Operation Delta 3 - 005

gonna be around.

been fairly busy.
done some lurking and plenty rebuilding last few weeks.
Things don't always work out as well as expected. https://discussions.virtualdr.com/
Seems I always get "difficult" machines to work on.
Like I once said, it all interacts.
I am at times at a complete loss as to what causes the problems I notice.
Some get solved by installing win3x/95 drivers in 98SE machines. Go Figure.

What I most often notice, is that the original "builder/box shifter" doesn't bother to optimise/properly configure the machine they sold. And to me, optimal has to have stability. And I don't mean "fail safe".

I wish I knew a lot more, since I may often be able to notice a problem, but seldom can I pinpoint the exact cause of it... https://discussions.virtualdr.com/

I said it before, and will repeat it, this here hobbyist ain't a guru.

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Remember, there is always something we forgot to ask.
And, it's only FREE advice!

Kind regards, Jaak

GG1 inserts a PCI card...

we haven't heard from him.
his puter died.
he thinks he lost all data.
he forgot to set to boot from scsi first

our first funeral service.

No guess not.
GG1 inserts PCI card, transferred partition to partiion

boots from card,
gets blown out of chair by the sheer speedblast.
cannot get up.
we have a funeral.

have I told ya I am a pessimist?
I choose to be, because that is the only way I can have some things going better than expected.

optimist view
GG1 inserts PCI
gets back to us with news about unbelievable performance increase.
we have a funeral

nah, guess not, BT still in the works.
we'll wait for funeral until that ends https://discussions.virtualdr.com/

had a bad week.
at epox first boot (I was flipping switch on strip).
by the time I get in front of screen, its going into winME and suddenly shuts off.

at new attempts, drive lights dont come up, no beeps, no hard disk spins.

it ain't heat.
it ain't CPU, (tried other)
it aint PSU (tried other)
it aint vidcard (tested)
it ain't hard disk (tested in other puter)
apparently, the motherboard just died.
PSU and CPU fans spin until they are shut off by system itself (we see no BIOS screens, no screen whatever, cpu do not warm up, initialise)

going to take an old PCI vidcard to shop to try what it does with it.
tomorrow, replacement mobo should be in.
funeral is next wedneday.
dangit, I hate to have to ask for RMA.

------------------
Remember, there is always something we forgot to ask.
And, it's only FREE advice!

Kind regards, Jaak

Good Morning All, Unexpected things this weekend - like tree limbs coming down. Had to work and didn't get to the PCI card until Sunday night. The card would not pick up the hard drive. It could not find the Operating System. The card was installed and drivers loaded. Reseated adapter cable and PCI card. Same results each time. The computer works in the original configuration. No problem. Since the symptom is the same each time I tried to bring the computer up I have a feeling I'm missing something on the configuration. Called Train with same results. The only difference between our systems is I use two recovery disks and he doesn't. Went back and studied on Jaak's posts on the subject. Decided I would take Train's suggestion and wait until BT is built to fix this. But if any of you have any ideas, I sure would like to hear them.

Regarding BT, the MOBO, cpu and cpu fan should be in this week. On the cpu went with 1.1ghz TBird for $95.00, the ASUS A7V for $67.00, upgraded the fan to a higher rpm, the total for all three plus shipping came to $179.00. Need to get a monitor and audio card. Found a SB live for $26.00. Looks like with a 17 inch monitor included, the system will come in less than a $1000.

Had an inventory at work this weekend so will be busy today too. Will be back as much as I can.

Hope this answers some of your posted questions and comments.

Kallikru and Jaak. We needed something to talk about until the actual build on BT starts so talking about components, repairs, and just whatever else comes to mind. And there has certainly been some interesting posts from you all. https://discussions.virtualdr.com/

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Jaak
No funeral.
Card would not read harddrive. Bad ribbon? other problems?

Big problem Wind storm caused honey doo s [ called clean up is all ]
GG1 sneaked in on me.

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SMILE
and post back
[ Book mark this post to find it again]

[This message has been edited by Train (edited 09-24-2001).]

Quick question....my new board supports ata100 drives....should it recognize the new 40 gig I just bought....I will try it when I get home from work tonight but wanted to see what everyone has to say....also I have a tip for those buying computer items....If staples has it and you can find a better price anywhere on the internet (excluding auction sites) they will price match it....I got a 7200 rpm 40 gig maxtor ata100 drive today for 76.00 dollars...pretty stoked about that one. They have matched everything I have taken in there ..got a linksys befsr41 router for 79.oo and a 17in monitor 2 years ago for 129..when that was an outstanding price....

sarrkazztic
You have the blue connector on the mobo? If so just use the 80 wire ribbon. You should be ready. You did install the ata100 drivers, didn't you?

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SMILE
and post back
[ Book mark this post to find it again]

I installed win2k and then the via 4in1 drivers....that is all I have done....when I boot the machine it detects the drive that I have in there now as ata100 (maxtor 20gig that is going to be a slave to this new 40)so am assuming that either the via drivers or the win2k setup took care of it for me because the drivers for the mobo are still shrink wrapped. Hey, can you guys take a look at a post I have over in the win2k forum about setting up a dual boot if win2k is already installed....I want to play some games in win98se but do not want to do all of the reinstalling if I do not have to....

[This message has been edited by sarrkazztic (edited 09-24-2001).]

GG1

been into ctrl+H ?

you got a installation shhet with card?
it should tell you that when (any?) other drive is on primary IDE, you may not be able to boot from highpoint.
then, in mobo BIOS, you select to boot from SCSI...
But, in ctrl + H options screens, you have to set which drive you wanna boot from, just as well.

next.
the drive detection IS NOT done from MOBO BIOS.
it happens after mobo has done full POST and ESCD load.
hence, you MUST update ESCD in BIOS

could be you should plug the card in other slot.
(a non shared IRQ slot is best)

remember, ctrl + H (for highpoint...)
also, the card will normally detect the drive at its "natural" settings.
(the jumper we talked about is mighty important.)

what I still suggest is this.
connect the identical drive you have to card.
clone part from IDE to part on highpoint
(WD ezdrive should work with highpoint)
iow, WD tools partition, and then do filecopy

if you dont do it the first time, it somehow remembers you didn't want new disk as boot drive, and copy option don't come back, not until you redo partitioning of new disk.

its all in the advanced screens.

don't just connect your working drive to card.
please clone.
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epox diagnosed as dead.
CMOS or bus got fried?
when guy brings in his old system, first thing I gonna do is put it in tray, and do full scan against virii.
(this guy's sytem may be dangerous!!! the xxxx bookmarks he showed me were getting my short hairs up. JEESH. I had not looked at that.)

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Remember, there is always something we forgot to ask.
And, it's only FREE advice!

Kind regards, Jaak

[This message has been edited by jtdoom (edited 09-24-2001).]

GG1
I am stupid...

Quote:

---

The card would not pick up the hard drive. It could not find the Operating System. The card was installed and drivers loaded. Reseated adapter cable and PCI card. Same results each time

---

this would happen if the card uses another drive steering/interpretation method.
EVEN WHEN USING THE 32gb JUMPER

and, IMHO, this is most likely the cause.
you see, I seen that happening as well.

for instance.
I do drive prepare on a working puter.
I transfer the freshly partitioned/formatted drive to other puter, and the drive shows one measly MEGABYTE difference when I check with fdisk, but it won't work.

BIOS and IDE controllers differ.
(chipset and drive translation.)

hence, I suggest to clone part to part.
then remove old system disk to get it out of the loop, and try boot.

when is weekly subject gonna revitalise?

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Kind regards, Jaak

[This message has been edited by jtdoom (edited 09-25-2001).]

Hi All, Just got home after 11 hours at work. You figure it out. Hint - It's not nice right now. People under extreme pressure doing by hand what an IBM computer should be doing.

DrMDJ, you talked about a MS A/ patch the other day. Could you expand on that some more please? And in your inemitable detail if you have time.

Jaak I'll try to do some of those checks you have talked about in the next day or two.

Everything you all have said I check out as it becomes a shortcut to on hands knowledge. And that is a tip for you lurkers. If you don't understand what is said either ask questions or save until later when you have more knowledge. And in this lull, we have until all the components are in for BT, is a good time to browbeat these computer heads, these experts of cyberspace, these nuts who spend so much time explaining to us less informed nuts, these wonderful sharing caring people who give so much of themselves to help the rest of us in times of need. Without them we would spend a lot of money at computer shops. And of course I have to plug VirDr as they have given us a platform to do what we do. (By the way exactly what is that we do?)That ought to get Bistro up out of his meditation to hold forth on - well you all know. https://discussions.virtualdr.com/ https://discussions.virtualdr.com/ https://discussions.virtualdr.com/ https://discussions.virtualdr.com/ https://discussions.virtualdr.com/

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death of an epoch/x

uh oh...
I just noticed.
(good thing I reread my own commentarries)

JEESH
bios on his old system did not look kosher either...
may NOT have been caused by PSU.

ouch.
I will know when his system gets back into my lap.
bugger me, but he did have a good AV.
of course, I don't know how often he updated it, or if full realtime protect was ON.
oh oh, dear me.
if I find out, and subsequently raymond finds out I inadvertently screwed up this mobo... what then?
(he's lurking, I feel it in my bones.. and it was me who told him about VDr https://discussions.virtualdr.com/

well, if it was virus, who's to blame?
any thoughts?


------------------
Remember, there is always something we forgot to ask.
And, it's only FREE advice!

Kind regards, Jaak

"And early in the morning, Bistro approached the Master with much trepidation. "Master?", he asked. The Master looked up and asked "Yes, Bistro, my dubious student? What do you have on? Your mind?". And Bistro said, "Yea verily, I hopeth I do". "Then speak thy peace quickly, for I have not as yet had my morning coffee and therefore cannot endure much of thy babbling as yet", the Master replied. Bistro swalloweth hard and spoke. "Master, when I finally leave this Blessed Mountain of Computer Whiz-dom, and go down into the Valley of Need, people will ask 'What exactly is it that thou do?'. How do I answereth such a hard question?" The Master rolled his eyes upward and spoke "Hast thou learned nothing? Hast thou dumped the knowledge I have bestowed on thee all these years as offal in the gutters?". The Master slapped Bistro upsideth the head smartly and spake further, "When they asketh thee that question, thou shalt answer: 'I am a computer nut who indeed desires greatly to help less informed computer nuts'. That should sufficeth them. Now.. leaveth me in peace." And Bistro took the Master's words to heart and vowed not to forget them; at least not until lunchtime...


--[b]From The Annals of Doofus On The Mountain

If it has a working antivirus on the machine and the client does not do the required updates to the virus definitions or does not enable full time protection.....then it would be their own fault.....as well as downloading suspicious looking files and attachments from the internet without scanning them for virus first...

now what, it's back on line?

I edited one message to get a few erroneous statements right (not changing gist of mssg, corrective measures), and the last two posts suddenly show?

huh?

Thread having problems, so will close continuation started here:
http://discussions.virtualdr.com/For...ML/005236.html

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Murf

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