Hardware error, but what?

  • Thread starter Thread starter JGL
  • Start date Start date
J

JGL

My son's 2 year old pc was relatively trouble free until about a week
ago.

It was running Win98 and monday morning the system failed to boot to
windows. I chose to fdisk, delete all partitions, repartition and format
the drive and try a fresh install of Win98se. This ran smoothly until I
started to add the additional PCI cards (network, modem & soundcard). The
system immediately started to give registry errors on restart, running
scanreg and restoring back to the 'windows is running for the 1st time'
stage.

All fans are working. I have replaced the system battery, reset the BIOS
and suspecting a memory failure I have swapped out the 256MB of memory. I
then reformatted but now I receive a number of hard drive errors with
sectors being recovered and the summary page showing ~4MB of the 40GB
hard drive being 'bad sectors'. WIn98 installs but I get the same looping
of scanreg on startup after adding the additional PCI cards.

This is obviously a hardware problem but what? - Errors point to memory
but I have swapped this. Is it likely to be motherboard or a failing hard
drive?

specs:

Elite K7S5A skt A SIS Mobo
256MB of PC2100 DDR 266 DIMM
Athlon 1.4Ghz 266266 FSB Skt A CPU
Nvidia 64MB Geforce 2MX200 graphics card.
Fujitsu 40GB harddrive.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Regards

Jim
 
My son's 2 year old pc was relatively trouble free until about a week
ago.

It was running Win98 and monday morning the system failed to boot to
windows. I chose to fdisk, delete all partitions, repartition and format
the drive and try a fresh install of Win98se. This ran smoothly until I
started to add the additional PCI cards (network, modem & soundcard). The
system immediately started to give registry errors on restart, running
scanreg and restoring back to the 'windows is running for the 1st time'
stage.

All fans are working. I have replaced the system battery, reset the BIOS
and suspecting a memory failure I have swapped out the 256MB of memory. I
then reformatted but now I receive a number of hard drive errors with
sectors being recovered and the summary page showing ~4MB of the 40GB
hard drive being 'bad sectors'. WIn98 installs but I get the same looping
of scanreg on startup after adding the additional PCI cards.

This is obviously a hardware problem but what? - Errors point to memory
but I have swapped this. Is it likely to be motherboard or a failing hard
drive?

specs:

Elite K7S5A skt A SIS Mobo
256MB of PC2100 DDR 266 DIMM
Athlon 1.4Ghz 266266 FSB Skt A CPU
Nvidia 64MB Geforce 2MX200 graphics card.
Fujitsu 40GB harddrive.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Regards

Jim
Click to expand...

I would suspect either failed capacitors to the left of the CPU socket
or an inadequate power supply. Those capacitors "usually" will look
vented, domed or leaky if they're the problem.

You might try underclocking the CPU, swapping in a different video
card if one is available to reduce power consumption from the
motherboard as well as the PSU. If you have a voltage meter you might
take voltage readings at a power plug (Or motherboard plug for 3.3V),
but ignore any odd-spec readings on -5 or -12V, as they'r often wildly
off on a modern PC that doens't use these rails. If you don't have a
voltage meter then the motherboard BIOS voltage monitor is a poor
substitute but certainly better than nothing.

You might also create a bootlog to see where problems start, but this
seems more random than that.


Dave
 
JGL said:
My son's 2 year old pc was relatively trouble free until about a week
ago.

It was running Win98 and monday morning the system failed to boot to
windows. I chose to fdisk, delete all partitions, repartition and format
the drive and try a fresh install of Win98se. This ran smoothly until I
started to add the additional PCI cards (network, modem & soundcard). The
system immediately started to give registry errors on restart, running
scanreg and restoring back to the 'windows is running for the 1st time'
stage.

All fans are working. I have replaced the system battery, reset the BIOS
and suspecting a memory failure I have swapped out the 256MB of memory. I
then reformatted but now I receive a number of hard drive errors with
sectors being recovered and the summary page showing ~4MB of the 40GB
hard drive being 'bad sectors'. WIn98 installs but I get the same looping
of scanreg on startup after adding the additional PCI cards.

This is obviously a hardware problem but what? - Errors point to memory
but I have swapped this. Is it likely to be motherboard or a failing hard
drive?

specs:

Elite K7S5A skt A SIS Mobo
256MB of PC2100 DDR 266 DIMM
Athlon 1.4Ghz 266266 FSB Skt A CPU
Nvidia 64MB Geforce 2MX200 graphics card.
Fujitsu 40GB harddrive.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Regards

Jim
Click to expand...

The indication of bad sectors on the HD is not a good omen. This is
normally indicative of a failing HD and it can cause you many erratic
errors such as you have experienced. I would try a different HD if it
were me. If you think the HD is too new to have failed, run a check of
the drive for a boot sector virus.

Ken
 
Try taking the cards out :)
You may find that you need to find a different driver for one of your
devices. Also, check for a DMA conflict between your hard drive and your
sound card.
 
I would suspect either failed capacitors to the left of the CPU socket
or an inadequate power supply. Those capacitors "usually" will look
vented, domed or leaky if they're the problem.

You might try underclocking the CPU, swapping in a different video
card if one is available to reduce power consumption from the
motherboard as well as the PSU. If you have a voltage meter you might
take voltage readings at a power plug (Or motherboard plug for 3.3V),
but ignore any odd-spec readings on -5 or -12V, as they'r often wildly
off on a modern PC that doens't use these rails. If you don't have a
voltage meter then the motherboard BIOS voltage monitor is a poor
substitute but certainly better than nothing.

You might also create a bootlog to see where problems start, but this
seems more random than that.


Dave
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply Dave.
The capacitors look fine.
I have tried swapping the video card to a lower spec but to no avail.
As I don't have a volt meter, I swapped out the power supply. Again no
effect. BIOS voltage monitor showing everything OK.

I will try another install and see if I can get as far as a bootlog!
 
The indication of bad sectors on the HD is not a good omen. This
is
normally indicative of a failing HD and it can cause you many erratic
errors such as you have experienced. I would try a different HD if it
were me. If you think the HD is too new to have failed, run a check
of the drive for a boot sector virus.

Ken
Click to expand...

Thanks Ken, Have scanned for viruses. I suspect a failing harddrive but
unsure if there is an underlying cause.

regards

Jim
 
Just saw this thread.

Few things it may be...

- Bad IDE cable. Take the IDE cable for your CDRom and try that on
the HDD.
- Bad IDE controller. Put the HDD on the second IDE controller and
leave the first empty
- Bad powersupply. Got another to swap with? Multimeter may help.
- Bad memory. If you have more than one piece, pull the extras. Swap
them and if the problem goes away you found the issue.
- Bad HDD. Got another you can swap with - or another PC to mount
this drive in?
- Almost any other component failing will do this as well... time to
start swapping bits! : )
 
Thanks for the reply.
I have removed all cards but Video. It is when I start to add the cards
back in the faults start to appear.

regards

Jim
Click to expand...

You might see if it'll boot to safe mode, which would usually indicate
a driver or OS problem. Of course the bootlog might be revealing too.

Try isolating which added card causes the problem, confirming that it
IS just that one card, not just the added load of several of them, by
then removing that single card and installing everything else.


Dave
 
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