Computer Occasionally Doesn't Start

[HoB10]

Hi i'm new, and I was just wondering if anyone could help me solve some problems.

As the title mentions, my computer occasionally will not boot up. For a long while I was having that problem and then It turned out that one of my hard drives was going. Recently however, I installed the WinFast PVR2 TV Tuner (TV2000 XP) and now I seem to be having hardware problems. The computer is not always booting up. It seems to halt when those blocks are loading across the screen (what it does after an incomplete shutdown). It is also restarting (not often) and a message pops with a link to microsofts error reporting. I attached a picture of what windows says about the error and listed the microsoft error link.

Microsoft Windows Error Reporting

Regardless, it says there is no solution and I may not be able to solve that problem without uninstalling the driver, I was wondering if there are any diagnostic tools to scan my computer for other problems or good registry fixing programs.

Any comments or thoughts would be appreciated. Also, does it matter which PCI slot the TV tuner is in, could moving it to another slot make any difference?

 

[eyeCpc]

Uninstalling the card or drivers for it won't help since this is a pre-existing problem becoming more visible with the additional card added in. The installation may have seen a cross link of some type however.

Try unchecking the item for the card in the startup group of the msconfig utility to manually start it when going to use it rather then seeing the driver load with Windows. While there try a few other things as well to see if this is a software(bad install? corrupted driver set?) or hardware problem(supply?, board?, memory?).

 

[HoB10]

I unchecked them and I'm going to test restarting. I just wanted to post now before so incase it doesn't want to start up again.

I installed it two times already but not because of this hardware problem. I was thinking that something was wrong with the audio creating static. Then I realized after reinstalling that I just needed to hook up some cord directly into the sound, which helped.

As far as other problems it could be any one of them. I created my computer in 2002 and I've been updating it since. However, I'm still using socket A, so I consider it fairly outdated. The only other thing I can think of is power problem or malfunctioning in the MOBO. One month ago the power went out and it seemingly surged the computer a bit. It wouldn't restart after that for a while. Then I just decided to just let it go and let it try and boot. After 5-10 minutes it would finally boot, until eventually it somehow went back to normal.

 

[eyeCpc]

I hope you have some better surge protection since all this was first seen. You can easily try the card in one of the other slots and still end up with the same thing. It never hurts to try however to see if the slot was somehow damaged or the card is simply raised up in the slot and needs to be reseated.

On a system 6yrs. old and in regular daily use another thought that comes to mind is the battery on the board itself. If you haven't replaced the battery in all this time the integrity of the cmos information will see loss as well.

Besides worn drives, old cables, worn leaky caps, one simple item often overlooked on old pcs is a $2-$3 item in a retail store's watch/calculator section. That and any dust/dirt buildup in slots can cause problems as well as any hardware faults.

 

[HoB10]

I will make sure I get better surge protection in the future, though I may have to do a little research because I don't know whats good.

I tried moving around the PCI cards and it changed nothing. I even uninstalled the program in attempt to reinstall to see if that helped, but it proved to not be affectively by restarting the computer before I could even get to reinstall it.

So you think I should buy another battery for the cmos to see if it affects anything?

As far as cables I try to replace them once in a while, and my harddrive/dvd drive are new. I actually had a ton of built up dust due to bad circulation, but I usually dismantle and thoroughly clean the computer.

I'm not really sure what else to do to, I checked for driver updates for the tv tuner program but I'm not sure which version to download. I guess I can just try the XP version and assume it is most recent. Any other thoughts/suggestions?

Is it possible that a virus (namely trojan) could cause this? Think I had a trojan recently from something I downloaded.

 

[eyeCpc]

With any system of that age any number of things can come up like bad caps on the board, corrupted bios programming or failing eprom, chipset going, overheating being one item to add. You have to selectively rule out one thing at a time in order to fully diagnose the system there.

Sudden unexpected restarts can also be a headache once hardware becomes the thing being looked at. Your supply, hard drive, board, cpu, memory are all items that could be on the last leg causing problems. On a much newer machine you can generally pinpoint things much faster since everything is either new or next to new in far better shape.

The main idea for replacing the battery becomes obvious since those were never meant to last more then 5yrs. tops. You're on year #6 presently.

 

[HoB10]

After considering the problems I've had with my pc in the past year I have decided to build a new one. I figured I would need to eventually anyhow, but it is important that I have one that works now for school.

Regardless, what do you think about using a harddrive on a motherboard it hasn't been formatted to? The reason I ask may be obvious, I want to transfer my harddrive to the new computer, but It will just be temporary until I burn everything onto DVD's. I would do that on this computer now, but for some reason I am also now having issues with the SONY driver and it keeps saying code 39 missing files or corrupt data for the drive. I tried updating but it cannot find it, even though it shows it in device manager.

 

[eyeCpc]

Once on a new build you would also be seeing a new optical drive for burning data disks there. Sometimes they can't read when burned on one system with an older drive and then tried on a totally new one later.

A new board at this time will likely see only one ide channel since the tread is for sata at this point. There you would simply slave the old drive if ide to the ide optical drive unless you decide on a sata model burner where the old HD would simply be set as master.

That would have to wait until Windows is first installed and running since ide tends to be seen first over sata by the Windows installer. You would want boot information on the permanent new drive and simply allow Windows to detect it as a new device long enough for backup.

 

[HoB10]

I was really just hoping it could detect windows on my current drive and run that even though it has not been setup to the MOBO. I figured I would do it that way because I wasn't sure if there were any type of constraints with windows being installed on two harddrives at once. Do you happen to know if it would be possible to install windows on another harddrive I own (without constraints) and then slaving the other as you said?

One more thing, oddly enough I am so use to ide cables that I truely know little about sata cables. Though I wouldn't mind using them I don't want to accidently get a drive that would be suitable for one and not being able to hook it up.

Is the power supply model I listed below strictly sata model or do they just come with extra sata cables for convenience? I am just wondering because I want to get a DVD burner as well but i'm not sure whether to get sata or ide.

Here are some of the things I picked out for my comp:
Specs:
Kingston ValueRAM 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820134117

ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI MCP ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131013

AMD Phenom 9600 Agena 2.3GHz Socket AM2+ 95W Quad-Core Processor Model HD960ZWCGDBOX - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103244

ASUS EN8500GT TOP/HTP/256M GeForce 8500GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready Video Card - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121094

I noticed in another post someone recommended this ATX12V 700W Power Supply 100 - 240 V, but I was hoping to find something a bit cheaper to fit my budget. Although, I really don't want to under supply my system and cause any problems.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...rk=False&Page=

 

[eyeCpc]

For simply seeing a clean install of Windows on a newer larger faster drive etc. you wouldn't want that one plugged in since there is no plan to dual boot with it plus avoid that being seen by the installer as the "first" device on the system. From there slave it and copy drive to drive to have onhand, burn to disk for removable storage and backup.

The larger wattage supplies will generally see more sata as well as ide power connectors since once you add drives the demand will still on the supply itself regardless of type. Unfortunately you linked everything from your shopping cart and not the general product pages for a full look at each item.

Here I run 2gb of Kingston Hyper X DDR2 800 memory on an Asus M2N-E model board with a 6000+ X2 AMD model cpu. The AM2+ model boards are the ones that offer support for the Pnenom quad core models and other new ones that may be seen in that line not AM2 boards.

For a look at the boards instock you simply use the selector for the cpus supported then selecting the make and model. For Asus the only ones presently instock are seen at Newegg.com - Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, Digital Cameras and more!