S
(Shovel)
Guest
OK, you may remember me posting a few times about my girlfriends computer that I built up a couple of weeks ago. We had problems then and now it's got worse.
I'm just going to post a list of problems and if you can help with any of them, I'd be really really grateful, it's starting to get silly now...
Spec:
AMD Duron 1.3
-- ThermalTake Volcano 7+ CPU Fan
Abit KD7 Motherboard
-- Onboard VIA LAN
-- Onboard 6 Point AC'97 Sound
-- USB 2.0
128 MB Crucial DDR266
64 MB Geforce 2 MX 400 (Abit)
Seagate Barracuda IV 40 GB Hard Disk
Lite On 52x24x48 CDRW
Teac Floppy Disk Drive
Dell 17" Monitor
MS Wheel Mouse Optical (USB)
Windows XP Home SP1
Office 2000 SP3
Problems:
#1 Memory
We orignally bought 256 MB. However, one the 128 sticks was faulty so we had to send it back (beep errors on start up, no booting).
We though this fixed it, however, as of this morning, Jo booted up and the computer froze on the login screen. Rebooting the beep errors have returned. She says that it is the same error as before. No idea what caused it. And no, it hasn't been dropped.
#2 Floppy Disk Drive Crashes.
Works for boot disks (or did certainly), when you try and access a disk in XP though, computer freezes up. We removed it from Device Manager and re added it, but to no avail.
#3 ZoneAlarm 'memory loss' issues
Running ZoneAlarm 3. Jo tells it to let a program on the internet, and checks the "Remember this" box, but it will sometimes ask again and again on future boot ups (e.g. it will only remember for that session).
#4 ICQ. She logs in, I log in, neither of us appear on the other's contact list. On the *old* computer though, which uses the same network connection, there were no problems.
#5. Network connection issues on start up. The old machine - a network set up Windows 95 (B or C) had no problems with the University network it connects to (there is no log in btw). However, although XP usually works first time, Jo very often has to use the "Repair" button on the Network Connection, or when that fails has to restart to get it connected right. I believe that it fails on "Trying to renew the IP address".
#6. "Slowness". I think this is RAM, but there are regular instances of individual windows taking an age to pop up from the taskbar. As well as the shortage of RAM she also has nVidia NView running (I think).
So, it's looking healthy then... any tips or help very very much appreciated.
My plan so far is:
1) Reseat the RAM, once refund from Dabs comes through on the returned stick, get the full amount of RAM in there.
2) Take my own floppy disk drive down there with me next time I go, with my own cabling and swap them, see if that fixes it.
3) Disable nView, I did that on my own system yesterday and my own windows seem to pop up much quicker now.
But the new memory problem is more than a little perplexing...
Thanks for any advice,
Ben/Shovel and Jo.
I'm just going to post a list of problems and if you can help with any of them, I'd be really really grateful, it's starting to get silly now...
Spec:
AMD Duron 1.3
-- ThermalTake Volcano 7+ CPU Fan
Abit KD7 Motherboard
-- Onboard VIA LAN
-- Onboard 6 Point AC'97 Sound
-- USB 2.0
128 MB Crucial DDR266
64 MB Geforce 2 MX 400 (Abit)
Seagate Barracuda IV 40 GB Hard Disk
Lite On 52x24x48 CDRW
Teac Floppy Disk Drive
Dell 17" Monitor
MS Wheel Mouse Optical (USB)
Windows XP Home SP1
Office 2000 SP3
Problems:
#1 Memory
We orignally bought 256 MB. However, one the 128 sticks was faulty so we had to send it back (beep errors on start up, no booting).
We though this fixed it, however, as of this morning, Jo booted up and the computer froze on the login screen. Rebooting the beep errors have returned. She says that it is the same error as before. No idea what caused it. And no, it hasn't been dropped.
#2 Floppy Disk Drive Crashes.
Works for boot disks (or did certainly), when you try and access a disk in XP though, computer freezes up. We removed it from Device Manager and re added it, but to no avail.
#3 ZoneAlarm 'memory loss' issues
Running ZoneAlarm 3. Jo tells it to let a program on the internet, and checks the "Remember this" box, but it will sometimes ask again and again on future boot ups (e.g. it will only remember for that session).
#4 ICQ. She logs in, I log in, neither of us appear on the other's contact list. On the *old* computer though, which uses the same network connection, there were no problems.
#5. Network connection issues on start up. The old machine - a network set up Windows 95 (B or C) had no problems with the University network it connects to (there is no log in btw). However, although XP usually works first time, Jo very often has to use the "Repair" button on the Network Connection, or when that fails has to restart to get it connected right. I believe that it fails on "Trying to renew the IP address".
#6. "Slowness". I think this is RAM, but there are regular instances of individual windows taking an age to pop up from the taskbar. As well as the shortage of RAM she also has nVidia NView running (I think).
So, it's looking healthy then... any tips or help very very much appreciated.
My plan so far is:
1) Reseat the RAM, once refund from Dabs comes through on the returned stick, get the full amount of RAM in there.
2) Take my own floppy disk drive down there with me next time I go, with my own cabling and swap them, see if that fixes it.
3) Disable nView, I did that on my own system yesterday and my own windows seem to pop up much quicker now.
But the new memory problem is more than a little perplexing...
Thanks for any advice,
Ben/Shovel and Jo.
