Puzzling Problems -- Pulling Hair

[The Mighty Favog]

So many things are going wrong, I'm not sure where's the best place to
start asking for help. Bear with me:

This past summer I built a new system:

Motherboard: ASUS P5K DELUXE/WIFI-AP LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache
LGA 775
Memory: Crucial 2GB kit (1GBx2), Ballistix 240-pin DIMM, DDR2
PC2-8500
Video Card: SAPPHIRE 100210L Radeon HD 2600XT 256MB 128-bit GDDR4 PCI
Express x16
Power Supply: PC Power and Cooling ULTRA-QUIET PSU: SILENCER(R) 610
EPS12V
Video capture: ATI VisionTek TV Wonder PCI Express (added within the
past month)
Storage: Four 500 gigabyte hard drives -- three Western Digital and
one Maxtor.

I'm running a triple-boot configuration with these OSs in separate
partitions on a single 500 gigabyte drive:

C: WinXP
D: Vista
E: WinXP testbed (a small partition where I try out things before
installing them on C

Until recently everything's been working just great. Then two or
three weeks ago I began to get an error message at WinXP shutdown.
Something like "The instruction at 0x66903f88 the memory could not be
written at 0x66903f88" along with a critical stop sound. Didn't
happen all the time at shutdown, but pretty often. Then a few days
ago I was online and I heard a "click" and the system rebooted. Right
out of nowhere. Then, when XP loaded again, I saw this error:
"Catalyst control center monitoring program has encountered a problem
and needs to close." When I closed that window, I saw this message:
"Catalyst control center host application has encountered a problem
and needs to close."

Weird. So I decided to try Vista, which I seldom do anymore since
first playing with it, because XP is just easier to use and more of my
software works with it. But when Vista loaded, my beautiful Dreamscene
desktop waterfall appeared for a second and then the desktop went to
black. And then I got an error message saying Windows Explorer had
stopped working. Then another message saying Windows Explorer was
restarting. Then another message saying it had stopped working. And
on and on. I also got a message saying I had no ATI drivers. I also
found the Aero scheme wasn't available to load.

Weird. But I had a backup of the Vista partition, so I started Ghost
from the WinXP testbed partition and tried to put a known working
version of the Vista partition in place. Ghost failed. Now this was
getting really strange. I'd done this before several times with no
problems. So what was going on?

I noticed that the Vista partition had lost its D: drive designation.
So I used the drive manager to give the partition its D: back and I
reformatted it. Then I tried loading the Ghost backup of the Vista
partition and it worked. But when I ran Vista, it would load but all
the previous problems reappeared.

So I disconnected all four of my hard drives, took a perfectly good
previously used 120 gigabyte IDE hard drive out of a drawer, and
hooked it up. I partitioned it into two equal-size partitions and
loaded Windows XP onto the first. It loaded OK -- there was one
problem when it said it couldn't find a file on the WinXP disk, but
then it seemed to find it after a few tries and went on. I fully
updated WinXP online -- SP2 and everything. But it won't load
Internet Explorer 7 no matter what I try. Seems to load fine, but
then XP announces it failed to load.

Then I installed Vista on the second partition. Big failure. It
seems to have loaded properly, but when it tries to start all I ever
see are the little horizontally moving green blocks. When they close
and Vista says it's about to run for the first time, I hear a click
and the system reboots. I am offered the opportunity to start it in
safe mode, but even then, just when the Vista wallpaper is supposed to
load, the system reboots.

I've loaded the newest version of ATI's Catalyst Control Center into
the new WinXP installation. When I started WinXP to type this
message, I got the old "Catalyst control center monitoring program has
encountered a problem and needs to close" and "Catalyst control center
host application has encountered a problem and needs to close"
messages. And this, mind you, is on a FRESH installation of WinXP on
a different physical hard drive.

I've removed the TV Wonder from the system. I've removed all four 500
gigabyte hard drives from the system. And still it's flaky.

So ... I'm guessing I have a hardware problem. The power supply?
Memory? Or, what I think is the likely culprit, the Radeon video card
itself?

Ideas, anyone? I hate to go over to Best Buy to get a new video card,
but I may just give it a shot. BTW, the first time I tried to type
this message, the computer rebooted and I lost what I'd typed. Very
annoying. Help, please.

--
Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Favog
If you want to send a private email, pls use billanderson601@yahoo.com

 

[Mr. Arnold]

"The Mighty Favog" <billanderson@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:0c0e16c9-dc44-4a9f-8ddb-ca3b6c89a629@e1g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...
>
>
<snipped War and Peace>

> Ideas, anyone? I hate to go over to Best Buy to get a new video card,
> but I may just give it a shot. BTW, the first time I tried to type
> this message, the computer rebooted and I lost what I'd typed. Very
> annoying. Help, please.
>

It seems as though you have equipment issues and you should follow that
angle.

 

[DanS]

> So I disconnected all four of my hard drives, took a perfectly good
> previously used 120 gigabyte IDE hard drive out of a drawer, and
> hooked it up. I partitioned it into two equal-size partitions and
> loaded Windows XP onto the first. It loaded OK -- there was one
> problem when it said it couldn't find a file on the WinXP disk, but
> then it seemed to find it after a few tries and went on.

Big clue in the last sentence. I've seen this twice. There is a hardware
issue. The first piece to look at is RAM. Both of the times this had
happened it was a bad stick or RAM. One was Server 2K3 and the other was
XP.

Try removing the sticks one-at-a-time and restoring your known good Vista
image to find the bad stick. Who knows what could have happened in the
install phases of any OS with bad RAM.

 

[the wharf rat]

>> Ideas, anyone? I hate to go over to Best Buy to get a new video card,
>> but I may just give it a shot. BTW, the first time I tried to type
>
>It seems as though you have equipment issues and you should follow that
>angle.
>

Sounds like power to me. That's an often overlooked aspect of
system building.

 

[Bill Anderson]

DanS wrote:
>> So I disconnected all four of my hard drives, took a perfectly good
>> previously used 120 gigabyte IDE hard drive out of a drawer, and
>> hooked it up. I partitioned it into two equal-size partitions and
>> loaded Windows XP onto the first. It loaded OK -- there was one
>> problem when it said it couldn't find a file on the WinXP disk, but
>> then it seemed to find it after a few tries and went on.
>
> Big clue in the last sentence. I've seen this twice. There is a hardware
> issue. The first piece to look at is RAM. Both of the times this had
> happened it was a bad stick or RAM. One was Server 2K3 and the other was
> XP.
>
> Try removing the sticks one-at-a-time and restoring your known good Vista
> image to find the bad stick. Who knows what could have happened in the
> install phases of any OS with bad RAM.

Thanks to you, DanS, and to Mr. Arnold and the Wharf Rat. The problem
is solved -- at least I think so. I am typing this from a
newly-reinstalled Vista partition, which I was beginning to think would
be impossible. My system seems to be working fine again. So how did I
get to this point?

I tried testing the memory with freeware Memtest 86, but it didn't do me
any good -- it gave the same results no matter which memory stick I had
installed, and I really couldn't figure out what it was saying to me
about the memory. It may be a good program for experts, but it didn't
seem user friendly to me. But while researching Memtest 86, I came
across another memory test program called Docmemory. For me at least it
was more user friendly. I removed one of my two 1-gig memory sticks and
ran it and the stick passed all tests four times. It was starting on
its fifth round of tests when I shut it down and switched memory sticks.
This time it found about 10,000 errors in the first ten seconds. I
didn't believe it, so I switched the sticks back and forth a few more
times just to see. Sure enough, I had one bad stick. Well, they are
1-gig sticks and both XP and Vista will run fine with 1-gig, so all
seems OK for now. I am about to contact Crucial to see about returning
the bad stick. Many thanks for your help. Who knows, I may be able to
put everything back the way it was without spending any money. You
people who can diagnose a problem like this from just my initial summary
really amaze me.

--
Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Favog

 

[DanS]

Bill Anderson <billanderson601@yahoo.com> wrote in
news:JIWdnZnU3qZcqcbanZ2dnUVZ_gadnZ2d@rcn.net:

> DanS wrote:
>>> So I disconnected all four of my hard drives, took a perfectly good
>>> previously used 120 gigabyte IDE hard drive out of a drawer, and
>>> hooked it up. I partitioned it into two equal-size partitions and
>>> loaded Windows XP onto the first. It loaded OK -- there was one
>>> problem when it said it couldn't find a file on the WinXP disk, but
>>> then it seemed to find it after a few tries and went on.
>>
>> Big clue in the last sentence. I've seen this twice. There is a
>> hardware issue. The first piece to look at is RAM. Both of the times
>> this had happened it was a bad stick or RAM. One was Server 2K3 and
>> the other was XP.
>>

<SNIP>

> This time it found about 10,000 errors in the first ten seconds. I
> didn't believe it, so I switched the sticks back and forth a few more
> times just to see. Sure enough, I had one bad stick. Well, they are
> 1-gig sticks and both XP and Vista will run fine with 1-gig, so all
> seems OK for now. I am about to contact Crucial to see about
> returning the bad stick. Many thanks for your help. Who knows, I may
> be able to put everything back the way it was without spending any
> money. You people who can diagnose a problem like this from just my
> initial summary really amaze me.

Your welcome. Diagnosing problems from a _good_ description is no big
deal when we all see the same problems over and over again.