2 Probs: Windows Splash + Sound Drivers (?)

[plx]

Yea I know the topic is rather vague but I tried to be as descriptive as I could.

I'm having two problems on my computer atm. I have a 5 year old machine;
Pentium 4, 2.4GHz
Some Jetway Mobo
2x512 MB RAM
Geforce 4 Ti4200
Ehh yea, that's basically it I suppose if you need to know anything else please say so The Machine is kinda crappy I suppose for today's standards but I'm saving up for a new one so untill then I gotta cope with it

Anyway the problems.

The first problem I have is that whenever I load up my computer it automatically freezes up during the XP splash screen. Then, whenever I hard reboot my computer it asks me how to boot up. I tell it to boot up normally and it loads up fine.

This happens ALL the time and it's getting really annoying, always the same thing; It freezes during XP splash, hard reboot, boots fine. Freeze during XP splash, hard reboot, boots fine. I hope you get the idea.

Whenever this happens the red light on my machine turns off, the green one (power supply) stays on. I have no idea what the red light is connected to though, I was thinking it was the hard drive...

I read up a bit, did a chkdsk and a chkdsk /p. It found some errors so I did a chkdsk /r and after that it didn't find anything anymore so I thought it'd be over. But... it didn't. It kept continuing, the same problem over and over.


The second problem. I play games, alot. Specifically World of Warcraft. I've been playing it for almost two years, I've always had performance problems but nothing that serious to keep me from playing, but recently (a few weeks, maybe same time as problem #1) I've been having these very frustrating freezes, lock ups that take like a few seconds especially when running winamp in the background. This made me think that there's maybe something wrong with my sound device? Firefox running in the background doesn't cause much problems (though I get some lock ups here as well) so I don't think it's due to winamp using too much memory.

I was hoping someone around here knows their stuff and knows a way to fix either or both of these problems. Would be muchos appreciated!

I do not have a restore point, so that can't help me
I was thinking to reformat or just defrag my hard drive, but the partition was made december 2006 so I'm not sure if these effed up lock ups are all solely due to my drive being heavy fragmentated.

Yours sincere

edit: fixed some sentences

 

[pejung]

Your mainboard is 5 years? If yes it might be old to work.My first mainboard died after 5 years too.

 

[plx]

Yeah, well a bit less actually The only parts that I have changed in my system was the ram (original 512, replaced with 2 bits of OCZ) and the motherboard. The motherboard died like within a year after I purchased my computer and the store I bought it from replaced it back then. So the mobo itself is a bit less old then the other parts but still 4+ years.

But I'm not sure wether the mobo can be the cause of the problems I described above?


edit: I did a S.M.A.R.T scan thingie with SpeedFan, now I don't understand anything that's written there but at the end of any sentence it says 'This is Good' so I assume there's nothing wrong with the drive.

The overall fitness for this drive is 88%.
The overall performance for this drive is 98%.

I'm stumped

 

[plx]

Shameless bump ^_^ (pls don't kill me!)

I wish atleast the first problem could be fixed because that's the most harmfull one I guess...

 

[N3051M]

Ok, so you've tried takling the software issue, and it fixed some things but still giving you grief. I think its time to peel the can open and have a good look inside (maybe do a bit of dusting whilst you're at it). Look for dead give aways - burns, funny shaped capacitors, stains etc.

Get Everest Home (linked in my Faq page underneath) and check your temps and voltages.

Scan for registry errors, download CCleaner and run it. Try and find out if any software is conflicting with something..

Having a problem pre-windows means that its either hardware error (BIOS, hardware, power etc) or startup (loading drivers, starting up services and programs etc).

 

[plx]

Hi and thanks for replieing!

Well both Speedfan and MBM5 show ok temperatures. I have no idea where in EVEREST I can check it though, it's way too complicated for me

I did remove dust inside my computer, removed RAM sticks and put them back in but unfortunately it didn't help.

I didn't see anything broken or screwed up or whatever. Though all parts were rather warm/hot, I figured that was due to the computer being on before I turned it off to open it up? Any idea how long the parts should stay hot/on temperature after the PC is turned off?

About the PSU, I have no idea which one I got. I tried opening up my case and look on the PSU box inside my computer but it's all jibberish to me.

I went into the start up tab in msconfig (not sure what it's called in the English version of XP) and disabled everything so I that it would have a clean start up but the same problem kept occuring.

I'll look into CCleaner and see if that helps, let's hope so...

Otherwise I'll hopefully have some time to defragmentate tonight/tomorrow to see if that helps (analyses showed a 39% degree of fragmentation).

Keep the ideas flowing please

edit: Ran CCleaner and it removed alot of stuff. I noticed that one of my memory sticks wasn't showing in DXDiag and EVEREST so I opened up my case again and reapplied both of them again, it shows fine now. This reduced the performance lag I had ALOT but the freeze during XP splash screen hasn't stopped

 

[N3051M]

Well both Speedfan and MBM5 show ok temperatures. I have no idea where in EVEREST I can check it though, it's way too complicated for me

So temps are ok, how about voltages? can you post them here?
Btw, in everest you just expand the computer branch and click on sensors..

I went into the start up tab in msconfig (not sure what it's called in the English version of XP) and disabled everything so I that it would have a clean start up but the same problem kept occuring.

Its called the same in the english version.. an easier way is to boot up in safe mode, hence starting up with virtualy no extra stuff, including specialised drivers, then using the msconfig utility to narrow down the problem..

Any idea how long the parts should stay hot/on temperature after the PC is turned off?

kinda like a hot electric iron after you've taken it off the plug..

About the PSU, I have no idea which one I got. I tried opening up my case and look on the PSU box inside my computer but it's all jibberish to me.

Info about PSU's can be found in my faq (second link in my signature, scroll down a bit). Post all relevant info including brand etc.

 

[plx]

Hi again

Well oke, I'll start off with EVEREST readings;

Mobo: 41 C (106 F)
CPU: 45 C (113 F)
Seagate HDrive 42C (108 F)

This is whilst running WoW and alt tabbing into windows, so it is kinda under pressure and still somewhat decent temps from what I can tell.

Now the voltages bit, I'm not sure what you're after so I just copied the whole thing... I hope you can make something out of it;

Spanningswaarde
CPU Core 1.49 V
+3.3 V 3.33 V
+5 V 5.21 V
+12 V 12.04 V
-12 V -11.87 V
-5 V -5.10 V
+5 V Standby 4.95 V
VBAT Batterij 3.30 V
Debug Info F 3D FF FF
Debug Info T 41 45 255
Debug Info V 5D 00 D0 C2 C6 25 34 (01)

Spanningswaarde = Voltage rating
Batterij = Battery

My PSU is of the 'Maxpower' brand, it came with the computer which is somewhat 5 years ago as mentioned earlier. There was a sticker on it with alot of information which was somewhat similiar to what EVEREST showed. I have checked your link and the 5% thing and I suppose the ratings for +12, +5 and +3.3 are 'oke' even though the +5 one is very close to 5.25 (5.21) but I guess that's due to it being such a small number ^_^

On the very right on the sticker there was a list with; 200, 230, 250 upto 400W so I suppose that's the maximum I can get out of it.. Not sure.


Also, any ideas on how I could find out to what part of the computer the lights on my case are connected to?

Like I mentioned before I have a red and a green light. When my computer works like it should the green one is on all the time and the red is either on or flickers on and off very quickly depending on what I'm doing. For example copy pasting a folder makes the red light flicker really fast and just ideling makes it flicker very slowly (so I guess it's connected to the Hard Drive then). But when the computer freezes during boot up or even during windows (happens occasionally) the red one doesn't light up at all whereas the green one stays on continuesly untill I shut down the computer.

I don't know if this is related to the cause of the problem or just a consquence? This is why I'm afraid it might be related to my Hard Drive.

Any more replies would be much appreciated! I don't think it's healthy for my computer to be hard resetted all the time ^_^

edit: I found this program called HD Tune somewhere on this forum, never heard of it before so I tried it out. It told me that the Health is oke (2 yellow bits though) and it didn't find a single red block in the scan (did a fast one and a full one which took 1 hour). It was done while running several applications though, so I hope that didn't influence it in any way... Thought it might be worth mentioning, I don't know if that application is any good or anything...

 

[plx]

Small Bump ^^

Anymore ideas on what could be wrong or what I could do would be much appreciated.

From what I can tell with my very limited PC knowledge it seems that the HD is fine, the PSU seems to give oke reports, temperatures are fine, did a CClean and Adaware scan and I'm kinda out of ideas.

I suppose I could do a memtest run or something even though the RAM is 'only' 1~ year old.

 

[N3051M]

Like I mentioned before I have a red and a green light. When my computer works like it should the green one is on all the time and the red is either on or flickers on and off very quickly depending on what I'm doing. For example copy pasting a folder makes the red light flicker really fast and just ideling makes it flicker very slowly (so I guess it's connected to the Hard Drive then). But when the computer freezes during boot up or even during windows (happens occasionally) the red one doesn't light up at all whereas the green one stays on continuesly untill I shut down the computer.

The red light seems to be for your hdd. You can trace the cable to your motherboard and what pins its occupying if you wish. The PC could simply be stuck on an error of some sort. Check your BIOS settings or if you prefer, load the defaults for it by reseting the CMOS or using the "Restore defaults" option in BIOS. If it gives you a series of beeps (error codes) then you might want to check out what they mean from your motherboard manual or on the net.

I suppose I could do a memtest run or something even though the RAM is 'only' 1~ year old.

It doesn't matter, you can have brand new ones and still they fail on you..

If its still freezing, its time to eliminate stuff. Unplug the PC and open it up. Take out all expansion cards, extra devices (inlcuding hdd, optical drives etc) and use onboard graphics/sound where possible so you only have CPU/motherboard, power, audio/video and your input devices (mouse and key).
Boot it up, if you have unplugged the hdd, then it should give you an error like "HDD not detected" or similar, and same with RAM (if you've taken that out)
Take it off power then add the Ram (if you've taken them out) and reboot, it should show the amount of ram installed but stop because of no hdd.
Take it off power again and add the hdd (OS hdd only, if you have more than one) and boot. If it successfully boots into windows (without the freezing) then repeat the steps on adding 1 more device back on, untill you find the one causing trouble. There may be more than one fault, so skip the trouble one and go to the next device and test etc.

That should keep you busy for a while. You gotta give people a day or so to reply, since we've got other stuff to take care off in the real world, so be patient. Just edit your post instead of making a new one.

how did safe mode turn out?