Oh no. My computer is hosed!

[Alphawolf]

I'm just not f'in happy since around 7PM yesterday.

Long story short- my AMD board got upset after I tried to install a USB wireless mouse and had to uninstall unknown hardware about 5 times.

I endabled PnP - YES in the BIOS.

This made XP find my video card again for some reason along with the mouse.

I had to keep using the keyboard to screw around with shit.

Nothing I did was gonna make the mouse work although XP found the mouse upon boot-up, it refused to take the drivers and remained a question mark in device manager...along with the video card.

So, I change back to my trusty PS2 mouse and reboot.

WinXP doesn't start. Not in any mode.

In SAFE MODE it stalls on amdagpxp.sys so something got f'd when uninstalling the 'video card' all those times along with the mouse.

Yeah- I tried every mode there is in XP to get some sign of life.

Nuthin'.

Oh, man. Well, I accepted I'd have to reinstall. Luckily I keep all my files/programs on a drive other than the OS drive and have a full partition of installtion software.

Good, right? Well, my floppy doesn't work. It's been busted like 2 yrs..when was the last time you used your floppy?



So, I find a bootable CD of Windows 2000 Pro with SP1. Cool.

I boot and it goes through stuff as normal. Then it is scanning the HD for a long time. I let it go 3 hours. Then I change the boot drive in the BIOS and run Windows 200 setup again. Let is scan the other smaller drive over night. Nothing happened.



Shit.

I sorta recall some weird stuff when I used partition magic a LONG time ago. I think the first few megs of the first bootable partition aren't available and that's why it has issues.

Well, I'm making a best guess.

At this point, I will make a partition magic CD bootable then screw around with that. Hoping that works.

If not. I have to go to another computer and take the floppy drive, tear mine out and open and stick in the other floppy and go from there.

The next few days will be a PITA.

And I was just about to start a new project too.

Maybe I'll be able to MAGICALLY boot XP now...well,, just 'cos.

Help me

See ya's sporadically.

[Alphawolf]

Too long, huh?

I'm still fucked. Thanks to Partition magic I know what it is.

Error 1516 - Partition improperly dismounted

Have a bunch of partitions and wiped out my C: partition which actually had little on it. Formatted it as FAT32.

Tried a dozen times to install Win2K Pro or WinXP Pro.

It has issues with the partition. Windows ME happily installed and is what I'm using now.

The dealio is that all my other partitions are in NTFS.

Windows 2000 and Windows XP have different versions of NTFS.

Tried updating Windows ME to Win2KPro and WinXP Pro to no avail. Even hiding all the error prone partitions doesn't really help it.

15 hours straight today. |pissed|

Basically, the only thing that can fix the other partitions is reformatting them. Or getting WinXP or Win2K installed and possibly running chkdsk /f if the system can see the other drives.

I have a bunch of crap to do before I can even start to do an actual reinstall.

[Fonz]

Doesn't sound so good

Reminds me to take another backup, last one was from 4 months ago...

I hope things work out for you Alpha

[kinimod]

I just had a 120 gig hard drive just die on my. 110 gigs used, 2 years of memories gone thanks to wester digital(i will never buy another wd drive) but luckily I was under warranty.

Good luck with your system

P.S. I haven't had a floppy in my system for about 3 years now.|afro|

[Alphawolf]

Was up till 4AM last night.

I couldn't get Win2K or WinXP to install no matter what onto a newly formatted C drive.

Even if I hide the partitions that have that error, it seems Win2K or WinXP scans everything and is to smart (?) to install.

I'm guessing the entire drive (both) needs to be clear of that error.

Windows 98 or ME will happily install onto the new partition. I tried installing a new version of 2K and XP so many times. Furthest along I ever got was when Win2K actually went to check disk space on C..
.
.
.
then sat there at 0 percent for 30 minutes. It froze.


I checked the newly formatted partition for errors and it has none. Didn't matter if it was formatted in FAT32 or NTSF...results were the same.

So, even AFTER you make space and get a new partition, you are still fucked.

Next step is to take my seconday drive and stick it in another computer as a secondary drive to see if WinXP can see the drives and if so back up some stuff then format the entire fookin' thing...the whole drive.

Unless it was a FULL backup of every partition on both drives, it wouldn't help.

I haven't had to do a reinstall on my PC since 9/11/2001 when I built my PC to take my mind of the terror attack.

|goodnight

[vmp22]

man i totally feel for you. i lost so much things from computer crashes over the years.

now i use vmware to create a virtual partition and backup that partition onto a dvd. now if my computer ever crashes again, i can restore my whole computer (with all the bios settings too!!) as is. no need to reinstall windows.

hope things work out for ya Alpha.

[Alphawolf]

Things are finally back on track.

Had to bring my hard drives to my Father's computer.

Hook up each drive one at a time as a secondary drive.

Then run chkdsk /f on each partition.

Then I ran Diskeeper's boot time defrag.

Then I ran Partition Magic to check for errors and the error was gone. All good.

Then I went into Partition magic and converted the NTFS partitions to FAT32.

I was able to click around my data when they were in my Father's system. It's all OK.

Drives are back in my system and Partition Magic is doing a few things. I'm putting the OS on the newer 120GB drive now and hooked up my 60GB drive as the secondary.



Now when Partition Magic is done doing it's magic (it's awesome btw- used it since v2 and never had an issue) I can actually start on my complete system reinstall.

At least I still have my system and programs partitions - should be able to import a lot of settings to the new install.

|drunk|

BTW, I came across the most amazing CD for you Wintel PC owners. I was lookin' to get a bootable Partition Magic CD...and in my search I came across a mention of a bootable CDROM that is a GODSEND if you system crashes:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&i...oot+cd&spell=1

It is a bootable CDROM with a menu to all sorts of proggies that will load to a RAMDISK. It's Verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry sweet.

BTW, if I never had Partition Magic, I'd have no clue what the problem was.

In a way- it's good to give the system an enema every couple years I suppose.

[powerstorm]

Originally posted by kinimod
I just had a 120 gig hard drive just die on my. 110 gigs used, 2 years of memories gone thanks to wester digital(i will never buy another wd drive) but luckily I was under warranty.

Good luck with your system

P.S. I haven't had a floppy in my system for about 3 years now.|afro|

man, i'm with ya there. I lost a 120GB maxtor not long ago. Lots of training, pron and memories. I think it's time to dig out my DLT Tape drive again.

Drizzt

[Alphawolf]

I just got my system fully loaded and working yesterday.

Man, what a hassle. All of it was my fault from the beginning.

Turns out...I just didn't let XP go long enough in SAFE MODE. I was too impatient and never needed XP in SAFE MODE before.

It just always pauses on amdagp.sys for about 4 minutes then loads the desktop.

Had I known that I never would have needed to reinstall everything and lose a bunch of stuff.

When I did try to reinstall and Win2k or WinXP wouldn't boot...again my fault.

I'm running a 2400XP which is 1 step up from official Epox board support.

I ended up puting in my 1.4Ghz Tbird to reinstall XP.

I used the same web forum as when I went to upgrade my system 13 months ago. www.amdmb.com

I came across a post OF MINE detailing how I learned one needs to disable SSED instructions in the BIOS in order to install or load WinXP / Win2K!

Ooops.

After installing the 1.4Ghz chip to install everything and learning the above (again).

....I put my 2400XP back in fully expecting the system to boot happily. Even put my side cover back on.

No video signal. |pissed|

Swapped vid cards- same shit.

OK. Went back to that web forum and printed everythign up from the Epox rep and a guy that knows his shit.

Printed up mobo manual with all jumper settings.

Yesterday AM I went over every jumper and switch setting. I had Memory and Vcore voltages a step up from when I screwed around trying to OC my 1.4

I put everything back to DEFAULT position. Here's the kicker- I musta installed the CPU late one night and when it booted at 1800 something Mhz I was just happy the CPU worked at all.

That's the way I had it for 13 months.

Well, I had the default setting for the switches REVERSED. I was running the CPU at 12.5 instead of 15x!

Well, put those switched to DEFAULT state. Cleared CMOS for good measure.

Expected to have probs so I was gonna write down voltages to post back at the web forum.

I push the button and BAM! 2000Mhz!



Go into the BIOS and configure things. Turn off SSED instructions.

Boot into Windows ME SAFE MODE.

Man that booted fast and no probs. I was getting GPF's in ME and STOP errors in XP indicating a faulty memory module. I ran memtest for 6 hours and it found no errors.

It was the tweaked voltages causing the probs.

Boot into Win XP Safe mode and just wait this time when it goes to load amdagp.sys and up comes the desktop.

Ran some disk utilities due to all the times it locked up and I had to power off.

Then boot to XP in normal mode. Woosh. Sucker booted quick. Still expecting to get a STOP error but everything just feels smooth and so I go about installing proggies and then rank diskeeper 8.2

Works great.

So, I never needed to reinstall Windows.



Had I been patient XP woulda come up in SAFE MODE and I'd be fine.

But, I gave my entire system a solid checkup and all my hardware is good.

Also, I'm now runnign the CPU I bought 13 months ago at full speed.

No need to upgrade nothin' until Doom 3 / Half Life 2 come out.

Computers are fun.

[Cleo]

Glad to hear that you got it up.

I've always wondered about something with Windows boot drives and backing them up.

On a Mac you can use a utility to clone the boot drive to another drive like a FireWire drive. Then if something happens to the boot drive the computer can be booted from the FireWire drive and it can then be cloned back so need to reinstall anything. I actually do this with my iPod when I go away so that I have a backup of my drive just in case.

Isn't there a way to do this with Windows?

[Surfn]

I know from my own experience that impatience has no vitue...still


I'm glad to see/hear your system is back up, betta than eva

[Alphawolf]

Originally posted by Cleo
Isn't there a way to do this with Windows?

Sure. GHOST being most popular.

I have it. You can span multiple CD's which I'd need to do.

Really, I'm sorta glad I lost a lot of shit. Just didn't need it.

I'm glad I hand wrote all my sponsors down on post-its. I also dragged all my confirmation e-mails into a word document then zipped it up and loaded it to a temp folder off one of my domains.

Man, I wanted to start the Sponsor Review project the NIGHT this 1st went down. We are talking since Wed the 14th I was working on this computer shit.

I was very close to ordering some new stuff from newegg.com Even have a wishlist made up. For just $500 and change I can get a sweet new system- board, vid card, serial HD, 1 512MB memory stick and a new CD/DVD recorder.

Thing is- I never had a computer problem I couldn't diagnose...ever.

It pissed me off I had all the utilities in the world to diagnose, but couldn't figure it out.

The tedious part is setting up all the proggies the way you like 'em.

Oh, well. It's a 'born again' 'puter.

[Alphawolf]

Originally posted by Surfn
I know from my own experience that impatience has no vitue...still


I'm glad to see/hear your system is back up, betta than eva

Man, you ain't kidding.

It's like when you are late to get somewhere and you feel all stressed and drive a bit more agressive than normal. Maybe go through that yellow light that has been up a bit...

You save like what- a minute or 2 - maybe 3, but you can DIE driving like that. Time is relative.

When WinXp SAFE MODE started and stopped on that line....drive light staying on solid...10 seconds felt like 10 hours.

The silver lining is that:

1) I cleaned off my desk as memeory test and disk tests were running.
2) I sorted through all my CDROMS and tossed the truly old crap.
3) Ran diagnostics on all hardware and know it is all good.
4) All sorts of crap I never really used but had installed anyway is gone.
5) Easy Recovery Pro found and saved a shitlload of .doc, ,xls, and .png files which is really what I needed to save.
6) CPU is running at full capacity finally.
7) Websites continue to run even if my PC doesn't.
8) Webmail comes with every account now and although it sucks to check and see 86 SPAMS and 1 legit...it is possible to do e-mail via any system connected to the 'net.
9) I learned no matter how much it pains me to write down all the programs I have burned to CDROm- it so worth it instead of just a generic label like 'backup f drive 2/04'
10) Made Firefox my default browser and only go into Explorer when I really need to.

The bummer stuff:

1) The only porn I ever paid for (which is just a few MPG's was lost.
2) Having to retrain my spam filter will take a while and all my Outlook rules are gone. Lots of the adult stuff that it marks as spam I need to check out 'cos it may be legit newsletters and so on...
3) Reconfiguring Dreamweaver and Fireworks to my liking is a hassle. The Plug-in's and extensions. Tedious.
4) Cookies and favorites all gone.

Oh, well. I needed a good purge anyways.

[hazel]

Sorry Alphawolf, you did say <b>XP</b> didn't you? There's a clue for you. I ditched that sucka application and went back to Win ME some time ago. It ain't perfect, but it does a job. That XP is far too big, does nothing worth while that earlier stuff didn't, and is full of holes, bugs and security leaks - plus it DOESN'T support half of the plug n plays it claims. It's total pants and just eats disk space

Dear Bill [Gates] give up while you still can - PLEASE!

[Alphawolf]

If you have a half good system with 512MB RAM XP should be far superior to ME which truly was crap.

I can dual boot to it if I wanted, but edited boot.ini to just boot straight to XP.

The way XP/2000/2003 handles memory is much better than 98 or ME.

But whatever works for ya...well, works for ya.

[hazel]

No offence intended, Alphawolf,

Yes I'm running a Win ME system which can only see up to 512k RAM. I only have a PII 400Mhz processor with a Hercules KyroII [64Meg] AGP board, a crappy old Diamond sound card and a rusty old 56k modem. Also have a total of 4Gigs IDE and 6Gig SCSI HD which is plenty for me

Difference is that this load of old junk does exactly what I want it to, as well and quickly as I want it to, without having to worry about thousands of a-holes wanting to crash my system [as with XP] just for a laugh six times a week

I don't play games or run fancy CAD utils, and therefor don't need a gazillion megs of memory or HD, can't use a 3Ghz processor [almost 50% faster data processing than my 400], don't need to employ the latest, smartest, can't work it out applications [like XP] which cause more problems than they solve, and can still produce web fodder to compete with many of the best [okay, I'm trying to]

No. It's personal preferrence in all areas. I can't live with watching for daily updates on the XP anti-virus page myself. I'm content to plod along with what works for me, as you surely are too

Anyway. I do sympathise with you. Have had an HD go POP! before now. All the best for the future

Hugs n Smoochies

Hazel

[Alphawolf]

Oh- I'm a geek and lost part of my life playing Half Life.

I understand fully though. I had XP on a PII 300Mhz. Pretty sluggish- even after doing all XP Tweaks possible.

The whole ordeal above was my fault.

It's all good now though.

[hazel]

Geek? Nah! I've done Half Life, Half Life: Opposing Forces and Half Life: Blueshift [the orange CD, the green and the blue]. Moved onto Earth 2150, Moon Project and the almost impossible one [can't remember the name of it]

Anyway. We both grew up and found this terrific world of adult webmastering [or am I just daft?]

Hazel