Computer Refuses to Freakin' WORK

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I don’t refer to myself as a computer person. I’ll say that to start with.

I mean, okay. I can install programs. I can use the programs. But my knowledge and ability with computers is limited by a need for the computer–the hardware and the OS–to actually freaking work. To this end, I purchased a new computer about five months ago. I didn’t want to have to deal with the whole piecemeal thing anymore, and I wanted something that’d run Second Life.

I’m really fucking careful with my computers. I don’t install shit like BitTorrent or whatever. I don’t change my settings. I don’t decide to try to overclock my processor or install anything even remotely suspect (as in, I have Second Life, Firefox, Pidgin, Google Talk, Skype, iTunes, Amazon Unbox and Paint Shop Pro installed). I don’t change out the parts. I don’t hook weird shit up. I use a surge protector.

So, needless to say, when my computer decides to not fucking WORK for no fucking REASON, it really pisses me off.

It won’t load Windows. Tried the system recovery using the section already installed on the hard drive. It failed spectacularly. Well, okay; the computer didn’t go up in blue flames or anything. It just didn’t work at all. My system recovery discs–burned the first week I had the computer–seem to have been forcibly resettled by the cleaning lady (who is really nice, but who rearranges all of the crap on my desk no matter how many times I ask her not to).

So, new recovery discs are in the mail, overnight. I should get 'em tomorrow. I am scared to SHIT that they won’t work.

Is there anything else it could be? It does the Windows Vista load-y thing (where it has the crawling green status bar with no logo), and then just sort of hangs up on a black screen after. If I hit F11, it goes into system recovery. If I try to go into Safe Mode, it hangs up at (I believe) casdisk.sys, or something similar (the HP tech guy didn’t seem to thing that was important).

I don’t care about my files, being somewhat obsessive about backing most of them up. But. . .if the recovery disks don’t work, what else can I try before having to rely on the warranty people (who I’m guessing don’t provide loaner computers while they work)?

Also, what the fuck IS it about this shit that leaves me crying frustrated. I swear, I can handle medical/family emergencies while calm and detached, but screw with my computer and I’m frustrated to tears inside of 20 minutes…

2

I can tell you why this happens, but I don’t think that’s really the question you’re asking. If it is; the computer is something that’s integral to your life, and your sense of well-being. (Same as it is in mine). When it falls apart, not only does that well-being go away, but you feel helpless because no matter what you do, you can’t seem to make the darn thing work. The frustration compounds on itself because, like me, you likely turn to the internet for problem solves, which you now can’t do. :frowning:

(PS- Angel, for whatever reason I think I’ve lost your email addy… The one on your profile seems not to be working.)

3

Crap, I’m at work, and I can’t remember yours off the top of my head. My new one is darkassin at gmail dot com.

4

Oops. Understandable but not a good first move. Windows may now be thoroughly borked. In future, press F8 when Windows is booting (right at tthe start) and you’ll get to the Windows recovery console where you should choose Last Known Good. I hope your data was backed up. If not, you’re going to have to tread very carefully.

When you get your new disks, find the one with Vista on it and boot that. It should detect that you’ve already got Vista installed and offer you a number of choices. You’ll want to choose an over-the-top or upgrade install if offered. You don’t want one which formats the drive.

I’m sure Drachillix will be around shortly: he’s vastly more experienced in the home sector.

5

Are you Joe Garvin? :smiley:

6

If you reliably get to the point that Windows starts loading, then that rules out a whoel host of things, like bad memory, bad processor, etc. It boils down to Windows going wonky, or the hard drive failing. The system disks will fix issue #1. If they don’t work, then it’s #2. I’m pretty sure HP will simply send you a new hard drive, provided you then send them the old one within a week. And HD’s are very, very easy to swap. That at least saves you the trouble of shipping the whole machine in.

And yes, computers can be frustrating as hell, even to an IT guy like me. I think it’s because, in theory, they should be 100% logical and consistent, and they just aren’t. And you can’t even reason with 'em.

7

PC Search & Rescue, Truck 1 on scene :cool:

Failure to complete a load can be any number of things, bad ram, bad hard drives, and windows corruption being the most common. One of the really irritating things about many machines these days is that damn restore partition. A copy of a windows disk is so much more useful in this scenario. If they are sending you a restore image and it does not work you have three options. Jump through the hoops for warranty work, suck it up and call a shop, or try a few things. One of the nice things about shops is we usually have extra ram, hard drives, etc laying around as testers and can swap out components to test them without purchasing a part you may not need.

If you have a few blank CD’s and access to another working machine you can grab .iso’s of memtest86 and bootable testing utilities from the manufacturer of the hard drive (not manufacturer of puter)

These will allow you to isolate for bad ram and or bad hard drives. If your machine has more than 1 stick of ram you could try running with one then the other separately. Just be careful to seat them completely before powering the machine on, inserting or removing a stick of ram on a powered up PC = its all over but the crying. If you have a bad stick, this could very well rememdy your situation.

8

I have seen plenty of machines make it into windows and then nuke themselves due to bad ram. One of the key signs of bad ram IME is the lack of consistent timing or consistent error message. I have a machine in the shop right now that was throwing stop 0x07e’s, 0x050’s, 0x08f’s after 5-10 min in windows. Memtest screamed for mercy when we ran it. Start pulling chips one at a time. Works like a charm minus 1 bad stick of ram

9

Not necessarily. A long time ago I had a computer that loaded one OS just fine but failed when loading another. One used OS memory from the top down, the other from the bottom up. Changing the memory had no effect; removing half of it did. The problem was that the processor had a missing pin. The pin that was missing was the 16 MB addressing pin. So the machine was limited to 16 MB, which was a shame as I had 32 MB.

Another machine failed in interesting and apparently random ways. I absolutely could not track it down until I disassembled the whole thing and spotted that there was a very minor scratch on the motherboard, just enough to cut one trace.