Well that seems like it's it, it's my P4 that's not working, no new pc until 2006

[Frank N. O.]

Me and Chey stayed up late and went thrue testing all old parts (old = the ones I bought last year at the same place that I planned on still using) namely the CPU and both RAM-blocks and with the old motherboard and graphicscard and psu that worked til the day I disassembled it there was still no video signal, there was the same whine/grinding high pitch low volume noise now identified to comming from around the cpu and it's cooler and the old psu also switched itself off after running the computer, sounding like it was in pain, for a while, but more than just 1 second mind you, and I've now tested both mb's, both graphics-cards, both psu's and we tested the ram both together and the two seperately alone and there was still the same result. This was the worst. A new P4 is a x64 and with cooler it costs 2000. A AMD San Diego 4000 that Chey recommended is 3000 and I simply don't have that and can't loan that, so the new mb will be returned for a refund, hopefully, and then I'll just have to wait.

And there's no damage visible to the cpu, everything seems to be working and fit without any pressure needed.

The email to the store got a reply and he said it sounds like I've tried it all and he couldn't tell further without getting the parts in for service, service, meaning I have to pay for it, great, but as said I'll try to get a refund.

Frank

[FIATLOVE]

The only time I experienced the same stuff you going trough now Frank, with my old pc (soon to be changed with the MONSTER) meeeeeeeeeeeeeep :-)
I am a MCSE and I did install the XP OS about 4 times before give up, for first time in my life I went to store, asked for support, said I was willing to spend money for the support if I did something wrong during install. (I did suspectg I did something wrong during my first install of a videocard with need of external power..), just like you explained in one of your posts.

It turned out to be the dual RAM not compatible with MB, even HWCL said so...
The shop refund me about 50 usd for my hours of hazzle, then installed the proper dual RAM into it for free, I even got a personal excause from MSI dev team by mail! (MSI motherboard HWCL failure)

I "bought" my new pc from that same store ;-)

Hope you find out of your probs somehow Frank, I guess you feel like living in a state of "pc-limbo" world :-((( I hope you fix those HW troubles soon!


Mads

[Chaul]

Sorry to hear about your troubles, Frank.

The only time I have had to take something for a replacement was when a graphics card suddenly lost signal after only a week of use. There was definitely no signal coming out and this was confirmed by the seller. I didn't get a refund but I did get it replaced with the same model with no extra charge.

Tuukka

[Frank N. O.]

Thanks guys. Not sure what will happend but the mb has at least been returned, but no word yet if they'll give me a refund. At least I'm distracted from that horrible night of the flu (I think) I had yesterday that actually topped the one I had just after we moved in which makes this the most pain and suffering I've ever felt in my life, it even made me cry out for my dad (who as you know died in the christmas of 1998). I've never felt shiver, musclespasms, pain in every joint and nerve, goosebumps, and painful freezing like that before, I blame this stupid un-insulated, in-accurately build place they call a home. When my mom described the place to the doctor he was shocked it wasn't made any better, it's only 15 years old, and his place is 150+

And this computer still crashes and can't pull IE windows very well, or any even remotely big videofiles like Jeff's videos so no fun at all. And no DVD-drive since I don't think it can run in win98 and the soundcard needs Win98SE at least anyway and no hdd space on this 1998 IBM hdd to upgrade to XP and I can't boot with this old machine with the 80gb Seagate (the one with the virus) at all, the BIOS doesn't even register it, even with the IBM unplugged, I wonder if the old ASUS P2B mb can at all read it, or maybe it's because it's a Ultra ATA btw? I think the IBM is a IDE. I just thought of this just now when I typed. Hmm I gotta ask Chey when she comes online again.

Frank

[FeZ]

I am not sure if I asked this before, but I do not understand why you did feel the need to get new hardware just because of a Virus/Trojan or whatever.

I heard of viruses that screw up the Motherboards BIOS but your problem does not seem to be that serious.

There is no virus I know off that could not be wiped with a fdisk/format or a low level format of the drive.

If you are worried about the data on the drive there are several ways to retrieve them, even if they are on NTFS partitions. I would be a bit worried to access this drive in a live windows environment anyway even if it is not the boot device.

Anyway good luck on fixing it :Peace:

[Frank N. O.]

Hi Frank, well actually it's more several things happening around the same time (which is normal for other things too like the things bothering me and my mom, it's a collection of things that intensify each other at the same time, not just one thing).

A few weeks ago I'd saved up money to buy a Mondeo seat and two pedals to mount so I could drive with the DFP wheel more comfortably as well as precisely and Corrado and his father-in-law (who bought Corrado's 98 Mondeo recently) were so friendly to measure up the driving position and take good reference-pictures for me for the project that really looked plausible like no project before it, except for one thing, the only dependable quality used-parts place I found no longer had a stock of the parts.

I got rFactor and when I run it at higher quality it's a bit slow, and then Most Wanted was jerky and only part of that turned out to be the dumb constant motion-blur, in fact the fps varied like waves at 15-20 fps were FS2004 had been smooth at just 10-12 fps so something wasn't right. All in all after talking with some of you I found out it was my old graphicscard that was a bottleneck and a new one would fit the bill while the rest of my computer was still just fine but since my old card was a AGP and the only good ones in stores I knew here were PCI-E I had to get a new mb so I could run PCI-E but keep my cpu and ram. Then the virus struck and my dd with gb's of info, much of it irreplaceable creations, wasn't back-ed up and my hdd was running out of space, and had gotten some damaged sectors so I decided on getting a new SATA hdd with more storage space as well, and then get XP Pro UK OS instead of my upgraded danish XP Home because I qualify for OEM software with the hdd and I was only going to use it on that machine anyway.

I bought it all at once since I was looking at a new install for with new drivers and new partions for the hdd and it was easiest to do at once, both OS, hdd and graphicscard and then hopefully I could get my old files scanned and over on my new hdd by coupling the old hdd as slave and booting up on the new one, maybe, I still have to check some details with that to be sure no virus programs get activated.

Then somewhere between uninstalling the CPU from the 1 year old AGP mb to the new PCI-E mb the CPU ceased to function and only after testing it on the old mb and swapping ram-blocks with the help from Chey online did I confirm the only common denominator in this fault was the cpu so I had to get a new one but they were a bit expensive and then I thought, is it really worth the money to buy another one only marginally more powerful? Mb's cost the same and I could return this, so I chose a AMD Athlon 64 San Diego 4000+ CPU and that's what I'm hoping to get sometime. I returned the mb for a refund but no word yet and they should've gotten it friday but they're closed the whole weekend so it'll be a long wait.

That's why I updated my hardware at the same time, it was a lot plans that got pushed forward ahead of schedule to make the whole system restoring and upgrade easier and more effective at once.

Hope you understand now, it's a bit complicated, as is most of my world although it doesn't always sound like it.
Frank

[FeZ]

Ah ok, that makes kind of sense.

I am a bit in the same situation that I would need a full PCI-E upgrade. But so far even GT Legends runs ok and I have already lost interest in Most Wanted (which run on low settings) so I have again further postponed an upgrade ;) .

[Frank N. O.]

Funny you should mention GTL, because that didn't run very fast on higher settings for me either (like Most Wanted and rFactor) however with StarForce crashing my system on a random basis and even worse, a lack of any feel of what the cars are doing (in the demo) then I have no intention of buying it, even when/if it comes in the cheap pile. Besides I got a router and DVD-burner to get, after I pay off the loans, and then I got some other stuff I need to get working on.

I just hope I can salvage at least my photos and videos that I don't have any back-up off. I can maybe find car-pictures and video-clips but the home-made ones are irreplaceable, and I put a lot of work in my housemodel too but luckily that's a tiny little C4D mesh file.

Glad I could explain the situation to you because I'm still under the weather here, it's darn near freezing here and I had to get out from bed and right into it to drive my mom to the garbage-dump, at least it's been two months since last and we got a ton of good grocery shopping done the two last days, that helps to save money to pay off the loan, and to make sure we don't need to drive in christmas rush traffic.

Frank

[Frank N. O.]

Well the doctor didn't sound very interested nor impressed by my recent medical history but I got an apointment thursday at least.

On a better note, they have recieved my mb so I guess I'm getting a refund, or rather a deduction in the cost of a new pc and suitable mb that I ordered after my mom offered to dig deeper into the reserve cash since I'm good for it and it was a really good worthwile purchase that wouldn't become obsolete in a few months. He said they'd send it today which means it might be here tomorrow and the packagepost is very early, 10 am at the latest normally :D

Frank