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Big problems


Mooney

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WELL HOWDY Y'ALL.

 

So my computer's being a bitch these days. Here's what happened.

 

For the past few months, it's been randomly freezing (and by freezing I mean the screen goes black and my monitor enters power save mode... all I can do then is restart) usually while I'm playing a game, watching a video, or sometimes just browsing the internets. With that, I could deal. Then, the other day, I installed Electric sheep, a cool screen saver that my friends have. As soon as it installed, my computer restarted (I was not prompted or told it would do so, it just did). Now, every time I turn it on, it freezes either at the Windows log in screen or a few seconds after I log in. I booted into safe mode and uninstalled the screen saver, but the problem persisted. System restore, nothing. I even reinstalled Windows. Still happens. Now, I've tried numerous distros and versions of Linux. They all either freeze during installation (usually at the partitioning phase) or they claim they have installed successfully, but when I restart Windows just loads right up (No GRUB or anything).

 

Fortunately, I'll be getting a laptop in a few weeks for school, but I'd really like to know what's wrong with my comp, especially since I want to sell it before I move into my dorm. So is this a virus, a hardware problem, or what?

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Sounds like hardware to me..

 

Either the ram or the motherboard.

 

Modern motherboards have built-in obsolecence. Take a look at the electrolytic capacitors (vertical cylinder-shaped thingies with 3 converging lines on top). If the top looks like it's bulging (should be flat), or there is some brown stuff on top, the capacitor is defective. You can either try replacing it (good luck!) or get a new motherboard.

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I had a PC that did the exact tsame thing, random crashes, random restarts. fresh format and install did not help.

 

It was bad ram. find hirens boot cd. that has all sorts of software for testing your system. run the ram test first.

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The RAM, eh? I guess I'll run ol' memtest86+ and a few others... I guess bad RAM isn't as bad as a dead mobo, cause at least RAM is getting cheap these days. I could probably replace all of my RAM for at or under $50. :(

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Well, I was able to install Ubuntu 9.04 successfully, and I ran memtest86+ from the Ubuntu cd... It didn't find any errors. I do, however, get these two errors whenever I load Ubuntu:

 

[lots of numbers] ata1: softreset failed (device is not ready)
[different numbers] ata2: sofreset failed (device is not ready)

... and then it boots up fine.

 

Does this mean there's something wrong with one or both of my hard drives? Or the drive controller, maybe? :(

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Well, I ran it from the Ubuntu cd that I burned on a different computer, I ran it from GRUB, and I ran it from a slightly old version of the UBCD. None of them came up with any errors. I did, however, notice something else.

 

While trying to get wireless working on Ubuntu, it told me that my wireless card was disabled, and I'd have to turn it back on from windows. Well, after booting into safe mode and discovering that it was indeed enabled, I tried disabling it to see what would happen. When I rebooted and started windows normally, it didn't freeze. So now I'm stuck with a shitty install of windows and no internet. Good thing I'll be getting a laptop and going off to college soon... :D

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