PITA system

[crockettmann]

Wondering if anyone has seen anything like this before.

Been having probs recovering from a crash on the kid's computer. Unidentified bug or system prob, not sure. Now, I'm no PC guru, just an advanced newbie with a pretty knowledgeable pc friend.

The pc would almost boot, then hang. After several tries, it started to get the dreaded BSOD. My friend hooked the HD up to his system & scanned for viruses with AVG & found nothing. He tried to save the valuable files and probe into system use to find out what caused the problem. It all started about the time the following 2 things were downloaded: Bearshare and a bunch of emoticons.

This is odd, because there were no administrative (download) priviledges available (XP pro).

The result was that it slowed my friend's system down drastically. At this point, we figured reformat the hard drive and reinstall windows. The OS installs (takes the better part of a day), then just as it's finishing, BSOD.

Here's where we got aggressive and started replacing hardware (long winded sequence of events available upon request):

3 different HD's

3 different mobo's

2 different CPU's

3 different sticks of RAM

2 different OS's (XP and '98)

0 partridges in a pear tree (gotta draw the line somewhere)

 

Considering that we have tried disabling the caches during the install, has a virus ever been known to seek out and destroy or embed itself into every single piece of hardware on a machine? It seems like I get a humorous email about this kind of virus every 6 months or so, and I almost expect my dog to die next!

We have now reached the point where the OS installs completely, but the desktop has no icons or start menu. The task manager is there (CTRL ALT DEL) and you can launch a prog, but it mostly just sits there.

I know there are other forums out there, but this is the only one that really gets me the best results. You're a great bunch, and I always appreciate your time & input.

[cornholio7]

is the psu old?

[crockettmann]

Not extremely new, corny, but have tried a couple of them too, the one that was in their pentium system then the one that just came out of my machine when I upgraded. The last mobo we tried was an ECS K7S5A ver. 3.1 (same as my mobo) with an athlon XP 1800 cpu. The psu was running my XP 2000 fine just a few weeks ago.

[LIGHTNING UK!]

doesn't the BSOD message give you any clues?

 

Open the dump file in WinDbg and see what it reports as the cause of the problem.

 

Unless it's hardware related, it'll probably give you the driver name.

 

But I guess as you say you've changed all the hardware and reinstalled (from a decent CD I hope!) that OS, it's unlikely to be a problem like that.

 

So what IS the common denominator here? PSU sounds like it's the only thing it could be right now

[crockettmann]

doesn't the BSOD message give you any clues?

From the info I have , the last BSOD said "13THINT" and the successful install said something about OOBE0023. I checked out OOBE and found out it was part of the MS install designed to help with unattended installs. I don't know where this applies in this situation. It was then that we tried to install windows 98 instead, and I'm not sure where that is at right now.

[Movie Junkie]

The only common denominator I see in all of the setups you have tried is your plug-ins (Sound, Audio, NIC, etc). If you are using the same cards maybe one of them has gone buggers. Try swapping them out. Use only the needed items and if everything is OK then swap them back in one at a time. Make sure you swap them correctly so you don't wind up with a IRQ conflict.

Edited February 25, 2006 by Movie Junkie