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At a loss, need help (weird PC problem)

K

Karafias

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 15, 2004
Messages
417
Not sure what forum to put this in, because I don't know wtf is wrong.

My grandmother said her PC wasn't working, so I went down to have a look at it. Hard drive wasn't booting - ran some diagnostic tools, ordered a new HDD and put it in. Upon putting it in, exact same error. So I took out my voltage tester, PSU seems to be in working order - must be the motherboard, right? Took me a while to hunt down a used 478 motherboard, got one, put it in. Same problem. Shit. OK, I'm at a loss at this point. The only thing I can think of would be the power supply now, even though it looked like it was working. I used a voltage tester, not a multimeter, and it's not very accurate.

So, I replaced the PSU. Same fucking problem. At this point I'm at a complete loss; what else could it be? I've replaced the HDD, motherboard, and PSU. Tested the ram, it's good. HDD shows up in BIOS just fine, it just won't do anything. I've tried different cables, putting it in different IDE channels, etc. The CD drive works just fine. I used a boot disk to run some diagnostic tools and the CPU seems to be fine.

So, any thoughts? Talked to the local repair guy and he can't think what it would be either. This is a system I paid $100 dollars for a while ago so my grandmother could have email, I don't want to sink a lot of money into it :s

System:

socket 478 p4
512mb of ddr266
 
Tried that -refuses to read/write to disks at all. I brought the computer home and and trying to figure out wtf is going on. Plugging both HDDs into another PC and they work just fine. Tried some more cables, wondered if it could be that...

This problem is just plain weird. I don't see how it's even possible.
 
Shot in the dark...have you taken everything out of the case and run it with the bare minimum?
 
Old Hippie said:
Shot in the dark...have you taken everything out of the case and run it with the bare minimum?
Click to expand...

Yup. That's what you have to do.

As I see it...........you replaced the following:
MB
HDD
PSU
You swapped out cables

Only original parts:
Case
RAM
Optical
CPU

Variables:
OS
CPU
RAM

It's got to be a corrupt OS,RAM or CPU.
Go barebones. Reset the BIOS by removing the battery (is it still good???)
First replace the RAM just for kicks. That's where my money is.
If new RAM does the same thing, reseat the CPU.
If that doesn't do it..............it's schnitzel and Grandma needs a new pair of shoes.:eek:
 
Actually, I was thinking case short/weird ground issue but the others could apply as well.

He said he's tested the RAM.
 
So what exactly does the error say?

Are you able to get into windows before the error comes up? If so, what are doing that causes the error?


Have you tried memtest? ...I'm pretty sure you could make it bootable from a usb drive, since the cd drive isn't work too well.

~KI
 
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