My same old berserk computer is at it again...

Well, I do hope you don't get tired of seeing me posting rants about my PC, but then again, I at least need info or suggestions on this.

My PC (XP, Mcafee 6.02) has been resting for about 2 months before I started it back up last Friday. I forgot my admin password that time, so I log on to guest account. The problem is, the system can't last any longer than an hour or so before restarting suddenly, and when it got up again, it froze and restart, so many times until it finally hit the BSOD. During that time though, I thought perhaps my hardware was in trouble from moving around too much (I moved to a different dorm from last year), so I disassembled and reassembled them, but it didn't solve the problem. Thus, I decided to reformat and reinstall, and when I got the XP installed, I installed my antivirus.

Problem continued though, and in the last few BSODs I see errors such as MEMORY MANAGEMENT, IRQ_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL (or that sort of comparison), and STOP (which stopped my XP from loading at all), and I also kept erinstalling my XP, during which the installation occasionally failed before it ended (some of the BSODs came out too). During the last disk checking I saw, the XP said there's some parts in my FAT32 HD which is unwritable (which made me assume my Maxtor had a bad sector). Plus, I found out that my PC restarting suddenly may be due to the NT On Access Scanner Server service (from McAfee), but what's odd, before now, that NT On Access Scanner server only caused my system to merely slow down, NOT restarting.

I was thinking of immediately sending my PC to a computer vendor, but please help me clarify some things: Is it that my hardware (mainly I suspect my HD and RAM) is broke? I hate it if I have to buy stufs when they're not fully dead, but then again, I hate it when they work the wrong way....

 

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That's VERY strange running into the blue screen of death on XP. I don't think I've EVER seen it on XP.

Weird.

What kind of computer do you have? Did you build it or have it built for you by someone?
I ask this because I used to come across this irq not less than or equal error a LOT back when I had a Via based motherboard. I never ended up solving the problem. I eventually had enough of it and just switched over to an Asus and haven't had a problem since.

Via is well-known for being a 'cheap' chipset with many idiosyncracies. Too many idiosyncracies in my opinion. I spent more time troubleshooting hardware issues than anything else. I've heard that Via is not as bad now as it used to be, but once burned, twice shy, says I.

Anyway.
So. I have no idea exactly what might be your issue.
You say that you've disassembled and reassembled your machine? Does this mean that you've taken out all the ram and pulled out all the power connections and etc and reseated all the connections?

It's possible that your hard drive has issues. Theres a chkdsk utility that you can scan your disk with and mark all physical errors so that the system will not use them... Now. I'm not sure if you can do this from another machine and if the results will stay with the hard drive or not. But, it's something worth looking into.
Unfortunately, it's been a long time since I've used it and forget exactly how it works. Maybe someone else will have some advice on the particulars for you.

 

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Now that you mention it, yeah, even though I often get PC troubles I almost never run into BSOD that often

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The first time I bought my PC around 3 years ago, it was assembled right away by the vendor (without the OS; I used my pal's XP CD), but about a year ago, I hanged the MB, RAM and VGA, and at that time, I install every hardware myself. My MB is Asus X series, a small one (forgot the full name of the serial), but if you say so, hmm...

As for reassembling, well, not a full reassembly actually.....I only pulled out the RAM, VGA and other expansion cards, and the parallel cables connecting to HD (so I didn't touch my CD drivers, my main power supply, and kept my MB screwed tight), and placed them back in, occasionally, changing the primary to secondary or seondary to primary or master to slave etc.

Anyway, thanks for replying. Chkdsk, hm? I'll get my pal's CD again in that case.....

Oh, and some other thing: Everytime I try to access safe mode, the PC stops listing files at Mup.sys..... is this common for XP (it always stops at that file)?

 

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When did you patch it last? Has it been connected to internet?
The problem is that there is a windows exploit which if unpatched lets simple web virus/trojan entities to restart your computer again and again.
Don't bother with windows native firewall, it's shit.
What you need is to download all the latest security patches and set up a firewall.
Welcome to Windblows

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Otherwise it could be a faulty RAM or what nexus said.
Try booting your computer with a live knoppix cd (linux live distro),
try accessing your hd,
if it still restarts then it's not a win problem.

http://www.knoppix.org/
knoppix won't damage your pc, it's cd based only (by default)

 

You mean the last time I did Windows Update? Manually, I did it last time about over 3 months ago
And about the problem and the internet, When that problem started, I did connect to internet via LAN, and after the constant reinstalling, it matters not if I'm connected or not.

Well, then, I'll try what you said too. Thanks for answering

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PS:

Lol

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one of the computers i reformatted recently had the hardware so fucked over from bashing the case with bottles in drunken rages, that it would not run for more than 40minute without a bluescreen. it even bluescreened while i was installing windows!!

 

I had a problem, called the Microsoft monkeys tech support. They made a bad thing worse and deleted all of my files! They pay people that can't find their way out of a trash bag when it was opened!

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you should try dealing with the people from xtra(the ISP run by the phone company)

me: i tried the modem at my house, and it worked.
them: yes, but we are XTRA not ORCON
me:but you use the same lines
them:but our coverage is not the same as ORCONs, we are XTRA
me: i realise that you are xtra, but you use the same lines, when i connect, i am connecting using the same exchange, and the same lines
them:we are part of TELECOM not ORCON
me

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rcon uses telecom lines!!!
----i gave up on them-----

 

Some times a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, in this case your hard drive is fucked, to use use the correct technical term. Back up what you can, reinstall XP on an NT partition on a new, not-fucked HDD.

 

Update, people:

It seems that while my hardwares may indeed broke, my Mcafee 6.02 seems to be the main trigger here. Last Monday I reinstalled my XP again without installing my Antivirus (and don't worry about net, I'm disconned even until now), and it's running fine until yesterday night, even after I installed some sofwares like MS Office, Acrobat etc. *sigh* The NT On Access Scanner Server problem again, but now in a bigger scale

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Thanks, and thankfully, I have a lot of CDRWs filled with my backup data already, except my collection of music videos...

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PS: Oh, btw, the last time I reinstalled my system, I formatted my partition using NTFS (though contrary to Anonymous' suggestion, I still used my old HD).... just a bit of info, dunno if t helps or otherwise...

 

Of course, w2k, xp should be installed on ntfs; fat is out of the question.
Sorry about your hd, good that you still have time to back it up.

 

i heard that windows made NTFS inacessable to other OSes. i have all of mine in fat32, because i use linux on all of my comps and need to be able to access and alter files withotu widwos interfering

 

Actually, I already backed up all my data even before I moved to the new dorm (back then, I was thinking of putting some of the data into my old PC at home, which turned out to be broke so I can't do anything anyway), so I didn't bother about backing up when those crashes happen. Wonders if I'll get a new HD soon enough though... I tend not to replace things which aren't too broke yet... (like I said, it worked pretty well until yesterday as I haven't started it up today, without most of the hardware drivers installed yet either)

Eh? I thought FAT was the one associated with Windows instead..... thanks for telling me that.


Oh, BTW, in case I got a new HD, is it fine if I installed XP on my new HD while keeping my old HD on work (as secondary partition/HD) ?

 

No, vslayer, it's not a good idea to install WinXP on FAT. I suggest to make one partition for windows installation and other software only, and the other in FAT where you store all your private data (like on Linux you have / and a seperate /home partition), so it's accessable to other OSes. Makes reinstalling win a snap.
(C: = windows + applications; D: = My documents, etc)

Btw- you can still read NTFS from Linux, writing to ntfs is experimental, but possible.

p.s. I don't have a win partition (ntfs or fat) anymore, all my partitions are EXT3

 

IRQ_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL

The last time I had that problem was Windows ME.. *shiver*

Chances are something delicate has been pooped on. Try running magnets over your hard drive and see if that fixes the problem.

Ehehehe..

Just kidding of course.

You sound like the type who can build/fix a computer so get a HD and see if it works. If not, get a mobo and ram and see how things go. Keep repeating until you've got a damned new computer.

 

firstly before I go into my explaination of what killed my install previously, I would question as to whether your Harddrive cables are hooked directly to the motherboard or go through a Control card?. If they go through a Control Card I'm guessing thats where the IRQ error would come from originally, if you changed a switch on the board during your cleaning or even removed a jumper it might of messed up how the drive communicated with the motherboard, the reason a new installation might fair better is because of the OS "configuring" to that particular setting. So don't just flick a switch or put a jumper back.

My thoughts on the actual OS itself is that XP is a Resource hog, it doesn't just eat memory it also utilises alot of Dirty Disk accesses. Basically this isn't a problem with newer drives that have enough heads/cylinders and of course enough speed. (Currently I'm running a Maxtor 5400rpm 40Gb harddrive as C:, which is a slower harddrive however it's relatively new being about 4 years old)

I found that the drive I first installed on wouldn't work with NTFS (The partition kept corrupting), and I found that reformating/repartition it back to FAT32 continued to sprout error messages before the installation about "failing sectors". I replaced that drive, however the drive itself can still be used as a Secondary drive, so don't just throw it away, make it a drive D (or what ever letter takes you fancy)

The other things I usually do to aid the drive is:

Turn off System Restore Feature
(This saves harddrive space and stops harddrive accesses used by the Restore feature)

on SP 2:
Disable Instant Updates (Best setting is to place it on Notify, that way it doesn't constantly harass you about it being Disabled and it doesn't automatically download things to your harddrive again generating disk accesses.)

Of course there is then the Anti-virus software which itself creates disk accesses and images of the drive (so as to see if there are any physical changes), disabling anti-virus programs isn't suggested however looking for one thats not as resource heavy and function filled might be an option.

 

NTFS isn't inaccessible however it uses a HASH method that encrypts the filestructure of a user that comes from the multiuser framework. (Basically the admininistrator password aids to the formats encryption)

This means that if someone wants to read the NTFS structure they have to either have a password, or a program that will slowly but surely bruteforce the encryption.

Most bruteforce programs will only generate a "Read Only" access (which is what Avatar mentioned in Linux) but this is understandible otherwise a "Read/write" access would be a "Hack" and have Microsoft condemning Linux for yet another breach of their Software Patents.

 

Stryder,

My HD is connected to my MB with a single cable, so no other thing in between... and I don't remember seeing anything too suspicious in my MB near the port for the HD cable, nor do I see anything that looks like a switch there. I guess the problem is caused by another matter.

As for Xp the resource hog...... hold a sec.... a PC magazine I once read said that Xp stores a lot of DLL 'permanently' into RAM.... so it's right then?

And I'm not familiar with "Dirty Disk" jargon... what is it?

And about the HD, so you suggest that even when the HD is damaged a bit, making it secondary wouldn't hurt? Hmm, okay... I just don't feel like throwing things which isn't too broke anyway. Oh, with that said, I just want to say that I just started my PC again today and installed all my hardware drivers, and everything works fine..... so I guess my hardwares aren't that broke.... (damn you McAfee...)

As for how to aid the drive, okay, I'll note that down, thanks ^_^

About the Anti-Virus, not disabling it is fine for me as long as they don't bug me with constant update request (damn you McAfee 8.x), or this kind of system freezing which worsens as time goes by (Damn you NT On Access Scanner Server...)..... sigh.... I need a much better anti virus. NOW.

Anyway, thanks for your post ^_^ they will help a lot.

Hmm, I think for now I'll wait a bit to see if my system is going to run well without McAfee. Maybe some other time.

LOL

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Pleasure old man, and a prudent recourse. You can never back stuff up enough when it comes to computers...

Letting XP run in its default NTFS mode will take care of a lot of problems. Basically, instead of behaving like an absolute tart every time the damn OS runs into a check sum error, XP just deals with it and thinks to itself Oh, okay. No big... and carries on.

If you insist on still using the same hard drive, it should be okay for a secondary (slave) drive, but make sure you give it a thorough going over (set check disk to find and fix bad sectors) - only use it for storage though. If you've got bad sectors on it the chances are the damage is located towards the end of the data partition - transfer everything useful onto your new HDD and empty out the other one, give it a good defragging and it'll probably last you a good long while yet to come until it approaches full, that's when you'll risk looking data.

Keep burning those CDRW's and y'should be fine.

All the best with it...

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[quote="Mr Anonymous]If you insist on still using the same hard drive, it should be okay for a secondary (slave) drive, but make sure you give it a thorough going over (set check disk to find and fix bad sectors) - only use it for storage though. If you've got bad sectors on it the chances are the damage is located towards the end of the data partition - transfer everything useful onto your new HDD and empty out the other one, give it a good defragging and it'll probably last you a good long while yet to come until it approaches full, that's when you'll risk looking data.[/quote]
Thanks. BTW, about the checkdisk.... for some reasons the checkdisk in my XP is not the usual windowed program (I used to see in 98SE), instead, when I run it, it runs at DOS, and immediately closes when it's done..... help?


PS: I'm already connecting my kiddo to the net..... and it looks fine, except that when I tried installing the latest firefox just now, before the installation ends, IE and Windows Explorer froze when I open them.... anyone ever had that problem?

PS2: Something just badly pissed me off.... why is it now that everytime I update ANYTHING about Firefox, my system freezes. Completely. Does this have anything to do with NTFS partition or anything else?