Technical Malfunctions
I have come to the conclusion that I have a bona-fide love-hate relationship with computers. I can happily spend hours sat behind one, yet mine in particular seems to be set against working properly.
It started about a month or so ago when, after finally getting tired of some niggling system errors that I put down to software rot and a too-small drive partition for the OS, I decided to reinstall Windows. Since then it's been a downward slope involving frequent errors, random resets, an inability of half my programs to function and quite a bit of data loss (many thanks to Graeme's portable USB hard drive for staving off the worst of this). The errors seemed to point towards the HDD being corrupted, and due to the fact that a repartition, reformat and reinstall hadn't solved the issue (in fact they seemingly accelerated the rate at which I got errors) I figured it was time to bite the bullet and spend some money on new hardware.
So I bought a nice big 250GB drive that I'd been drooling over for months, installed it and started the great system transfer. Of course, I'm still getting all the errors- it wouldn't have been that simple, now would it?
So I started running a few more tests. I re-enabled the BSoD (for those that don't know, WinXP's standard response to a fatal error is to restart; you can re-enable the debug screen in System Properties > Advanced > Startup & Recovery, just untick the restart automatically option) and started googling error codes. So far I've had driver failures, IRQ conflicts, file system corruptions and memory issues, and never the same message twice. I'm convinced it's a hardware problem, but it's definitely not the HDD. That leaves the memory, motherboard, CPU, graphics card, DVD drive and power supply.
I'm convinced it's not the PSU, as if the PC wasn't getting enough power to run BitTorrent then I doubt it'd run anything at all. I can't see these sorts or error coming from a DVD drive either, which leaves CPU, GPU, memory and mobo, coincidentally all the bits I'd have to replace to upgrade my PC.
So I've decided to change my upgrade plan. The original idea was to build a whole new PC in a uATX case, keeping the current system for downloads, game servers and general workhorsing. Now, to save cash it looks like the two-PCs plan is going to be scrapped in favour of simply renovating the one I've got. After all, I have a serviceable case, PSU, HDD and DVD burner, I may as well keep using them in anger.
I've made the first step today and ordered new memory- 2GB of GeIL DDR400 RAM in a dual-channel set. It's not quite as storming as the memory I've got, but as there's twice as much of it (and better-arranged) I can't see it causing any bottlenecking problems, and at present stability is more important than speed. I've no intention to overclock anyway- I'm not doing so at the moment, why start now?
The rest of the upgrade parts- a new mobo, processor, graphics card and CPU cooler- really need to come as a set, because I won't be able to use any of it before the lot is here anyway. I reckon it'll take two or three months to save up for it, and if the memory solves the stability issues the wait shouldn't be too bad. In any case, Oblivion should be here this weekend, and if I have a stable PC to run it on, albeit at minimum spec, I guess I can keep myself entertained until the big upgrade.
Countdown: 24 Days until next NL Holiday. :D
It started about a month or so ago when, after finally getting tired of some niggling system errors that I put down to software rot and a too-small drive partition for the OS, I decided to reinstall Windows. Since then it's been a downward slope involving frequent errors, random resets, an inability of half my programs to function and quite a bit of data loss (many thanks to Graeme's portable USB hard drive for staving off the worst of this). The errors seemed to point towards the HDD being corrupted, and due to the fact that a repartition, reformat and reinstall hadn't solved the issue (in fact they seemingly accelerated the rate at which I got errors) I figured it was time to bite the bullet and spend some money on new hardware.
So I bought a nice big 250GB drive that I'd been drooling over for months, installed it and started the great system transfer. Of course, I'm still getting all the errors- it wouldn't have been that simple, now would it?
So I started running a few more tests. I re-enabled the BSoD (for those that don't know, WinXP's standard response to a fatal error is to restart; you can re-enable the debug screen in System Properties > Advanced > Startup & Recovery, just untick the restart automatically option) and started googling error codes. So far I've had driver failures, IRQ conflicts, file system corruptions and memory issues, and never the same message twice. I'm convinced it's a hardware problem, but it's definitely not the HDD. That leaves the memory, motherboard, CPU, graphics card, DVD drive and power supply.
I'm convinced it's not the PSU, as if the PC wasn't getting enough power to run BitTorrent then I doubt it'd run anything at all. I can't see these sorts or error coming from a DVD drive either, which leaves CPU, GPU, memory and mobo, coincidentally all the bits I'd have to replace to upgrade my PC.
So I've decided to change my upgrade plan. The original idea was to build a whole new PC in a uATX case, keeping the current system for downloads, game servers and general workhorsing. Now, to save cash it looks like the two-PCs plan is going to be scrapped in favour of simply renovating the one I've got. After all, I have a serviceable case, PSU, HDD and DVD burner, I may as well keep using them in anger.
I've made the first step today and ordered new memory- 2GB of GeIL DDR400 RAM in a dual-channel set. It's not quite as storming as the memory I've got, but as there's twice as much of it (and better-arranged) I can't see it causing any bottlenecking problems, and at present stability is more important than speed. I've no intention to overclock anyway- I'm not doing so at the moment, why start now?
The rest of the upgrade parts- a new mobo, processor, graphics card and CPU cooler- really need to come as a set, because I won't be able to use any of it before the lot is here anyway. I reckon it'll take two or three months to save up for it, and if the memory solves the stability issues the wait shouldn't be too bad. In any case, Oblivion should be here this weekend, and if I have a stable PC to run it on, albeit at minimum spec, I guess I can keep myself entertained until the big upgrade.
Countdown: 24 Days until next NL Holiday. :D
posted by Union Jackal at 12:25 pm
1 Comments:
Well, so far I've replaced both the HDD and the RAM (both of which probably needed doing in any case), and I'm still getting stop errors. It seems to mainly be when doing something hardware-intensive- Google Earth, any game etc. Given the errors I've been getting, I think the fault lies either on the graphics card or the motherboard, which complicates matters a little.
I've been looking at replacing my old GPU for a while, and wouldn't grieve much if I had to come the next paycheque. The catch is that my current system is Socket-A and AGP, meaning if I did upgrade the graphics card and then find out that it's the mobo or CPU that's at fault I'd have to buy yet another GPU on top of mobo and CPU.
I think over the next week, seeing as I don't have any games on-system in any case, I'll try going back to my GeForce2. If that remains stable for a week, I'll know it's the GPU. If the problem continues, I'm proper FUBAR- being without a functional gaming PC is probably going to drive me (more) insane... At least it'll probably mean I either start reading again or get some use out of the XBox...
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