GB SATA drive on accident. My brother recently gave me a 500 GB IDE drive, and we swapped. I have a 60 GB and a 500 GB right now, the 60 used to be my main but is now backup, and 500 is my main drive. I am running:
Windows XP SP2 Home Edition (haven't had the chance to upgrade to SP3)
HP Pavillion 753n desktop 2.53 gHz processor, 1 GB ram.
I have only made 4 changes to my desktop:
1) The new 500 GB hard drive.
2) I added an nVidia geForce 5600 256mb graphics card, but it is currently not installed after having the problems I am having. I am not sure how significant this is but my brother suggested I use Omega Drivers, they are just optimized versions of the nVidia drivers. My problems may or may not be related to these drivers, I'm not sure.
3) My brother gave me 2 sticks of ram, both 512 MB like I had before, except these are both of the same brand and speed, rather than 2 mixed brands like I had before.
4) Not sure if this is relevant, but when my brother and I installed the card, we went through the bios and decreased the onboard system memory from 8MB down to either 1MB or 512K, I'm not sure which. I do not know if this may have affected anything. When I uninstalled my card, I changed this setting back to where it was originally (8MB).
I am having the following issues on my computer, and this is VERY recent (within the past 2 weeks to be exact):
1) Problem: My computer does not load explorer.exe on boot up sometimes. I know this because the processor light goes off (no processor activity) and I see my background, but no desktop icons or taskbar. Restarting usually works, or manually running explorer.exe from the File --> Run menu of task manager. I've noticed that in Task manager, when this happens, the rest of the processes wont be assigned a User Name....like when it would normally say SYSTEM or (USERNAME) or NETWORK it does not, for any of the processes.
What I've tried to do to fix it: Since I recently installed that graphics card, and that's when I experienced these problems, I uninstalled the card and the drivers for it, and reinstalled the basic drivers (which is just an Intel 82845G Graphics Controller, 64.0 MB built-in chip. I have googled left and right and few people have problems like this but none of them have my exact circumstances.
2) Problem: My computer is randomly rebooting. I searched on Google for causes of this and one case was overheating, but I don't think that is the issue here. Through the BIOS it said my computer is running at 38 Celcius, and I think the last time I ran HDTune it said my HDD was running at 48 or so Celcius. I have 3 fans in my case right now (a CPU/heatsink fan, a system fan, and then a 3rd fan that plugs into one of the PCI slots, just to provide even MORE cooling). I don't think airflow is the issue, but just in case I have kept my case open the past few nights. I did not experience any random reboots yesterday but I just had one a few minutes ago, which is why I decided to post my problem.
What I've done to try and fix it: As stated above, I have my case open to allow optimal airflow. I have an extra fan in my case to cool it. I will eventually buy a hard drive cooling fan, and I cannot figure out any solution as to why it randomly reboots.
3)Problem: Just a minor thing...in HDTune I have run an analysis on my 500GB hard drive and the only "error" I receive is the Spin Retry Count is highlighted in yellow. I googled it and a few places said just to ignore it, but I want to double check this with the experts here. I haven't done anything to fix this, since I don't think anything can be done. This HDD is brand new, was never used before I was given it. It was a customer return from Seagate, but only to the extent that the user bought the wrong interface (much like I bought the wrong SATA drive, he/she bought the wrong IDE drive). I know it was never used because HDTune shows the number of hours the drive has been in function, and it was at only 1 or 2 when I first loaded the computer. That makes sense, because of the time it took to reinstall windows and load the drivers.
I apologize for my super-long post, but I think it's better to provide as many details as possible in the beginning than to have people spam up the thread asking questions later.
I hope to find a response to this, as I don't want to lose any data from these random reboots. I have already had to reinstall a few programs because they were corrupted while in use.
If any data need be further provided, please dont hesitate to ask.
PS: Just as a note, I want to say I have not gotten a SINGLE ERROR MESSAGE OF ANY SORTS. No blue screen of death, no pop ups, no errors, NOTHING. The reboots are just random, and they leave as quickly as they happen. Sometimes my desktop loads just fine, other times it hangs. I have looked in the event viewer but I do not know what to make of it. I am going to run a full antivirus/spyware scan, as well as scan with spybot search & destroy, and a Hijack this! log.
I haven't posted in a long time since I havent had any major problems. Recently, however I have been experiencing a handfull of problems, which I hope are not too serious.
Short story: I bought a 500 GB SATA drive on accident. My brother recently gave me a 500 GB IDE drive, and we swapped. I have a 60 GB and a 500 GB right now, the 60 used to be my main but is now backup, and 500 is my main drive. I am running:
Windows XP SP2 Home Edition (haven't had the chance to upgrade to SP3)
HP Pavillion 753n desktop 2.53 gHz processor, 1 GB ram.
I have only made 4 changes to my desktop:
1) The new 500 GB hard drive.
2) I added an nVidia geForce 5600 256mb graphics card, but it is currently not installed after having the problems I am having. I am not sure how significant this is but my brother suggested I use Omega Drivers, they are just optimized versions of the nVidia drivers. My problems may or may not be related to these drivers, I'm not sure.
3) My brother gave me 2 sticks of ram, both 512 MB like I had before, except these are both of the same brand and speed, rather than 2 mixed brands like I had before.
4) Not sure if this is relevant, but when my brother and I installed the card, we went through the bios and decreased the onboard system memory from 8MB down to either 1MB or 512K, I'm not sure which. I do not know if this may have affected anything. When I uninstalled my card, I changed this setting back to where it was originally (8MB).
I am having the following issues on my computer, and this is VERY recent (within the past 2 weeks to be exact):
1) Problem: My computer does not load explorer.exe on boot up sometimes. I know this because the processor light goes off (no processor activity) and I see my background, but no desktop icons or taskbar. Restarting usually works, or manually running explorer.exe from the File --> Run menu of task manager. I've noticed that in Task manager, when this happens, the rest of the processes wont be assigned a User Name....like when it would normally say SYSTEM or (USERNAME) or NETWORK it does not, for any of the processes.
What I've tried to do to fix it: Since I recently installed that graphics card, and that's when I experienced these problems, I uninstalled the card and the drivers for it, and reinstalled the basic drivers (which is just an Intel 82845G Graphics Controller, 64.0 MB built-in chip. I have googled left and right and few people have problems like this but none of them have my exact circumstances.
2) Problem: My computer is randomly rebooting. I searched on Google for causes of this and one case was overheating, but I don't think that is the issue here. Through the BIOS it said my computer is running at 38 Celcius, and I think the last time I ran HDTune it said my HDD was running at 48 or so Celcius. I have 3 fans in my case right now (a CPU/heatsink fan, a system fan, and then a 3rd fan that plugs into one of the PCI slots, just to provide even MORE cooling). I don't think airflow is the issue, but just in case I have kept my case open the past few nights. I did not experience any random reboots yesterday but I just had one a few minutes ago, which is why I decided to post my problem.
What I've done to try and fix it: As stated above, I have my case open to allow optimal airflow. I have an extra fan in my case to cool it. I will eventually buy a hard drive cooling fan, and I cannot figure out any solution as to why it randomly reboots.
3)Problem: Just a minor thing...in HDTune I have run an analysis on my 500GB hard drive and the only "error" I receive is the Spin Retry Count is highlighted in yellow. I googled it and a few places said just to ignore it, but I want to double check this with the experts here. I haven't done anything to fix this, since I don't think anything can be done. This HDD is brand new, was never used before I was given it. It was a customer return from Seagate, but only to the extent that the user bought the wrong interface (much like I bought the wrong SATA drive, he/she bought the wrong IDE drive). I know it was never used because HDTune shows the number of hours the drive has been in function, and it was at only 1 or 2 when I first loaded the computer. That makes sense, because of the time it took to reinstall windows and load the drivers.
I apologize for my super-long post, but I think it's better to provide as many details as possible in the beginning than to have people spam up the thread asking questions later.
I hope to find a response to this, as I don't want to lose any data from these random reboots. I have already had to reinstall a few programs because they were corrupted while in use.
If any data need be further provided, please dont hesitate to ask.
PS: Just as a note, I want to say I have not gotten a SINGLE ERROR MESSAGE OF ANY SORTS. No blue screen of death, no pop ups, no errors, NOTHING. The reboots are just random, and they leave as quickly as they happen. Sometimes my desktop loads just fine, other times it hangs. I have looked in the event viewer but I do not know what to make of it. I am going to run a full antivirus/spyware scan, as well as scan with spybot search & destroy, and a Hijack this! log.
