argh big trouble for me

fan is still making some noise but its not getting hot the powersupply fan is working just a little noisy obviously needs replaced but surely has nothing to do with theproblems.. mehtinks

 

oh and device manager shows the cd drives installed but like everything else "status is not available in safe mode" so it's hard to say but they have power and open and close etc but maybe thy arent communicating well.... that would be a totally different thing though and not related to the original problem of not booting I would think

 

stop telling good things about your computer detox my machine ownz

 

OMG
Buy a real pc Tox lol.

And where are those fajitas you promised me

 

So if you look at the installed devices all is there normal, no yellow !
or red X through any parts if you look well?
I don't trust the noisy fans. Case still open?
CD-rom should play in safe mode too, i think or am i mistaken now? If from safe mode you go to MSDOS and can you change to the cd-rom from there (there must be a cd in it of course) or doesn't it excist?

Try bootdiskette and look again at all the drives. Remember it makes an extra smartdrive so you might have to look which drive letter is which.

You did look in the BIOS if the cd-rom is there, did you?
Keep the computer open to avoid cables between other things or blockages.

Stuutje=RAF= is you can contribute anything really helpful welcome as it's really not fun seeing a formerly good working computer now in such a complete sad state due to... ??
Same to X-caliber, please take your comments and put them in your pocket, just think of what can be a way to help here.

We're with the forum family trying to help a user out and avoiding any further expected damage as i think he's close to better packing the whole matter and going to a repair or asking an engineer to come there.

One system beep? ok.
Boot from diskette, with cd-rom support, look at all drives, get to the normal boot drive and get to windows and start windows from there. If not, again reboot from that diskette and see to get into safe mode.

The space you mentioned above, is that normal or ..??

 

Gonna give it another go tomorrow...

I didnt see any yelloq or red but this time I will go all the way through and check for that...

I think I need to look up that part about the CDROM and see if that is normal not to wok in safe mode or if it is strange.

I was thinking that tomorrow maybe I could try to boot from the 3 1/2 disk and run the windows install from the WIN98 files on my hard drive; maybe that would avoid the low memory error?

Not sure how to look in BIOS to see if CDROM was there; to be honest this was my very first venture to BIOS or CMOS or any of those things.

Ah Jooske now at the end of your post I see you saying just about what I was thinking I would try tomorrow; so I will update after I've tried it.

I really do appreciate all this help and effort/time you are giving me here!

And I sorry for Stuutje and X-Caliber; they are both from =RAF= my DF2 online gaming squad; another member was helping me and I directed him to this thread so he could see what was going on/had been done; he sent the link (had been making fun of me for vacuuming the puter) these other guys are just picking on me since I've always bragged about my machine ;-)

 

Sorry for the trouble Jooske.
We just couldn't resist.

We'll help Tox in any way we can.
I don't care if I had to come over to the states to
repair his pc. ( he's a good host with that pc )

Hope you accept my apology, won't happen again.

 

Detox, You have 1gb of memory with win 98 - This may be part of your problem as normally w98 only sees up to 500mb. There is a fix somewhere MSKB I expect.

 

Pilli - the custom shop that built my machine made it so it would see all the memory; they told me they could anyway and sys info always detects all of it, as well as all games, etc that test for system memory before install, etc...

Hadn't thought about it but when I get home later today and try to reinstall Windows; if I am successful - I wonder if I will lose the ability to use all the memory :-/

edited for spelling

 

It's ok now you explain Stuutje and X-Calibur, it was the sad impression
I don't know much about your experience, and i heard lots of times people using vacuumcleaners which normally is ok, as long as you don't remove anything. But the highcompressed airspray is safer, of course.

If you get to the bios, you would see in the CMOS settings the drives and diskette station and the cd-rom could be in the list as well. You can look in the autodetect but if you don't really know don't make any changes.

If the large memory reading is a special setting, i really don't know; it worked before so it should do now again. Not sure if this has to do with any of the jumpers or blue things you might have changed, a bios setting or windows setting. This can only be told by the builder.
Maybe it's good to contact him anyway with the problems, he might be able to give some adequate advice as he knows the system and settings.

 

ah-ha; a little advice from another friend at RAF - and I booted the computer with the win98 floppy in it; got into the windows directory in DOS and tried "deltree *.*" but it did not work... anyway I continued to the folder on my hard drive that had the win98 install files and ran setup from there... It's installing now! esimated 20 minutes remaining and oh lord please be good-to-tox I'm begging!

Anyway I think several people told me to do this basically but I couldn't make it work from the cd and in safe mode it said I hadn;t enough memory; for whatever reason it seems to be working this way... I hope so!

 

Windows install seemed successful even though I didnt delete the tree first; but still the same probkem persists. I guess I should give up now.. barf

 

Hi Detox

I just heard of a Dos utility called "Pc-Check", it´s for hardware checking. I found this trial version only....
http://www.eurosoft-uk.com/pc_demo.htm
It requires your personal information and valid email to get the demo. I wish it helps to save valuable $$´s. I haven´t used that dos based feature so I can´t help much further, but I think that´s not too difficult if you can use any dos without mouse...

^Ari^

 

what are at this moment point per t the problems?
* boot up in normal mode yes/no?
* in my computer > cd-rom found yes/no?
* in my computer > hardware > cd-rom is there yes/no?
* in windows\explorer see the cd-rom drive yno?
* and if there, can access it yes/no?
* if no cd-rom is seen in either of these lines,
go to control panel > new hardware > find automatically and look what it finds.
depending on the find, let it do first automatically: in this case the cd-rom should be found and it might ask for drivers/filin the win98 directory from your hd.
If it was shown in the list at "my computer" but the properties say it is not there, you might like to delete > reboot and let windows find and install it automatically but make sure you have it's drivers somewhere copied on the system.
what i delete in such cases is like this:
- CD-ROM
...cd-rom drive type blabla number speed whatever <this one
(that is also the one you select and look at it's properties, before deleting you might like to try windows updating it's drivers, but if that doesn't work, delete, reboot, let windows install it again properly)

* your other problems / syptoms please.


If you hade deleted with thee your windows, you would have had to re-install all your other software too, so be glad you didn't succeed in that. It's almost the same effect as format c:\
If you now do a standard scandisc, does it run properly in the normal boot? And how does defrag look like?

 

Hey Jooske - well it seems exactly as it was before the reinstall; I can see the CD drive in the sys info-hardware but not in "my computer" in safe mode. Normal boot still screws up and tried again then gives the "safe mode?" screen. I greatly appreciate both your patience and your helpfulness; but I gave up this morning and called the shop; I was just checking the forum now before I leave with it - anyway I hope we'll know what it is tomorrow or monday.

After what you told me; I am also glad the deltree didn;t work that sounds scary - ouch!

So; by now just pray with me that it won;t be too expensive! Part of my decision is due to the fact that I need a new power supply anyway since the fan is so screwed up.

 

Detox, If the PC shop sold you the bits etc. And if there are faulty components, You may still be covered by warranty
If not they may give you a good deal anyway I hope it all woks out OK.

 

And ask the shop for a safe dust remover system, compressed air or other safe tool.
Please keep us informed, so we know how to help others too. Fingers crossed!

So all the problems onlt came with the vacuum cleaner or were there other reasons before that too?

 

Don't quite understand your banter, Number One! Why does a dodgy fan mean a new PSU?

 

Checkout,
A lot of folks read the labels! Switch mode PSU's can be dangerous & it requires a level of confidence to open one up ,even to fit a lowly fan, when that nasty unseen high voltage "could" be about

I know quite capable programmers who would not venture into their PC's & also know electricians who know nothing about PC's confidently changing a PSU fan.

Horses for courses M8

 

Hm ok - well the puter is only about 6 months old so it is under warranty anyway ;-)

Checkout and Pilli - yeah its the PS fan and I understood from most people that if the fan was bad it meant new Power supply.. that's pretty much the way the guys at the shop seemed to think of it as well.

The only real problem I had beforehand was the shutdown was dismal as could be - figured it was just WIn98 but even shutdown patch didn't help and I mean 95% of the time that puter doesn't shut down right while this one (also win98se) doesn't only 20-30% I think.

The power supply fan had been going bad for some time but since it was still spinning and the air wasn't getting hot I was letting it go - probably very dangerous to do but sometimes I'm just plain lazy.

 

Hi Detox,

I'm afraid that I have not much advice to help you here....
Some thoughts however:
How much Watt is your Power-Supply-Unit? You have a nice and heavy machine and it could need a heavy PSU. I have had 2 PSU's died before I bought a heavy one from a good company (Enermax 430 W), but that was a really expensive one and that could be a problem for you
One other thing that I really don't understand (and it was mentioned before by others): I really thought that the maximum amount of RAM for Windows 98 SE is 512 MB; I'm really surprised here that you have more, but -of course- I could very well be wrong!

I really hope for you my friend that the techs at the shop can fix it all for you for not too much money!

 

FanJ - well it is the shop where I bought it and it will prolly be covered by warranty; so that's good.

I asked something about the PSU being a little weak but they seemed to think that was funny. I kinda figured such a powerful machine would need more than 300 as well and thought maybe thats why the fan was going out; overworked?

Anyway Win98SE on my machine does recognize all the RAM I have but I think that the system itsel only allows each application to use a certain amount at a time... So I *think* my puter has use of all 1024 but any particular thing I am running (games when it comes to me ) can use only 512 at a time but another application (ICQ or RW for communication) will be using different memory than the 512 the game is using. I won't promise it but that's how I understand it. I suppose maybe I would have been better off going Win2000 but didn't hear mucha bout it til after my purchase.

 

Hi Detox,

You have (if I remember me well) 2 big harddisks, CD-ROM player and CD-ROM burner, and a big Video-card, and maybe more as well. To me it seems that a more heavy PSU wouldn't hurt. BTW: I am not saying that it caused all your problems. The amount of Watt is another thing than the quality of the fan of the PSU.
Are there more fans in your case? I guess so, cause you have a really good case (Antec). Any idea about the heath in your case? Well, again, that Antec must have some good airflow being certainly a good case! Well, heath cannot really be the problem cause -as I understood- your problems starts even when starting your machine.

Some other thought for the future: you talked about lots of dust overthere in Texas. There are filters available that could be put for the fans that blow air into your machine, if there are such fans in your case.

And more for the future (alas, it will not help now):
There is a real nice program called ERS (for W98: ERS9x) (not free, but not too expensive) that gives you the possibilty to make back-ups of your important system files, and you can put them on a floppy from which you can boot and restore. It is not a full-blown Imaging-back-up program like for example Norton Ghost, but it is a really nice program. I use it and I'm a big fan of it. It is also mentioned on the Wilders-site. Support is really good also!

 

yup you remember correctly ;-)

the air coming out the back of the acse is usually VERY cool the only spot that feel remotely warm is the PSU - there are 2 big fans in the back below the PSU that low air out, and a big vent under the hard drives up front where the air comes in. In fact; I posted a pic of it here in ten forward one time! lol maybe ill look for it...

the fans that get the most dust are the 2 on the georce4 that have that foam in them and the one that blows into the processor heat sink.

I have really been thinking watercooling might cut down on noise and collect a lot less dust.

 

Man....

Detox, if only you could use "Pc-Check" utility. I did try it today, and it´s so glory ! It´s just for hardware checking.

friendliest ^Ari^

Have a nice weekend , anyway !