My new system is not working

[bobbyh]

my new system has been acting wierd ever since i got it. The specs are the ones on my profile. Here's what is wrong: lots of programs seem to stop responding for no reason especially during installation. I can't update to sp2, when i try to update either IE will stop responding or it will fail during installation. Sometimes after i try to update windows (not necessarily to sp2) my system will not be able to reboot, it will restart at the splash screen and i cant even start in safe mode. I have suspected there to be something wrong with the bios, sometimes when i restart my computer, the bios will take more than a minute to get to the windows splash screen (this is VERY annoying when im trying to install stuff and need to restart all the time). If i shutdown for an hour or so and then reboot, the bios loads at a normal speed. I have tried to update it with winflash but my comp freezes when i press 'update'. my bios version is k8m8ms A10 7/19/2005. I almost have my product key memorized ive reinstalled windows so many times. A couple of times the slow bios problem seemed to go away but then i tried to update windows and my system wouldnt reboot. Sorry this is so vague/confusing hopefully i can fill in the details with your questions. Thanks!

 

[iss]

ok first a few things, when you reninstalled windows did you install the motherboard drivers? Do you have the latest drivers for your motherboard installed? in device manager are there any devices with a yellow question mark or a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark in them?

 

[bobbyh]

i installed the via 4in1 that came with the motherboard, in the device manager there are yellow ! by the multimedia audio controller, and the raid controller

 

[iss]

you need to load the drivers for your onboard sound. the raid drivers should have been loaded beofre the install of the OS during setup you press F6 to load third party drivers. I am assuming that since they werent loaded you are not running araid setup. if you tried to load them now you could wipe out the data on your drive. you could disable the raid in device manager.

 

[bobbyh]

ok i did all of the above, i have had the sound drivers installed before but the problem was still there do you think not disabling the raid controller would cause any problems?

 

[iss]

The drivers not being loaded for the raid is why your boot up is taking longer than normal the system is trying to load the raid drivers and it doesnt find them.

are yuo using an IDE hard drive or a SATA one?

 

[bobbyh]

That makes sense, why would it boot normally after leaving the computer off for a while though? im using IDE.

 

[iss]

for whatever reason there are times it doesnt spend as much time looking for the raid drivers. you could also check in the bios to disable sata and have only IDe enabled if you arent running sata hard drives. your profile doesntmention the specific motherboard you are using.

 

[DragonMaster]

You seem to have an hardware problem. In my case, not being able to do anything was the RAM. The computer having a lot of BSOD, graphic card.

A system can be very unstable if the HDD is defective, which happened a lot of times to me. You're using IDE? Disable everything in the BIOS. You have 4 in 1 drivers or 5 in 1? (5 in 1 has SATA too I think)

Have you tried the latest chipset drivers from VIAArena?

 

[bobbyh]

my motherboard is a k8m8ms. disable everything?? is there any way to find out if my harddrive is defective?

 

[DragonMaster]

Could your CPU be overheating? I googled and I think I read that K8M8MS has some overheating problems. Well, there are two companies making K8M8MS motherboards.

If the HDD is defective, you might have a lot of corrupt files. The only thing is that a freezing computer can cause the same problems. You should hear strange noises if the HDD works bad.

I just read also that the PSU could miss power.

 

[iss]

well you have yuor audio drivers loaded now just disable the raid. then see how your computer runs. a good deal of your problems were casued by drivers not being loaded and windows continually looking for the correct drivers. if your computer runs ok now then dont worry about it. if you are still having problems then try running System file checker. with your XP CD in the drive, open a command prompt and type sfc /scannow this will run system file checker and it will examine your system files for any corrupted or missing files and repair or replace them as need be.

 

[DragonMaster]

Also do a chkdsk you can run it by right clicking your drive in "My Computer" and somewhere there's a tab that let you select to check the disk, defrag it or back it up. Click the verification option. There you have the scanning options and the button to start a scan. You will have to restart windows to let it check your root partition.

Also, maybe you have a virus, spyware or something like this.

You could try a registry cleaning with jv16 PowerTools(oldversion.com) and Microsoft RegClean.

 

[robin_bga]

I thnk if yo bios takes long to start then u need 2update it plus make sure yo system is not over heating.go to bios en look 4 hardware / system health en check 4 CPU temp,should exceed 65c initial start. or make sure u have good ram i suspect u hav 2 ram chips there,there speed should be similar.as for windows,i dont knw which one u hav.:-(Would also recommend a sys check try using system mechanic 7pro u can download a trial at www.iolo.com R