Comments | xullrae: Calling all you techies out there!

xullrae

Calling all you techies out there!

Feb 27, 2005 19:48

Mat's PC is driving me round the bend (actually, Mat complaining about his PC is!). Ever since we got it a couple of years ago it has had problems booting up - it never boots up first time, and often requires 5 or 6 attempts. Once it's finally up it's ok, it doesn't crash, but since we moved to our new place it's been too slow for online gaming. Of ( Read more... )

Comments 20

bewildebeest February 27 2005, 21:10:42 UTC

What are the boot problems?

My PC sometimes decides not to see my second hard drive. This is an issue, since that's the one with the operating system on!!

anatosuchus February 27 2005, 21:42:21 UTC

Unless there is something really screwed up about your net connection, your speed problem is almost certainly hardware related. What is the processor (and speed), amount of RAM and graphics card model?

The boot problem could be something badly seated, either RAM, processor or a card or something. Try reseating them all. It could also be a dry solder joint, in which case you might have more trouble.

Geeks sister_savage February 28 2005, 09:50:11 UTC

*sigh!*

8w_gremlin February 28 2005, 12:59:56 UTC

AMD ATHLON XP2600+ 333MHZ FSB 256Cache - Thoroughbred CPU - OEM
(but runs as 1.2Mhz)

Sapphire Radeon 9200 8x AGP 256MB DDR TV-Out Lite

768Meg RAM

pleb February 28 2005, 00:06:01 UTC

Connection speed shouldn't be that bad, but the more recent MMORPG's are quite demanding - if you're on Blueyonder, remember the 1mb service only has a 128k upload speed - even standard 512k ADSL users get 256, which does make a hell of a difference. Just a thought.

Connection 8w_gremlin February 28 2005, 12:52:37 UTC

ADSL 1Meg with Plus.net (recommended to me by wolfiegoth
I think the problem is my chip and fan seating.
but i'll look at the windows issues, and see if its anything to do with them first.

Re: Connection pleb February 28 2005, 14:22:53 UTC

Definitely not a connection speed issue then, and as Dave said, I guess they're still optimising for dial-up.

koldun February 28 2005, 08:53:27 UTC

MMORPG's are still optimised for 56K, loading areas can be slow but actual play is ok, so it wont be speed.
b Check the start up tab of msconfig (just go start>run>msconfig). If you have a small army of apps in there is will cause slowdown and in extreme cases you could run out of memory on boot which would be a problem.
a Reboots on startup can be a few things, it really depends alot on how far its getting, if its just after the windows load screen i would say "Do you have SP2 on it" and "reinstall windows". If its prior to windows booting its more likely to be hardware.

8w_gremlin February 28 2005, 09:03:34 UTC

Right: - this is the order of boot up...
it boots up, to select user, click on one, it starts to show windows then the screen goes black. nada nothing.
reboot, and it doesn't get as far as the select user.
try a few times, then it logs in ok no problems what so ever, thougth it could be graphics card not sitting properly, but re-adjusted that.
moved card to different sockets but nothing.
looked at msconfig, took out, unneeded apps, no better in boot up, but better running games.

think it might be the cpu setting, but doen't really want to take that off and reseat it (not 100% sure about doing it right)

anatosuchus February 28 2005, 09:11:32 UTC

This might sound like an odd question, but is it worse in winter, or first thing in the morning? It might be dependent on the temperature of the machine. Does it boot up reliably if you have to reboot after it's been on for a while?

To be honest, it actually sounds like your windows install is screwed up (obligatory linux user dig: "there's a shock") so as koldun says you might need to reinstall.

xullrae February 28 2005, 09:43:47 UTC

It happens all the time. I personally think it works better if you think nice thoughts at it, which has been shown by experiment to be true - it always boots up more quickly for me than Mat. But Mat just says I'm being silly.

Thanks for the advice everyone - I think a reinstall sounds like the best thing to try.

gedhrel October 5 2006, 20:46:23 UTC

I was going to suggest exactly what Matt did - it's a temperature thing. You have a loose connection and thermal expansion/flexing causes it to make good.

If you've an intel chip then it'll also run slowly if the heat sink isn't firmly connected; AMD chips just burn. That's the opposite of the first problem though.

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