G
Gary B. Berns
I wanted to tell the group about a weird computer problem I am having
to see if anybody might have an idea.
My system is a 2.2 gig P4 with 512 meg of memory with an Asus
motherboard. Although the mb has internal video, I have a two year old
nvidia agp card installed. I run XP home edition.
About eight months or so ago I was having some problems and they went
away when I reset the memory chips. Since then everything has been
fine.
For backup I use Powerquest Drive Image 7.0 and backup to an external
USB hard drive. The image is created from within windows. To restore
you boot to the program cd which recognizes the external drive and
restore from there. The program is very similar to Ghost except for
the ability to image from within windows. It’s probably a dead program
now as Symantec has purchased Powerquest.
I had bought a utility suite and was having difficulty loading it and
thought it was probably a driver conflict somewhere. I decided to try
it in safe mode. Booted to safe mode and was interrupted before I did
the install. Had to get something on the web for my wife. Therefore
booted back into normal xp.
When I wanted to go back to safe mode I could not do it. After the
list of drivers loading went by, the screen flashed and went black.
Nothing happened after that. I therefore had the situation where I
could boot normally but not to safe mode.
No big deal I thought. I would do a system restore to two days before.
I put the Drive Image CD into the drive and rebooted only to have that
hang up two thirds of the way through. Where there should have been an
hour glass followed by a black screen immediately followed by a blue
screen with a message box, there was no hourglass, just a flash and
then a black screen. I could see the system talk to the floppy and
external drives and then all went silent.
This was similar to last years problem so I opened up the box and
reseated the memory. No help. In case it was the video card, I
switched back to the internal video on the mb, no help.
I spent 45 minutes on the phone with Symantec on their paid support
line but they did not charge me as they were completely baffled by the
situation. They even had me take the rescue cd to my neighbors house
to see if it worked there and it did.
I removed the hard drive and put in an old one which had xp on it and
it booted fine into normal mode but it would not go into safe mode
either.
Although the cd should be booting independently of anything on the
hard drive as it is made to clone to an empty drive, I even tried to
load it with no hard drive in the box to make sure the hard drive
wasn’t getting in its way. No change. That did rule out software as a
problem.
Well, I thought, that leaves the bios. I set that back to default
configuration. No change. Went to the Asus web site and got another
copy of it and flashed it over the top. No change.
At this point I am plumb out of ideas. My gut still says memory but I
reset the two cards, and even tried it with only one card in at a
time. I know its hardware as it happens with no hard drive in the
computer.
Today I put Ghost back on the computer and made a complete image in
case something is really going bad in there.
So that’s it. Computer is fine as long as don’t want to go to safe
mode or use Drive Image. Do not like this kind of mystery hardware
problem
Any thoughts?
Many thanks.
to see if anybody might have an idea.
My system is a 2.2 gig P4 with 512 meg of memory with an Asus
motherboard. Although the mb has internal video, I have a two year old
nvidia agp card installed. I run XP home edition.
About eight months or so ago I was having some problems and they went
away when I reset the memory chips. Since then everything has been
fine.
For backup I use Powerquest Drive Image 7.0 and backup to an external
USB hard drive. The image is created from within windows. To restore
you boot to the program cd which recognizes the external drive and
restore from there. The program is very similar to Ghost except for
the ability to image from within windows. It’s probably a dead program
now as Symantec has purchased Powerquest.
I had bought a utility suite and was having difficulty loading it and
thought it was probably a driver conflict somewhere. I decided to try
it in safe mode. Booted to safe mode and was interrupted before I did
the install. Had to get something on the web for my wife. Therefore
booted back into normal xp.
When I wanted to go back to safe mode I could not do it. After the
list of drivers loading went by, the screen flashed and went black.
Nothing happened after that. I therefore had the situation where I
could boot normally but not to safe mode.
No big deal I thought. I would do a system restore to two days before.
I put the Drive Image CD into the drive and rebooted only to have that
hang up two thirds of the way through. Where there should have been an
hour glass followed by a black screen immediately followed by a blue
screen with a message box, there was no hourglass, just a flash and
then a black screen. I could see the system talk to the floppy and
external drives and then all went silent.
This was similar to last years problem so I opened up the box and
reseated the memory. No help. In case it was the video card, I
switched back to the internal video on the mb, no help.
I spent 45 minutes on the phone with Symantec on their paid support
line but they did not charge me as they were completely baffled by the
situation. They even had me take the rescue cd to my neighbors house
to see if it worked there and it did.
I removed the hard drive and put in an old one which had xp on it and
it booted fine into normal mode but it would not go into safe mode
either.
Although the cd should be booting independently of anything on the
hard drive as it is made to clone to an empty drive, I even tried to
load it with no hard drive in the box to make sure the hard drive
wasn’t getting in its way. No change. That did rule out software as a
problem.
Well, I thought, that leaves the bios. I set that back to default
configuration. No change. Went to the Asus web site and got another
copy of it and flashed it over the top. No change.
At this point I am plumb out of ideas. My gut still says memory but I
reset the two cards, and even tried it with only one card in at a
time. I know its hardware as it happens with no hard drive in the
computer.
Today I put Ghost back on the computer and made a complete image in
case something is really going bad in there.
So that’s it. Computer is fine as long as don’t want to go to safe
mode or use Drive Image. Do not like this kind of mystery hardware
problem
Any thoughts?
Many thanks.