Windows could not start

hundredk

spud17 wrote: »

Don't know what to suggest, but I'd say 48deg is pretty warm, even with my old [STRIKE]radiator[/STRIKE] Athlon which ran at 55°C+, the HD ran at 30°C.

Just done a quick calculation, the failed 7yo Toshiba HD that I mentioned, shows 209 days (5016 hrs)in Ubuntus Disk Utility.

Thanks. I have no baseline to compare because I have only used this utility since I have had problems and may be my perception that it is hotter because I am looking and listening for fan etc. AS I said the hours did suprise me and in a way, lead me to thinking the problem was with HD's but not sure now.

I am also wondering if it could be the graphics card [intermittantly and now permanently] failing, and after the PC hasn't appeared to load the hard resets have caused chkdsk, boot and other errors?

hundredk

Bump.

Can anyone give symptoms of a failing/failed graphics card?

puppet1984

no display on monitor?
as you have 2 drives on the pc have you tried with both drives out and just using the smaller drive to boot then see if the problem persists.

hundredk

puppet1984 wrote: »

no display on monitor?

No display, and that's my logic for thinking it's the graphics card....but then others may say it could be something else. I have tried booting without the graphics card in at all to see if the clicking noise stops - it doesn't

puppet1984 wrote: »

as you have 2 drives on the pc have you tried with both drives out and just using the smaller drive to boot then see if the problem persists.

I haven't booted with the smaller drive, but I have now tried the hard disc in another PC and it boots up fine so I think that eliminates the hard drives (the other drive is incidental and just has data on it and same symptoms with that one disconnected).

jbreckmckye

Sounds more like a motherboard or BIOS issue. The fact that the BIOS checksum doesn't work out should really be ringing alarm bells. Checksum will be worked out before the bootloader comes into play, I should think, so hard drive issues probably wouldn't cause the problem. A crippled BIOS will have a great deal of trouble dealing with the HDD, not least if it's started to 'forget' sector numbers etc.

Tell me: did the machine refer to a BIOS or CMOS checksum error?

* Info: a checksum is a way of verifying data. Imagine that I took a checksum of a sentence by adding the 'numbers' of each letter together, and multiplying by the length of the sentence. Then, I posted the sentence, and the checksum. Whoever reads my sentence and has the checksum will tell if my words are corrupted, typo'd or whatever. Similar with software checksums.

hundredk

jbreckmckye wrote: »

Tell me: did the machine refer to a BIOS or CMOS checksum error?

Yes it did.


My problem is I have had varying symptoms over about a month to the point it is now; IIRC, something like this occuring roughly in this order.

1. Windows could not start....select mode to start...safe mode etc (15 times)
2. chkdsk error at start up (10 times)
3. Checksum error at start up (4 or 5 times)
4. Hanging when strted up (7 or 8 times)
5. Fizzing noise from base unit causing screen to flicker (2 times)
6. Fizzing noise from base unit causing screen to go off (once)
7. Clicking/tick noise in base unit causing LED "power on" light to flicker with each click

During 1-4 I have done full restore successfully about 5 or 6 times. After each restore the system behaved perfectly for a short time after and would reboot to update SP's etc and reboot 2 or 3 times straight after, then left a couple of days would revert to problems 1-4.:(

jbreckmckye

hundredk wrote: »

Yes it did.

Actually, I meant, 'which one'. But this is still interesting.

When booting, try going into the BIOS. You could look for data about the hard drive - for instance, the number of sectors, cylinders and plates, and seeing if this information matches what you know about the disk / the BIOS on the other machine says about the HDD. If there's an issue here, you may have identified your problem. If the BIOS doesn't know the physical attributes of the disk, the machine will have trouble accessing. I imagine that similar data is stored on the header of the NTFS partition, so the discrepancy would initiated a chkdisk, as the most likely assumption would be that the filesystem was borked.

My problem is I have had varying symptoms over about a month to the point it is now; IIRC, something like this occuring roughly in this order.

1. Windows could not start....select mode to start...safe mode etc (15 times)
2. chkdsk error at start up (10 times)
3. Checksum error at start up (4 or 5 times)
4. Hanging when strted up (7 or 8 times)
5. Fizzing noise from base unit causing screen to flicker (2 times)
6. Fizzing noise from base unit causing screen to go off (once)
7. Clicking/tick noise in base unit causing LED "power on" light to flicker with each click

During 1-4 I have done full restore successfully about 5 or 6 times. After each restore the system behaved perfectly for a short time after and would reboot to update SP's etc and reboot 2 or 3 times straight after, then left a couple of days would revert to problems 1-4.:(

Those last issues sound more like problems with the power supply. Could power issues cause the others? Surges / low-voltages / shortings etc? It's not beyond the realms of possibility. When you opened up the machine, did the unit look okay?

Intermittent lockups would be consistent with failures to power RAM, I suppose. It's worth a check, because a dodgy power supply is as much a threat to safety as to your Happy Computing Experience (TM).

hundredk

jbreckmckye wrote: »

Actually, I meant, 'which one'. But this is still interesting.

When booting, try going into the BIOS. You could look for data about the hard drive - for instance, the number of sectors, cylinders and plates, and seeing if this information matches what you know about the disk / the BIOS on the other machine says about the HDD. If there's an issue here, you may have identified your problem. If the BIOS doesn't know the physical attributes of the disk, the machine will have trouble accessing. I imagine that similar data is stored on the header of the NTFS partition, so the discrepancy would initiated a chkdisk, as the most likely assumption would be that the filesystem was borked.



Those last issues sound more like problems with the power supply. Could power issues cause the others? Surges / low-voltages / shortings etc? It's not beyond the realms of possibility. When you opened up the machine, did the unit look okay?

Intermittent lockups would be consistent with failures to power RAM, I suppose. It's worth a check, because a dodgy power supply is as much a threat to safety as to your Happy Computing Experience (TM).

All the problems only occur when using the XP PC with the problem. I have as far as possible tried to eliminate components fitting them into another PC, to identify the problem or eliminate the component as the cause. I have done this with HD's, RAM, CMOS battery. I have also stripped out all the components, took the motherboard out and looked for signs of damage but non evident.

After putting it back together the display now works and, on booting it goes through continual cycle of cannot start with options to start in other modes - and will now boot in safe mode.

Had a look at some of the bios settings but not sure what to look for..it would appear that applying failsafe settings and/or default may have done something?

jbreckmckye

If power and CMOS battery are not issues, I would verify that the BIOS settings match the physical attributes of the HDD and that the Windows bootloader (see BOOT.INI) is correctly configured.