Fellow geeks, I need help!!!!
My pooter keeps going mental after about 5 - 10 mins from switch on regardless of what I'm doing. Symptoms include, the mouse "locks" in vertical motion, will only go horizontally, then after a couple of clicks, hear a beep from the PC speaker then the screen goes garbled and it locks completely.
Currently running on a Knoppix CD (thank got I've got it, and so far it's actually working ok so far (15 mins and counting)
There is a hardware snag though, the Northbridge (or chipset) heatsink+fan is more tempramental than Mrs_M after I've been out on the tiles.
Any ideas???
Cheers!
Mono
Hi Mono,
Having read through the posts it seems that you are able to run your system 'ish' on 'another OS' successfully. (BTW - I've found that Knoppix is Ok for 'viewing' bit - but not for 'doing' bit, so would not recommend it for any kind of 'repairs' - been there, tried that, did'nt work, but only after many hours)
You say chipset ? I've had one with a dry joint before now, but they usually cause power spikes and shut down the power supply immediately. If you get past the motherboard to the PCI's/USB's, you could be having driver problems with your peripheral hardware i.e. I had very similar symptoms you describe when I used a USB WiFi dongle. Symptoms were that it would crash anywhere from 10 mins to 1 hour, sometimes taking the mouse with it & other times not
Alternatively however, and more suspiciously, you could also have a root kit virus installed and hiding as part of your OS trying to use 'exploits' on your OS. These 'exploits' deliberately try to force feed themselves past the buffer and straight into the CPU and can sometimes 'trip' the OS and give you the symptoms you mention.
If this is the case, then I agree with others in this thread that dual boot is the way to go to eliminate/confirm this by installing a clean OS with up to date Virus Killing Defs (root kit killing ones) - but theres no need to jump over to the Penguin if you don't need to.
If you are able (have copy of XP), why not install a perm/temp second copy of XP to another disk, one that is configured/fitted to IDE 2 for instance
- or - to another partition on the same/original disk
- or - as an 'emergency' you can even install to the same partition on the same/original disk, but now to a different Windows folder ie C:\Windows.000. (this choice can give registry probs though)
If you get issues with the licensing, pick the 'later' option and if you decide to keep your 'new' installation, the MS helpdesk will even allow you a couple of changes to your hardware/Ser No before they get tired and eventually 'switch you off' ie, you/your SerNo will get kicked off the WGA list.
So anyhow, any of the above solutions should now give you a multiple OS boot situation where you can retain your original sys whilst also giving you the opportunity to assess your hardware/drivers against a clean OS - and more importantly, allow your 'New' virus checker to 'jump over the fence' and clean your original OS, and thus any nastie/root kit, which will now effectively be 'switched off'
Hope this is of some use
TFH
DT_Xtremez_26:
