Bugger... Looks like my PC is on its way out...

Gitch · 01-30-2005, 01:48 AM

Well its happened, the thing I've been dreading as my trusty desktop enters it twilight years

"Cannot find boot disk. Press ctrl alt del to restart".

My almost 5 year old AMD Duron is starting to fade.

I've had this machine since October 2000 an eternity in computer terms. Over the years I've upgraded the video card, increased its memory from 64Mb to 192Mb to 704mB. I've kept the original 15Gb hard disk but a year or so ago supplemented it with a 120Gb disk for my music and videos etc. Its operating system has gone from Win98 to Win2K to WinXP. Over the past 2 months its started to take more time to boot up and is unusable for the 20 minutes after logging into my regular profile. Something hogs system resources for those first 20 minutes that I can't identify. VirusScan and 3 flavours of spyware detectors and various system tuneup utilities cannot identify the culprit.

The main reason I keep it is that it is now my wireless access port for my laptop, and because my building's admin won't recognise more than 1 MAC ID so that even if my laptop's network card worked (and no TINY.COM have still not replied to my tech support emails - I refuse to pay a £1 minute phoning them) it wouldn't let me on to the network. The downside of it being a wireless accessport is that it tends to get left on for longer periods than it would do normally, such as over a whole weekend. The deathly slow bootup also discourages me from rebooting anymore than often.

This morning, I picked up the laptop and switched it on and was unable to connect wirelessly. Wandering into the lounge I found a blackscreen facing me. Switching on and off failed to alleviate the problem. I looked in the BIOS and found that the system clock had also reset. This doesn't look good.

Rebooting revealed a potential source of the problem. The computer recognised the CDRW and DVDROM drives on the secondary IDE, but not the 2 HDDs on the Primary. Now I'm no technical whizz, but short of a generous 3 year old deciding to feed a can of Pepsi Max to my PC via the ventilation holes, I find it unlikely that 2 hard disks from different manufacturers 3 years apart in age, could fail simultaneously. A quick look around the flat revealed no 3 year olds, generous or otherwise, hiding under the bed or in the wardrobe.

This in itself is good news of course. I'm as bad as anyone at backing up my data. The most critical stuff is covered, but there's a lot of other crap I don't want to lose if I can help it. However it does look as if the motherboard is going. I had hoped to keep the desktop going to next year, when I plan on using the case, monitor and peripherals as the basis of a completely new system. Being my first home build, I was intending to spend at least a month or so perusing the various trade journals and online help tutorials to build myself a nice new Windows media system. It looks like that schedule may be bumped up.

In the short term, I figure that the Primary IDE has died on me. I've switched the two hard disks to the secondary and redesignated them as the boot disks in the BIOS. I can live without the CDRW and the DVDROM, now I have the laptop. Windows does at least boot now, although it takes about 15 minutes just to get to the login screen. Worryingly, the Admin profile also takes 20 minutes to fully load, a problem that didn't afflict it before. The wireless connection is back. This week I will buy a new 200Gb Hard Disk and a cradle to convert it to an external back up drive. I'll then use that to back up both the desktop and the laptop. With my data safe and at least some functionality back, I'll just sit tight and see how long until the motherboard finally goes and I have to buy a new system.

Here's hoping...

Brikar · 01-30-2005, 02:38 AM

Good luck. Although with prices nowadays, you could probably get a fairly decent replacement fairly cheaply. Your HDs, CDRW and DVD all sound like they're still in working order, and you've still got the case.

I say buy a new motherboard, mebbe a new processor, like an AMD Athlon, to upgrade from the Duron. 300 bucks. Yes?

Cymro · 01-30-2005, 02:50 AM

Well, he'd definately need to buy a new CPU if he got a motherboard, backward compatibility is something many computer components are lacking in.

Brikar · 01-30-2005, 02:57 AM

Not if he bought a new board that supported whatever kind of slot there was for the Duron. I remember when I had to buy a new one, there were different ones for Duron, Athlon and all the Intels. My new board was more than a year newer than my Athlon processor, but it still fit.

Cymro · 01-30-2005, 02:14 PM

Yeah, but we're talking about a four year difference here, IIRC they had only just broken the GHz barrier in 2000.

Bean · 01-30-2005, 06:19 PM

Cymro is right, finding a four year old motherboard or CPU is hard. I know last year I tried to buy a new CPU for my two year old mobo, and all the compatible CPU's had been discontinued. It's hard to keep up with processors.

And of course now just to throw us iff al ittle more, there's a new mobo standard replacing the current ones. It' called BTX, I'm sure if you google it you can find all the details. But you're cd drive and hard drives etc are all still good, so that should save SOME cash.

Gitch · 01-30-2005, 07:50 PM

Well my plan is to wait until the latter half of this year when I know what my job/house situation will be for the next couple of years. My 17inch CRT and wireless keyboard and mouse are still fine. The case is a midi tower with loads of slots. I think I'll chuck the motherboard and chip and probably the graphics card - I may as well keep the sound card since they don't improve like Graphics cards do. I'll chuck the DVDROM since it never worked properly anyway and replace with a dual-layer DVD+-RW (I'm guessing that Blu-Ray is unlikely to be a realistic option before next year). The 120Gb disk should be fine for storage. I'll get a new disk as my primary boot since that gets most of the wear and tear. I'll probably splash out and stick a couple of gig of RAM in. My main priority is to get a motherboard with expandability. I will want this machine to last another 3 years at least so I will want one with plenty of expansion slots and the latest spec architecture.

Bean · 01-30-2005, 10:37 PM

Well the latest spec is going to be BTX, and you may want to research it before assuming it will fit your case. Chances are, it won't. But if you're gonna go as far as you seem to be, what's another 100 bucks for a case anyways

Brikar · 01-31-2005, 03:30 AM

What's your graphics card? Cuz if it's better than mine, and you're gonna chuck it anyway...........

Gitch · 01-31-2005, 05:33 PM

An ATI XPERT2000 - I doubt very much its better than yours...

01-30-2005, 01:48 AM	#1 (permalink)
Gitch Consultant Fellationist Join Date: Dec 1969 Location: God's own country merry England Posts: 435	Bugger... Looks like my PC is on its way out... Well its happened, the thing I've been dreading as my trusty desktop enters it twilight years "Cannot find boot disk. Press ctrl alt del to restart". My almost 5 year old AMD Duron is starting to fade. I've had this machine since October 2000 an eternity in computer terms. Over the years I've upgraded the video card, increased its memory from 64Mb to 192Mb to 704mB. I've kept the original 15Gb hard disk but a year or so ago supplemented it with a 120Gb disk for my music and videos etc. Its operating system has gone from Win98 to Win2K to WinXP. Over the past 2 months its started to take more time to boot up and is unusable for the 20 minutes after logging into my regular profile. Something hogs system resources for those first 20 minutes that I can't identify. VirusScan and 3 flavours of spyware detectors and various system tuneup utilities cannot identify the culprit. The main reason I keep it is that it is now my wireless access port for my laptop, and because my building's admin won't recognise more than 1 MAC ID so that even if my laptop's network card worked (and no TINY.COM have still not replied to my tech support emails - I refuse to pay a £1 minute phoning them) it wouldn't let me on to the network. The downside of it being a wireless accessport is that it tends to get left on for longer periods than it would do normally, such as over a whole weekend. The deathly slow bootup also discourages me from rebooting anymore than often. This morning, I picked up the laptop and switched it on and was unable to connect wirelessly. Wandering into the lounge I found a blackscreen facing me. Switching on and off failed to alleviate the problem. I looked in the BIOS and found that the system clock had also reset. This doesn't look good. Rebooting revealed a potential source of the problem. The computer recognised the CDRW and DVDROM drives on the secondary IDE, but not the 2 HDDs on the Primary. Now I'm no technical whizz, but short of a generous 3 year old deciding to feed a can of Pepsi Max to my PC via the ventilation holes, I find it unlikely that 2 hard disks from different manufacturers 3 years apart in age, could fail simultaneously. A quick look around the flat revealed no 3 year olds, generous or otherwise, hiding under the bed or in the wardrobe. This in itself is good news of course. I'm as bad as anyone at backing up my data. The most critical stuff is covered, but there's a lot of other crap I don't want to lose if I can help it. However it does look as if the motherboard is going. I had hoped to keep the desktop going to next year, when I plan on using the case, monitor and peripherals as the basis of a completely new system. Being my first home build, I was intending to spend at least a month or so perusing the various trade journals and online help tutorials to build myself a nice new Windows media system. It looks like that schedule may be bumped up. In the short term, I figure that the Primary IDE has died on me. I've switched the two hard disks to the secondary and redesignated them as the boot disks in the BIOS. I can live without the CDRW and the DVDROM, now I have the laptop. Windows does at least boot now, although it takes about 15 minutes just to get to the login screen. Worryingly, the Admin profile also takes 20 minutes to fully load, a problem that didn't afflict it before. The wireless connection is back. This week I will buy a new 200Gb Hard Disk and a cradle to convert it to an external back up drive. I'll then use that to back up both the desktop and the laptop. With my data safe and at least some functionality back, I'll just sit tight and see how long until the motherboard finally goes and I have to buy a new system. Here's hoping... __________________ If masturbation is self-abuse - you are obviously doing it wrong.

01-30-2005, 02:38 AM	#2 (permalink)
Brikar The Dude Join Date: Dec 1969 Location: Massachusetts Posts: 3,606	Good luck. Although with prices nowadays, you could probably get a fairly decent replacement fairly cheaply. Your HDs, CDRW and DVD all sound like they're still in working order, and you've still got the case. I say buy a new motherboard, mebbe a new processor, like an AMD Athlon, to upgrade from the Duron. 300 bucks. Yes? __________________ "A million monkeys typing until the end of time will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Ten thousand monkeys typing for ten thousand years will write a Hemingway. Ten monkeys typing over Columbus Day weekend will give you a Dan Brown." http://olympusmans.blogspot.com http://benforrealz.blogspot.com

01-30-2005, 02:50 AM	#3 (permalink)
Cymro Religious Fanatic Join Date: Nov 1999 Location: Shitsville, CF63 Posts: 4,921	Well, he'd definately need to buy a new CPU if he got a motherboard, backward compatibility is something many computer components are lacking in. __________________ "Let me tell you something about humans, nephew: They're a wonderful, friendly people - as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. "But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those friendly, intelligent, wonderful people...will become as nasty and as violent as the most blood-thirsty klingon."

01-30-2005, 02:57 AM	#4 (permalink)
Brikar The Dude Join Date: Dec 1969 Location: Massachusetts Posts: 3,606	Not if he bought a new board that supported whatever kind of slot there was for the Duron. I remember when I had to buy a new one, there were different ones for Duron, Athlon and all the Intels. My new board was more than a year newer than my Athlon processor, but it still fit. __________________ "A million monkeys typing until the end of time will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Ten thousand monkeys typing for ten thousand years will write a Hemingway. Ten monkeys typing over Columbus Day weekend will give you a Dan Brown." http://olympusmans.blogspot.com http://benforrealz.blogspot.com

01-30-2005, 02:14 PM	#5 (permalink)
Cymro Religious Fanatic Join Date: Nov 1999 Location: Shitsville, CF63 Posts: 4,921	Yeah, but we're talking about a four year difference here, IIRC they had only just broken the GHz barrier in 2000. __________________ "Let me tell you something about humans, nephew: They're a wonderful, friendly people - as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. "But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those friendly, intelligent, wonderful people...will become as nasty and as violent as the most blood-thirsty klingon."

01-30-2005, 06:19 PM	#6 (permalink)
Bean The Awesome One Join Date: Dec 1969 Location: Canada eh! Posts: 5,055	Cymro is right, finding a four year old motherboard or CPU is hard. I know last year I tried to buy a new CPU for my two year old mobo, and all the compatible CPU's had been discontinued. It's hard to keep up with processors. And of course now just to throw us iff al ittle more, there's a new mobo standard replacing the current ones. It' called BTX, I'm sure if you google it you can find all the details. But you're cd drive and hard drives etc are all still good, so that should save SOME cash. __________________ "I haven't faced death. I've cheated death. I've tricked my way out of death and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity. I know nothing." --James T. Kirk

01-30-2005, 07:50 PM	#7 (permalink)
Gitch Consultant Fellationist Join Date: Dec 1969 Location: God's own country merry England Posts: 435	Well my plan is to wait until the latter half of this year when I know what my job/house situation will be for the next couple of years. My 17inch CRT and wireless keyboard and mouse are still fine. The case is a midi tower with loads of slots. I think I'll chuck the motherboard and chip and probably the graphics card - I may as well keep the sound card since they don't improve like Graphics cards do. I'll chuck the DVDROM since it never worked properly anyway and replace with a dual-layer DVD+-RW (I'm guessing that Blu-Ray is unlikely to be a realistic option before next year). The 120Gb disk should be fine for storage. I'll get a new disk as my primary boot since that gets most of the wear and tear. I'll probably splash out and stick a couple of gig of RAM in. My main priority is to get a motherboard with expandability. I will want this machine to last another 3 years at least so I will want one with plenty of expansion slots and the latest spec architecture. __________________ If masturbation is self-abuse - you are obviously doing it wrong.

01-30-2005, 10:37 PM	#8 (permalink)
Bean The Awesome One Join Date: Dec 1969 Location: Canada eh! Posts: 5,055	Well the latest spec is going to be BTX, and you may want to research it before assuming it will fit your case. Chances are, it won't. But if you're gonna go as far as you seem to be, what's another 100 bucks for a case anyways __________________ "I haven't faced death. I've cheated death. I've tricked my way out of death and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity. I know nothing." --James T. Kirk

01-31-2005, 03:30 AM	#9 (permalink)
Brikar The Dude Join Date: Dec 1969 Location: Massachusetts Posts: 3,606	What's your graphics card? Cuz if it's better than mine, and you're gonna chuck it anyway........... __________________ "A million monkeys typing until the end of time will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Ten thousand monkeys typing for ten thousand years will write a Hemingway. Ten monkeys typing over Columbus Day weekend will give you a Dan Brown." http://olympusmans.blogspot.com http://benforrealz.blogspot.com

01-31-2005, 05:33 PM	#10 (permalink)
Gitch Consultant Fellationist Join Date: Dec 1969 Location: God's own country merry England Posts: 435	An ATI XPERT2000 - I doubt very much its better than yours... __________________ If masturbation is self-abuse - you are obviously doing it wrong.

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