My computer seems dead....

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Last night, the computer was acting up, stuff froze, etc. So I rebooted. Now it won’t go past the Windows XP loading screen (with the progress bar on the bottom). It just sits there endlessly. I turned it off and used the safemode option, just to find out that it hangs on mup.sys, as it’s the last file on the screen to be loaded. (Later I learned that it wasn’t mup.sys that was to blame, but what happened after it’s called). A quick search revealed this thread. I tried most of the quick fixes people had. Taking out all USB components, resetting ESCD, setting BIOS to default. None of those worked. Today I will be trying some of the more radical ones, such as taking out my video card, taking out RAM sticks, etc. However, assuming that the opinion of most in the thread was right, this is some kind of power issue that leads to a windows issue. For nobody did reformatting help, so don’t suggest that. Some said that changing the PSU helped, but I really don’t think there’s a point to that in my 4 year old PC. (Still my main PC). But right now, nothing works, and I’ve got a bad feeling that this computer (my main and best one) is dead. I don’t have the money to buy a new one, or even build one. I had all of my files there, important files, and my sister and dad did too. Of course if I ever get a new computer, I can take the hard drive out of this one and just plug it in as a slave and it will work right? I hope so… I can’t lose my files or theirs. I stayed up till 4:30 last night fixing this, to no avail. I really, don’t know what to do. I CAN’T afford a new computer, especially right now. My parents can’t either so don’t even ask. I am right now on my secondary PC on the network, a 333Mhz Pentium 2. I can’t use this as my primary PC. Please help and offer advice.

My specs:
HP Pavilion from about 4 years ago.
Athlon 1Ghz (runs at 993)
384MB RAM (one 256MB and one 128 MB)
everything else is on the mobo, except for the crappy Geforce 2 MX 64MB PCI Graphics card.

2

I had this problem once.

I managed to sort it by using the rescue floppy that came with my hard drive, and writing zeros to the entire disk, followed by a format and install.

3

Well, EvilHamsterOnCrack, you’ve pretty much covered everything I would have checked for. The only thing you’ve not mentioned is if you took a good look at the capacitors when you had the case off?
They look like small AA batteries set on end. They should have bright, shiny, flat bottoms. No bulging or discolouring.

Worth taking a look at?

4

I’m not sure if you can use a system HD as a slave unit. Can’t hurt to try, though. Perhaps you can make it the master drive on your secondary PC.

Do you have the HP’s recovery disks? MY last computer was an HP and the recovery disk had the option to restore the original OS & factory-loaded software. I did this and was able to recover all of my data files, but have to reinstall all programs I had loaded since day one.

Do you have an emergency startup disk? This should allow you access to the HD, but you may have to access your data files via the DOS command line.

Just some ideas…

5

I’d like to go back to the beginning. When you started your computer normally, and it was hanging up on the Windows XP screen, as long as the progress bar was moving, you are okay. Sometimes, especially on older systems, that screen will appear for an extended period of time as the computer sorts out the boot up process.

The reason that the computer was hanging on that startup screen was probably because you had a sizeable amount of little programs that were all starting up at the same time. Some of the worst offenders of this are:

AOL
Quicktime
Real Player
Any IM software
Any type of CD burning software

These obviously will effect the boot up time of an older system more so than a newer one. So, disable them permanently, by typing “MSCONFIG,” in the Run command. But, do not disable any virus protection, firewall, or pop up blocking software.

If the freezing up problem was happening intermittenly after the computer had already been booted up for awhile, say, you came back to your computer and it was frozen up for no reason, or you were getting gobbledygook on the screen during the startup process, then the problem points towards the processor. AMD processors are notorious for failing quicker than an Intel processor would, and overclocking would only expedite this failure.

Do you need help finding a new processor? A compatible processor to fix this computer would be inexpensive.

You can remove this harddrive and install it as a slave in another computer. So, that is a viable option.

Do not format and start over.

Before you try anything else, simply put your Windows XP CD back in, and reinstall OVERTOP of your current installation. This tends to fix most problems.

So, in order, do these steps:

  1. Reinstall Windows XP. Do not format.
  2. Disable any unnecessary programs, and run your utilities: Disk Cleanup and Defrag.
  3. Replace the processor.
6

If you data is valuable remove your hard drive now. It sounds like you have either a disk media error or a busted low level binary. Continuing to screw around with your system if the hard disk is the only location of these files is not recommended, as some attempted “fixes” may inadvertently overwrite or damage your data or render your drive non-bootable, or if your drive is on the edge of failure keeping it in the loop is not suggested.

Get a replacement hard disk 80-120 gig units can be had for $ 50 - $70 after rebate. (make sure your BIOS can handle the size you choose) Re-install the OS. If the OS install fails you know you have a system board or peripheral hardware issue and you will need to diagnose further. If the OS install goes smoothly plug in the old drive as a salve once the sytem is up and take whatever data you need off it.