inertia will fix my PC

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Appologies to anyone who happens into this thread expecting something interesting. IN another thread, the poster known as inertia claimed that he could help me fix a problem with my PC that has so far defied my experts. In order to give inertia a chance to prove his/her point (and in the off chance that I my get a solution to a serious problem) I have created this thread.

Here’s the problem statement, in a nutshell:

System: Dell Latitude CPi 366MHz Pentium II
OS: Windows NT 4.00.1381

Symptoms:
System hangs during boot up. The windows are starting to draw, the task bar gets about halfway there, then everything freezes. A hardware restart is required. This occurs 100% of the time when there is no network present, however the system will boot properly about 80% of the time when the network is present. Probably unrelated, but I typically get one application crash per day, all applications seem to be subject (MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Project, Netscape, Internet Explorer, Deneba Canvas, Winamp, Acrobat, Exceed, and even the Windows Explorer). When Explorer crashes it takes the whole system down with it. Most of the other applications simply crash with no other ill effects, though occasionally a crash will put the computer into a really slow mode where I really have to restart to use the system effectively. The disk has been reformatted a couple of times. The OS has been reloaded from scratch several times.

Feel free to ask for any other details that might be helpful in your diagnosis.

2

[Moderator Hat ON]

Hmmm…smells like MPSIMS to me, since it’s directed at a specific poster.

[Moderator Hat OFF]

3

This wasn’t addressed to me, and I make no claims, but I’m going to take a stab at it anyway:

This is just a WAG, but from the description it sounds like a problem with the NIC (or its drivers) or the network protocol and binding settings.

Hopefully someone tried this: Open the box and pull the NIC out. Boot the machine in VGA/safe mode and remove or disable the network drivers and protocols. Restart normally and see if it works. If it does, then just shut it down again, reinsert the NIC and reinstall the drivers and protocols.

If it doesn’t work, then we’ll need more details.

One other note – if there is a resource issue, check the BIOS and make sure that if it has a setting like “PNP OS/non PNP OS” that you have it set to “non PNP OS.” NT is theoretically PNP, but it works better if the hardware has pre-assigned resources.

4

Having spent about a minute on the problem thus far, I’d have to agree with sixseatport about the NIC card I would hope that the shop guys would’ve already checked this out. I’m guessing that the difference between the network being present and not being present is that you’re unplugging the cable. Is this correct?

That’s my 1 minute eval. I’ll actually look into it now and get back to you later. I’m at the gym this evening so tomorrow at lunch or tomorrow evening.

One final thought, did you customize the system at all when you got it with sound cards or RAM or anything beyond standard.

5

Yep, that’s the first thing that we thought of. Tried that. Even switched to a different NIC and drivers. Was Xircom, now is 3Com. No change.
sixseatport wrote:

Well, that one’s over my head, but maybe my “experts” can help me with that. I have no idea how to check the BIOS. This strikes me as unlikely, however, since other identically configured machines have the same BIOS loaded and do not experience the same problem… supposedly… I get this pseudo-info from the same people that tell me that I must be doing something wrong because no one else is reporting ANY problems with their systems… and then in the next breath tell me that it will take them 2 weeks before they can get to my machine because they’ve got too many other computers in the queue… [grin] If you can easily tell me how to check the ‘PNP’ in the BIOS, I could feed back to you fairly quickly - if we have to wait on my resident experts, I fear this will be a long and boring discussion.
inertia wrote:

Basically, though it’s more than the presence of the cable. I’m sure you realized that, but just to be perfectly clear. One time about 2 months ago, the router that I’m on went belly up and my PC would not boot up then, either, so I’m pretty sure it’s the actual network. Still, about one in 5 boots with the network in place ends in the same failure mode. Also, I exaggerated about the 100% of the time it fails without the network. I don’t know the actual percentage, but I have successfully booted on a couple of tries with no network present. One of these instances had the unfortunate timing to occur when I was demonstrating the problem to one of my admins. When it failed to fail, I lost a lot of credibility with that crowd and it took me months to convince them to investigate deeper. If I had to guess at the success rate, I’d say it was less than 5% of the time.

6

To get into the BIOS on a Dell, the keystroke should be [CTRL][ALT][ENTER] during the memory check at bootup. This will take you into a little configurator program (BIOS stands for Basic Input/Output System), the exact interface of which changes about every 2 weeks, even within a given brand.

Anyway, you’ll just have to look around to see if it has anything about PNP OS or not.

Oh, and what I was driving at with the NIC was not a hardware problem, but rather a problem with the way the networking software was set up. That, or maybe your DHCP license has expired, or another machine is using your assigned IP, or a service is trying to grab network resources and isn’t succeeding.

Now that I think about it, go back into the machine, go to the Services list in the Control Panel, and start setting things to Manual start. Then reboot and see if it’s any better. Also, do you have any network printers installed, and are you on a Novell, NT, or Lotus network, or something else?

7

Have you added any peripherals from any third parties since it was purchased?

The NIC is a 3COM PCMCIA card?

What power management options are you running from BIOS? Control Panel/Power/PC Modems, uncheck that box.

Go into the BIOS and disable any built in peripherals like serial/parallel ports, USB (which is not supported in NT), IR, PCMCIA, sound, video out. There may be an option to set system performance for optimal/stable. Select stable for now. To get into BIOS you’ll have to check your manual, but generally you get an opportunity to hit <del>, <esc> or <F1> while booting. Laptops may have a different key or group of keys to accomplish this. While you’re in the BIOS, what version is it? If it doesn’t say there, it should say during boot up.

Are you using a C/Port or a C/Dock?

Does safe mode work? Always or subject to the same glitch? What about without network support?

Go to control the Control Panel and select system. Somewhere there will be a list of devices currently installed. Remove anything with a “?”. Are there any “Other Devices” showing up? While you’re there, take a look at the NIC and tell me what the driver version is.

Disable the .WAV that plays on startup. Should be under Control Panel/Sounds.

Have you loaded Softex v2.34 and PC Card Services? Is the UDMA driver loaded?

Is there any anti-virus software loaded? If so, what?

8

One last thing, have you tried it with ketchup (or catsup)?

9

What NOS? Novell, NT? Which client, protocols are running? Have you tried the second PCMCIA slot? Have you called Dell?, it may be some other HW problem

Up the Irons!

10

Oh boy, we’re getting too many chefs stirring the soup. I’m gonna drop out of this and watch Inertia work.

11

Peter North:

Yeah, the problem with NT is that it is NOT a PNP operating system. If you take a PCMCIA card out of one slot and stick it in the other, it will install a second network card and screw all around with it 'cause the drivers are still looking for it in the first slot. If the PCMCIA card was originally installed in the other slot, that’s where it should go back to. You’ll know this if you look at Control Panel/Device Manager and there are two NIC’s.

12

Sorry to butt in here, but my first question is, “What service pack do you have loaded?”

13

It would be better for us all if he just booted the thing with a bootlog.txt
if its possible with NT.

Then we can all see what is NOT getting loaded. Also, what about Dr Watson?

14

Damn… second try. I was almost done with the first when Netscape decided tidy up my desktop by closing superfluous windows… including the one I was typing in.

Opting to shotgun answers, rather than quote and respond.

No reference to PNP in the BIOS pages.

The NIC is a 3COM PCMCIA card that shipped with the machine. It even has a DELL label.

The only other peripheral is the PCMCIA modem card Psion Dacom Gold Card, which also shipped with the machine.

Actually, I think these cards must have shipped with another machine since mine originally had the Xircom card.

I am using a C/Port docking station, however the problems are repeatable docked or undocked.

Safe mode works, but the computer is almost unusable in this mode because I only have a 640x480 window with what looks like 16 colors.

I could not find any ‘devices’ list in the ‘System’ control panel, however I did look at the ‘Devices’ control panel and didn’t see anthing helpful.

Softex v2.34 and PC Card Services v2.32 were preloaded by DELL and are apparently integrated into the reinstall core.

I don’t know what the UDMA driver is, but there’s nothing in the ‘drivers’ folder that resembles UDMA.

I do have VirusScan NT v4.0.3a installed. Required by my company.

I’ve not tried swapping PCMCIA slots, but it sounds like this is not a worthwhile thing to try based on inertia’s comment.

I’ve got service pack 6.

Don’t know anything about bootlogs. I don’t have a bootlog.txt file on my disk; is there something I need to turn on first?

Dr. Watson does not detect this error. Perhaps the error occurs before Dr. Watson is loaded.

15

**First: **
Look in Start/Programs/Administrative Tools/Event Viewer. There are 3 different logs to look at: System, Application, and Security. Events for your problem should be under the System log. Make a note of the exact time of the last occurance of the problem, and look at the System log for what failed. Also, check the other 2 logs for info about those times als…you never know what you’ll find.

**Question: **
Did your support people install WINNT REALLY from scratch or did they do an “Image” install which basically copies the hard drive & settings from another machine? If it was an image, does the image work for everyone else? If so, go to LAST point.

**Next: **
While logged on, go into User Manager and define yourself on the LOCAL machine as a user. When you boot up into WINNT, it asks the username, password, and domain. Under domain, log in as local machine (probably defined as the serial number of the machine or some such identifier)

**Last: **
Have maintenance people replace system board. It’s probably that, anyway, so if the resources are there, just skip all the other steps and try this.

-Katy

16

I realize that, but we use Dell solely, and have many NT machines, and had similar problems with PCMCIA cards. And switching slots has worked in more than one case.

Up the Irons!

17

On W98 if you push that control button when its loading it brings on that safe menu & you can choose to boot with a bootlog.txt Dunno about NT. ANother thing w98 can do that NT might is have a System File Checker, SFC that makes sure all your system files are okay, well duh. Easy to run, almost 99% of the people don’t know its there. RUN:SFC

18

WooHoo! Go okatym! You are sounding just like my NT instructor! The event log is a veeeryyy handy tool to have on NT.

I struggle every day to be the kind of person my dog thinks I am.

19

“I only have a 640x480 window with what looks like 16 colors.” That’s not instability, that’s VGA. VGA is native to the OS and anything else requires a driver. Because the point of Safe Mode is to boot with no or few drivers, the video driver is one that does not get loaded.

20

okatym wrote:

Yeah, we’ve been all through the Event Viewer logs. Whatever’s happening is not getting logged.

Both. The first time they installed the standard image that they give everyone else. This has MS Office, VirusScan, etc. pre installed. The last time it was the hard way… believe me, they let me know how much more work it was… they seem to blame me, even though it’s been like this from day one.

Not an option, it’s a leased machine. Anticipating your next question… of course, the easy thing to do is just send it back, but apparently I have to send this one back before the leasing company will replace it and their lead time is currently about 8 weeks. Basically they are telling me that if I want it replaced, I’ll be without a computer for the 8 weeks. I know it’s insane, but that’s life in big corporate America…