harbingerOTV
03-17-2008, 11:49 PM
A friend of mine just moved and her computer is going a little nuts. I'm not a hardware guy and hopefully it's something along those lines and someone can point it out.
p4, 3ghz, 512k ram, 120hd, winXP Home, eMachine
no extra peripherals just the stock keyboard mouse and cdrw.
We hooked it up yesterday and it got to the file check screen and it would countdown from 10, get to 7 and freeze. Trying to skip that screen and it would lock up. Booting in safe mode it would start listing the drivers and such and freeze. Putting in her system recovery disk, it would load the app screen and freeze.
I opened op and took out the HD and Ram and put them back in to make sure they were nice and tight. Cleaned out the dust and checked all the other wires thinking maybe something had jogged loose.
About 3 hours of manually restarting and it got back to the check screen. It counted down fine and then began the scan disk. It probably took 2 hours for it to complete. It finally booted up, although it took about 5-10 minutes to reach the desktop and load the icons up. Trying to open anything on the start menu, it would freeze for a few minutes then finally open what you wanted.
I checked the system resources and it said she only had some 380 megs of ram not anywhere close to the 512 that's installed. I then noticed her clock was way off and I think that it had restarted at 12. Her computer was only unplugged for 4-5 days.
It was not doing this before and she hasn't had internet for a good 6 months so a virus of somekind is not what I'm thinking. I am going to try and run some cleaners tonight on it if it will let me.
Could faulty ram affect it like this? Could bad ram affect the battery (thus the clock)? Could the battery be the whole issue?
The HD spins quietly so I'm not thinking thats the issue but more likely (and hopefully) a battery or ram issue. I need to check if my extra ram will work in her machine and I can try that out.
p4, 3ghz, 512k ram, 120hd, winXP Home, eMachine
no extra peripherals just the stock keyboard mouse and cdrw.
We hooked it up yesterday and it got to the file check screen and it would countdown from 10, get to 7 and freeze. Trying to skip that screen and it would lock up. Booting in safe mode it would start listing the drivers and such and freeze. Putting in her system recovery disk, it would load the app screen and freeze.
I opened op and took out the HD and Ram and put them back in to make sure they were nice and tight. Cleaned out the dust and checked all the other wires thinking maybe something had jogged loose.
About 3 hours of manually restarting and it got back to the check screen. It counted down fine and then began the scan disk. It probably took 2 hours for it to complete. It finally booted up, although it took about 5-10 minutes to reach the desktop and load the icons up. Trying to open anything on the start menu, it would freeze for a few minutes then finally open what you wanted.
I checked the system resources and it said she only had some 380 megs of ram not anywhere close to the 512 that's installed. I then noticed her clock was way off and I think that it had restarted at 12. Her computer was only unplugged for 4-5 days.
It was not doing this before and she hasn't had internet for a good 6 months so a virus of somekind is not what I'm thinking. I am going to try and run some cleaners tonight on it if it will let me.
Could faulty ram affect it like this? Could bad ram affect the battery (thus the clock)? Could the battery be the whole issue?
The HD spins quietly so I'm not thinking thats the issue but more likely (and hopefully) a battery or ram issue. I need to check if my extra ram will work in her machine and I can try that out.