wintel/xp problems

[radhak]

I am in a soup. I am looking for ideas.

In the last 2 weeks, I have done some major changes to my wintel/xp desktop (Dell Dimension 8300) and it has slowly degenerated to an unworkable state. I have tried to rollback as much as possible, to no avail. Now I wanna know what else could be a problem.

This machine is a 3Ghz, 1GB pentium IV bought 6 years ago. The HDD was a 120GB, and I wanted to upgrade it. Last year I bought a WD 300GB and added it as a secondary HDD. The idea was to make it primary later. Things were fine.

Since early this year I noticed that I was unable to apply Service Pack 3. It would just fail at the end. I assumed the old HDD had a problem.

So on Aug 9 I used Acronis True Image (Home) to take a complete backup of the 1st HDD onto an external, then 'applied' it to the 2nd HDD. (ie, sorta Ghosted the image). Worked like a charm - I swapped the HDDs and saw that my 1st HDD was now a 300GB and the 2nd was a 120GB (which I wiped clean a weak later).

First thing I did after that was apply SP3, and it went thru nicely with no error.

Then I ordered 2GB of Kingston memory. Dell (and Kingston) said I could use different types of memory (ie, two 1GB + two 512MB). I moved the earlier memory sticks to the 0-bank and put the new sticks to the 1-bank.

The first problem I saw was that one of the new memory stick was defective (isolated it by using one stick at a time). Got mad at the vendor (ANTOnline at Amazon) but removed both the new sticks (have to return them). Now the m/c has the original 1GB memory.

At this stage, the sky fell. The machine would boot nicely, and at the first click to run anything (file brower, web browser, editor, etc), would start to hang. ie, that program would not come up, then it would not be 'killed' using Task Manager (where it did show up), then TaskManager too would hang.

Safe mode works well - am even able to surf the net!

To recover, I started slow - disabled a bunch of memory-laden services I didn't need, then went on to remove SP3, then as a desperate attempt re-applied the Acronis Image of Aug 9 to the same HDD (to clear the slate completely of any possible changes to the system since then). Nothing worked.

LOML works on this machine the most, and says the hanging started right from day one after the HDD upgrade, but it was not this bad : she'd start something like Picasa and the come back a bit later to find everything frozen needing a reboot. Then after that it'd be Firefox that hanged. But it did work for some time after each reboot. Now, the reboot seems to be going thru nice, but only 'seems' : no program is workable after that!

Could this be the new HDD? Or did I damage the old memory when I moved the sticks? Or is this a software bug?

[Rich P]

If you want to eliminate hardware problems as a source of your trouble, try the set of diagnostics that comes on the Ultimate Boot CD...it's free. I had an unstable XP installation on a new machine a few years ago and used this tool to dial it down to a faulty stick of memory. Took the memory back to Fry's for a different brand and the problem was solved.

[parnelli]

FWIW- I was thinking maybe the memory settings auto-changed with the new sticks but didn't change back (grasping at straws!) - but then somehow I missed the "safe mode works well" part.

If what you're saying is that you can get into safe mode and run for extended periods of time without hanging or crashing then I'm going to say that it doesn't sound hardware related to me.

After 6 years I'd be inclined to do a brand new install and transfer my personal files over to the new install. Yes it's a pain, but things always seem to work better/faster after.

Outside of that I'd start checking things like virus/adware/spyware and disabling as much as I could and adding things back one at a time. eg- drivers, software

[pelligrini]

It doesn't feel like a hardware problem to me either. After this amount of time a clean install would probably be best.

It could be memory related, but probably more of a software problem. In your taskmanager what's the available Physical memory on the performance tab? If it is low, check to see what's using it up under the process tab. If you haven't already added Mem Usage, Peak Mem usage and VM Size columns you can find them in View>Select Columns. It could be something as simple as a memory leak from a program or plugin. Check your swap file size (virtual Memory) and location too.

[drillman88]

If possible I would do a clean install on the old hard dive to see what happens, but not activate windows. If everything works well I would set the new Hd up as the slave and save all of the files you need to the old hard drive then do a clean install on the new hard drive after everything checks out set the old hd up as a slave and transfer the files to it. You could back everthing up from safemode to cds if possilbe and not have to do the hd shuffling. I have had to do this a few times when nothing else works and teenagers can make nothing else work.

[radhak]

That ultimate CD seems to be a great resource - I shall be using it to check the machine.

Clutching at straws seems to be a great tactic at this point!

Just to be doubly-sure, I replaced both the old memory sticks with the single, working 1GB stick from the new pack. It worked - for a few minutes. I was able to bring up firefox, surf sites and even check the TaskManager processes. Then it went down again - I could see apps on the Taskmanager, but could neither use them, nor kill them.

So the memory is not at a fault, probably.

As of now the machine is booted in safe-mode it works just fine - of course with 600x800 screen and admin tools etc not working. LOML is happy enough to suggest I leave it like that!

This seems to confirm that the hardware is probably ok. It's funny the way programs just don't run but the system responds to mouse clicks and the keyboard (at least for a while, after which even that freezes and the power button is the only available option).

Yes, I'm sure a re-install should work. I just don't want to do it on a bad hard-drive or other unknown problems hanging over my head. I could use the older harddisk, or could even extract another 300GB HDD from one of my external drives.

Of course, if I have to re-install, then Windows 7 is tempting. Might as well try out that poison. Comments?

I shall check the memory and post.

[crokett]

I like Windows 7. A lot. Before it came out based on my experiences with Vista I was planning to either move to Linux or have my next home PC be a Mac. I have Release Candidate 1 installed at work and use it daily, all day. I have RC1 also installed at home and use it not quite as often. No problems with either and probably won't upgrade to the GA version unless I have to reinstall for other reasons. The GA version just dropped and I put that on my laptop. Runs extremely well but the VPN software doesn't install, which is critical for my work. I found a newer version that does install, not sure my company supports it yet. As far as testing the HW, a quicker way is to download a linux distro CD (I like Ubuntu) and boot that. You can boot a fully functional version of Linux to test things. If that works, then your HW is ok

[vaking]

Defective memory has a nasty habit of corrupting software. Do you still have the image you made of your original drive? Did it work for you until you started memory updates?
If so - I would restore that configuration again (unless you have later but working images) and proceeded from there.

[radhak]

Hmmm... looks like I missed out on the download of Windows 7 - even the RC download has expired.

And Oct 22 is too far away for me to wait .

Yes, I do have the original image of the machine but I restored it and it gives me the same problem.


There doesn't seem to be a memory problem : I have around 300mb available memory in both safe mode and regular (I was able to check the memory before it froze again).