Just About Had Enough With Family PC

[Nix]

After http://discussions.virtualdr.com/sho...d.php?t=199969, http://discussions.virtualdr.com/sho...d.php?t=201854 and http://discussions.virtualdr.com/sho...d.php?t=202222, I've just about had enough of our family computer.

I think the main issue was the hard drive, but subsequent to that I don't think my system likes the Sapphire Radeon 9250 very much.

The other issue that has been happening in relation to delayed boot up was that in WinMe sometimes it would just hang at start up after it had displayed the WinMe Logo screen or blue screen Windows Protection Error at the same point.

This was most prevelant in the first boot up of the day and required 2, 3 or more boots before it would boot normally.

Win98SE and Win2000 were both fine as was safe mode for WinMe.

So after trying various version of drivers for the Radeon 9250 I finally found a site yesterday that said to set the AGP aperture to 64 or 128 in BIOS, disable fast writes in the ATI Control Panel and diable ATIPOLL and ATISMART in MSCONFIG.

So I changed the AGP Aperture from 128 to 64 and did all the other things and this morning it booted up first go - hopefully not just a fluke or coincidence.

Now just to fix my Win2000 install - really ballsed that up (refer second thread).

I'm also thinking since I've had so much freezing / scandisks at startup in the last 2 months that it might be time to reinstall WinMe also so as to have a clean slate with the video drivers and a nice clean registry.

Maybe it's because the 9250 is an 8xAGP card but my MSI 6330 v2 Mobo is only 4xAGP, but everything I find indicates the card will throttle back.

[Nix]

Well got home this evening and the PC booted up first go so one of those settings I changed made a difference.

[Nix]

Well every boot so far has been fine, but I won't mark this resolved just yet or I'll jinx myself.

As a side note if I shutdown and immediately press power, I get 2 quick beeps followed by 8 long ones followed by a break of about 5-10 seconds and then 2 more beeps all with a blank screen, which is the same thing I get if I don't have a graphics card in.

If I shutdown and then leave the machine for 10-15 seconds before pressing power it boots normally.

Do graphics cards have some inbuilt safety mechanism that stops them from being powered up again to fast after being shutdown ?

[lgbpop]

I doubt it. Just wait the few seconds between shut-down and start-up and life should be good. How often do you shut down for 3 seconds, after all?

[SuperSparks]

It's good practice to always leave a few seconds after power down before powering up again. That way any residual charge in the capacitors can drain away and the computer can boot from a nice stable powered down state. I always give it 30 seconds myself if I ever have to power down and then up again immediately.

[Nix]

How often do you shut down for 3 seconds, after all?

Lately, a lot.

ie After a freeze and the only option is to power off, then press power straight away.

I guess I should wait for 15-30 seconds.

Thanks both.

[Train]

Nix, you will appreciate what waiting will do for you, believe me, give the rig time for the ram to drain and dump all the garbage that is in there.

[Nix]

Cheers.

[Nix]

Well that lasted all of 3 days

But what I have discovered is that it takes 2-3 boots before I successfully get into Windows after which time it runs for hours with no issue and reboots are fine and shutdown and then, after waiting 20-30 seconds, cold boots are fine.

So I thought well if it takes 2-3 boots I'll just let it sit at the XOSL boot menu for a minute or two to give everything time to warm up befoer then trying windows.

Presto it works.

So that means, something needs to warm up for about a minute before attempting to boot windows.

I'm guessing the Mobo ?

[Train]

Or the ps.

Just a thought:
May have a cracked trace in the mobo and letting it warm up heats things up enough the trace makes contact.

[Nix]

The PSU was replaced just recently from a generic 230W to an Antec 430W.

Might need to check everything is seated snugly - again.

[Nix]

Checked everything is plugged in snugly and all cards firmly in place.

Worked out that if I set the timer on XOSL to anything less than 4 minutes, it freezes but 4 minutes is fine.

I'll monitor to see if it starts getting longer as we move in to the cooler months.

If I can be bothered, or the wait time starts getting too long, I might go back to basics, remove everything and start with just HD, Video card and 1 stick of memory and try and pinpoint what component is causing the freeze.

[Train]

Please let us know what you find out. I be puzzled for sure.

[Nix]

I told my wife that she had to let it heat up for 4 minutes before using it or it would freeze and she said "but weeks ago you said it was freezing because it might be overheating".

I tried explaining the difference between a circuit or something needing to heat and the CPU overheating but she said it didn't make sense.

Anyway, it will probably be down to something like the mouse or keyboard - which I haven't checked yet.

Might need to borrow a mouse and keyboard from work to test with since I don't have a spare at home.

[Nix]

These sound similar to my issue:

http://www.xtremepccentral.com/forum...ead.php?t=1027
http://experts.about.com/q/PC-hardwa...3/XP-start.htm