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Forum Index : Other Stuff : Rebuilt my PC
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Gizmo Admin Group  Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5078 |
My main PC has been miss-behaving for several months. Wont boot, even to the bios, incorrect RAM size, freezing, etc. On Friday it was dead, so time to buy some new hardware. It was a P4 3GHz on a Gigabytw P5VDC motherboard with a couple of 1G ram chips. To play it safe, I decided to replace the CPU, motherboard and ram. I bought a Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 processor, a Gigabyte GA-G41MT motherboard, and a 2gig DDR3 ram chip. The new motherboard wouldn't take my AGP videocard, so I had to buy a new videocard as well, a NVidea GT220, nothing special, but it supports my dual monitors. Swapping a mainboard is nasty stuff for a OS. In the past I just swapped the mother board and let the OS pick up the new drivers, works 90% of the time but it can leave a lot of orphan device drivers in the system. This time I took some advice from the internet (  ) and booted the new system off the WinXP cd, selected Repair, which means the OS is partly resinstalled with a clean hardware profile, this keeps my software and registry settings. Then its a matter of installing the new drivers, running the updates and your ready to go.
Bad bad idea. Once installed, first boot, log in screen, wanted me to validate Windows again before proceeding. Tried to go online, but the network drivers weren't installed, so I had to phone up Microsoft to get the OS validated so I could get past the log in screen. Done. Then I installed SP3, the drivers, and got online to download the zillion updates it needed. After a few hours it was done, mostly. Microsoft Security Essentials, the free Microsoft antivirus software ( its actually pretty good ) said it wanted to be vadidated. So I did that, but its since asked to be validated every time I've booted the PC. And one of my printers wont work, crashes the spool and explorer every time I try to print. I've uninstalled the driver, cleaned it out of registry, reinstalled, but same problem. The other printer works fine  Both use USB, buggered if I know.
Moral of the story, dont use the repair function if you change your motherboard. It would be quicker to reinstall the OS from scratch, and more sucessfull. Glenn The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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| VK4AYQ Guru  Joined: 02/12/2009 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2539 |
I hate computers. Bob Foolin Around |
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sPuDd Senior Member  Joined: 10/07/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 251 |
Yep, if you change the Mobo you need to do a clean install or it will be flaky forever. A single card is OK, but the mobo is critical. Also, change that PSU or at least replace the electro's. It probably cooked the electro's on the first mobo. sPuDd.. It should work ...in theory |
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vasi Guru Joined: 23/03/2007 Location: RomaniaPosts: 1697 |
[quote=Glenn]the free Microsoft antivirus software ( its actually pretty good )[/quote] I know Microsoft Antivirus from MS-DOS 6.x times. Then they acquired RAV (Romanian AntiVirus) from GeCAD company. Now GeCAD is producing Axigen, a multiplatform email solution. Vasi Hobbit name: Togo Toadfoot of Frogmorton Elvish name: Mablung Miriel Beyound Arduino Lang |
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| Redman Regular Member  Joined: 12/06/2010 Location: AustraliaPosts: 41 |
A good way to check your PC health is to grab a Lilux Live CD and use the tools within. To run the CD you simply burn the image *ISO to a CD/DVD then pop it in the tray. Usually a pc will boot it strait up when you power on the PC. If not go into your bios settings and change the boot order to CD then HD Linux gives you a memory test kit which can test your memory modules for faults. Its the leading cause of failed systems other than the power supply. If not then boot into the OS *it runs from the CD not the HD so nothing is touched and use some of the tools within to snoop the the motherbaord and CPU. Usually the thing is fine aside from Memory then graphics cards. This is one of the more popular OSes for Linux. http://www.ubuntu.com/ I am using it now.. One thing about the Live CD, you can go into windows even when its dead and gather your stuff and save it while browsing the web...  |
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| vasi Guru Joined: 23/03/2007 Location: RomaniaPosts: 1697 |
I'm an old Linux user/programmer, since Slackware 3.0 and RedHat 2.4. Regarding to your last phrase... I did that recently, when updating from Ubuntu 9.10 to the Ubuntu LTS 10.04 and that trashed my boot zone for Vista (dual boot) with his new grub boot manager. It was impossible to boot anymore in Vista (yes, the entries in grub config file. were correct) so I had to make backups from Ubuntu and to reinstall Vista again. I consider this a bug from Ubuntu LTS 10.04 update (or the new version for grub because I had no problems form the previous one). Anyway, there is something very bad I observed on Linux SuSE 11.1 and any recent Ubuntu version installed on a laptop: - The laptop is getting fast very HOT, with the fan working at full speed all the time (except when it sleeps, of course). There are still many drivers made by hacking and reverse engineering. XP and Vista are a real blessing for laptops considering this. This mean long life to your laptop(notebook, netbook, etc.), and I'm not a fan of Windows. Also, I'm not against Windows. My reasons of going to Linux are different. Vasi Hobbit name: Togo Toadfoot of Frogmorton Elvish name: Mablung Miriel Beyound Arduino Lang |
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| Redman Regular Member Joined: 12/06/2010 Location: AustraliaPosts: 41 |
Try /var/logs There should be a recursive object being run in HAL. |
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