Ohshi (borked pc)

[Nocashvalue]

Right.
Big problem.
I quit cs:s and then went off to have breakfast.
On my return, it was frozen in the boot sequence.
Ah, I thought. Must have just randomly restarted, which has been happening quite often recently. Xp bsod's for about half a second and then just reboots, out of the blue (no pun intended). So I hit the reset switch, and then booted windows. Then I went back on CS:S, only for it to randomly quit (no errors, no nothing). Started it again, and after about 5mins, same thing happened. So I rebooted.

And froze in the boot sequence.
Sor I rebooted again.
And froze when GRUB was loading.
Rebooted.
Froze early on in boot sequence.
Rebooted.
GRUB Launched windows, and then froze in the technical GRUB jargon.
Rebooted.
Launched windows, only for the pc to freeze mid XP load.
Rebooted.
Launched windows, all loaded fine, then got to the welcome screen. A split second after the welcome screen finished, milisecond bsod then restart.
Launched Ubuntu.
Froze as soon as it loaded the desktop.
Rebooted.
Launched Ubuntu, then Gaim, only for gaim to randomly quit itsself. Launched firefox, opened forums, pc froze.
Rebooted.
Somehow managed to get here, in Ubuntu, with a few instances of gaim quitting itsself.

Helllllllllllp :/

[Paradigm^]

Checked your CPU temps? Have a peek in the BIOS.

[Lewiji]

Sounds like it could be a RAM problem. If you have 2+ sticks installed, remove one and try different combinations in the different banks to see if it solves the problem: Could be just a dodgy slot which isn't a problem in the short term, just swap a stick to a different slot, or it could be a dodgy stick which will obviously cost a bit to replace.

Other possibilities are heat, check all your fans are working, and I've had similar random freezing problems (although not the program closing) with a broken PSU.

Edit: I've tried my best to fix this, I think it's down to a dodgy RAM stick (it's a 256mb 400mhz DDR, but it is shown in POST as a 128mb 333mhz stick). He's tried a repair install but it just restarts. Hm.

[Nocashvalue]

/me reboots to try
Lew, get on msn pls :P

Wasn't temperature, or either stick of ram.


Right, :(
Lew has helped me as much as he can, but still to no avail.
I've tried an xp repair install on it, but when the setup gets to finishing, the pc randomly reboots. Then, when it goes into xp again, it says that it's "restarting setup", then the setup doth restart from the beginning. :(

I've done a memtest, and there's nothing fishy there, apart from my 256mb stick of ram showing up as 128mb and 333mhz :/

Help is quite the needed chaps, as I have coursework of all sorts to do.

[reno]

recovery console: fixboot. fixmbr. chkdsk.

that should help somewhat, though i'm not sure what effect it will have on your linux installation.

[Nocashvalue]

Can anyone tell me what it would do to my linux, as I'm not too keen on borking my linux as well as my windows :/

[Lewiji]

What it'll probably do is erase GRUB as the master boot record, and instead install the Windows boot loader. All you'll have to do is reinstall GRUB.

[wyrd_fish]

deffo sounds like ram to me... hummm

try a boot with very minimal hardware, ie remove anything non essential

and try underclocking your ram, and/or over-volt* it

*only if your feeling brave, it can mess things up more

[Nocashvalue]

:/
Lew, I cannot for the life of me remember how to reinstall grub. How?

Wyrd, I might try it.
But I have a distinct suspicion that it it in fact something to do with windows, as Linux is now very stable (I think the crashes of firefox were actually Ubuntu not having a flash plugin for the x64 wheras even the install for XP bsod's (yeah, I tried once more, and caught a tiny tiny tiny bsod before the restart).

[Lewiji]

Ok first do what Reno said. This should fix your XP partition.

Then have a butchers at this: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=76652

[Nocashvalue]

Did all that reno said, including chkdsk /p ing.
Did nothing much, except meaning I now have to reinstall grub.
chkdsk /p told me there were one or more errors on the drive the first time i ran it, so then I ran help, couldn't find a command there to do anything, so chkdsk /p ed again and no errors were shown :/
I tried to restart the repair install, but the install came up with the same problems as before, in exactly the same place as before (always when the progress is in the middle of the finishing installation bar).
I am at gah's end.
:(

[Cheechy]

with linux id make sure its running an fskchk ok, then check the system logs ie dmesg and messages log etc. It should give u a clue as to whats killing the processes.

It does sound more like bad hardware here though rather than a quick software fix.
One thing worth doing is checking what make your hardrive is, going to the homepage and downloading their diagnostic disk check. Run that, make sure your drive isnt failing.

Could just be a case of a shit PSU too, what watt is yours? Check bios and see how far out some of the voltages are etc..

[Nocashvalue]

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=60387
Is the case I'm using, with that 400w PSU.

:/
Now that you mention it, during half term, my graphics card was complaining of a lack of power :/

[captain canuck]

a lot of the above refers to a RAM problem,
however, I'd also like to suggest one other possibility. I experienced a similar problem about a year ago, with the exception that I'm only running XP.

Anyway. What it turned out to be was an incompatibility was exposed between my video card and the associated display drivers, and XP itself. Some configuration of software and hardware drivers that had never been tested before for the video card proved to be too much for the display drivers to handle, so the PC would just randomly shut off whenever it was taxed by this incompatibility.

Typically, this would be when too many windows were open, or too many things were moving on screen (i.e. games that the system should have been able to handle), but eventually got to the point where just about any graphic inconsistency (animated image for instance) would cause it to go - which included, of course, the little scrolling thingy on the Windows login screen.

[Nocashvalue]

How did you fix it canuck?
edit: canuck, that sounds a lot like what's happening to this pc.
You can have two hundred points if it is, and you tell me how to fix it...

Also, I've just tried to look at my windows partition from linux.
It's all gone.
:/

[captain canuck]

Sorry; I forgot to mention that part explicitly.

If it is an issue with the display-related hardware, what you'll need to do depends primarily on what that hardware is. In my case, it required basically just updating all drivers associated with the video card, which I actually got someone else to do because at the time I barely understood what a "driver" was let alone how to use it (unless of course it was a golf reference :p).

However, if things seem to be missing then it might be something slightly more complicated or malicious.

I'd actually say the smartest thing to do would be have a techy professional type look at it, and tell him all that you know of the problem as well as perhaps the potential solutions that have been provided here. But that, I suppose, depends on budget and such.

[Al]

Run in Linux, open Gaim, then when it closes, do a "dmesg | tail" and show me or someone else on ... Well I was gonna say Gaim but I guess not. On something anyway.

[StupidCatOfDoom]

I reckon it's a bust PSU or something. I mean, if you're getting all these errors and it randomly reboots and apparently XP has dissapeared from your hard drive, it's probably something to do with lack of power...or something.

You're lucky Ubuntu even works for you though. It always used to freeze during login for me, stuck on the sounds. And now Mandriva won't install properly and it seems like the CDs are bust (all the packages are corrupted).

Damn you technology!

[Nocashvalue]

SCOD - That ubuntu sound problem is a problem with the repositiories, that I luckily fixed a couple of days before the XP problem, with the help of messir al.
If I can find my spongebob notebook (the tome of linux data it is), I may be able to help you there.