Super easy to tell if it's a hard drive issue. Burn any one of the dozen distros of linux that will boot from a live CD/DVD (Ubuntu will do this), and boot it on up. If it boots and acts fine, bang, your problem is either the drive or the installation on the drive. Doesn't sound like the PSU to me, kinda sounds like maybe a memory issue (which can either be the memory or the motherboard). Have you checked the Windows event logs to see if there are any errors in there that might help pinpoint why its locking up?
Also: do you know what a blown capacitor looks like? Google it. Pull the side off your case and with a flashlight, check all the caps on your motherboard. Blown capacitors frequently cause odd and intermittent behavior. Note that not seeing a capacitor that's leaking fluid or deformed doesn't mean all of your caps are good, but it's an easy two minute check, and if you see any that are obviously blown, you can stop troubleshooting.
I wasn't terribly clear, I'm writing from the computer in question right now. The problem with the booting and freezing is intermittent, and mostly random. I'm going to run memtest shortly to see if anything comes up there.
Ah, I thought it was acting sluggish all the time. Memtest is a good thing to check - load the boot time scanner and let it run 3-4 full passes. Another thing to check is to download a tool like Speed Fan that will report system temperatures while its running. When systems heat up, the system will throttle itself to curb the heat and eventually will often lock up. Speed Fan will tell you the temperature, you could also run a test like Prime95 to see if the temperature spikes high under load, and also to determine if it causes the problem. That could explain the reboot problems, too, since the system may not have cooled off in time and may still be suffering when you reboot it. If that doesn't pan out, and if it does it with any kind of frequency, you could load up the live linux distro and just use that for a while as your desktop OS. Web browsing and basic stuff like media playback, word processing, etc., will all work out of the box if you load a comprehensive distro like Ubuntu.
Fuck okay, now it's working. I typed up a whole thing and it wouldn't let me post it and now it's gone forever. I had a look at the event manager, and there's a whole bunch of warnings, errors, and critical errors under Diagnostics- Performance dating back to the time I installed Windows 7. 2 warnings come in pairs, first is Code: The Desktop Window Manager is experiencing heavy resource contention. Scenario : The Desktop Window Manager responsiveness has degraded. and then second Code: The Desktop Window Manager is experiencing heavy resource contention. Reason : Graphics subsystem resources are over-utilized. Diagnosis : A consistent degradation in frame rate for the Desktop Window Manager was observed over a period of time. with the same timecode. The others are errors and critical errors stating Code: Windows has started up: Boot Duration : 59341ms
Right, so apparently my posts are getting cut off. Anyway, I ran Memtest a few times and it passed, no errors or anything. I'll be running Speedfan and testing with Prime and SuperPi et al and I'll post more when I know more.
As I said in the PM, email me what you're trying to post. I think it's because our database is using a Latin character set, and doesn't deal with UTF-8 or higher characters. Odds are you're trying to enter some sort of character that isn't "normal" and it's causing shit to blow up. It's probably been resolved in one of the patches that I haven't applied as of yet.
Huh. Almost sounds like W7 is dogging because it can't get enough resources from the graphics card to process the little desktop effects like transparencies. Go to Start > Control Panel > Personalization and select one of the Basic and High Contrast themes at the bottom. See if those error logs stop occurring. If that happens, it's either a graphics driver issue or a problem with the card.
I tried it multiple times with different words/length each time, I don't have the contents of what I was trying to post anymore. I didn't use any characters that weren't plain text straight from the keyboard and the "code" tags. Alright, I changed the scheme to the basic setting. I'm not sure why my graphics card would be having problems, I just bought a GTS 450 in November. Looking back at the logs, it seems the 2 error messages don't appear until the start of this year, after I had to remove a stick of bad RAM (went from 6 gigs to 5 gigs). I'll see if it's the scheme.
Before you had the nvidia chip, did you have an ATI chip or onboard intel graphics? My friend had similar problems due to driver conflicts after switching video cards. I'd run ccleaner and try and remove any remnants of previous drivers that may be hidden on your system somewhere.
I'm hoping someone is able to help me. I installed a new wireless modem on my brother's computer about a week ago. Yesterday when he turned his computer on, all his documents were missing. All the shortcuts on the desktop have disappeared and when you go into the My Documents folder, there is nothing in there. When I click on the properties tab however, it says it contains 186 files, 17 folders and 744 mb in size. It also says that the folder was only created today (31/03) I have done a system restore, nothing. I have googled and tried to do something in the regedit but the "Documents and Settings" value is not there. TIA
My computer's Windows Messenger software is essentially my timeclock. I sign on when I start working in the morning, and sign off when I leave at night. If I go idle for longer than 5 minutes, it shows that I am idle, and I inevitably get yelled at by my manager. I managed to change the system to only go idle after an hour of inactivity, but then it shows that I've been idle for an hour and again, I get yelled at. I would download software to move the cursor at a set interval to keep things moving, but my lovely place of employment blocks all external installations. Basically, I can't install shit they don't give me. The best I can come up with is taping down one of my keys, but doesn't Windows have some kind of built in security with keys being held down for lengths of time?
If someone has a Adobe Pro, or other program with optical character recognition, I could stand to have a file converted to text (kind need it tonight though).
I'm trying to help my friend get some pictures off an old Verizon LG Dare 9700. Only problem is the phone is kinda busted up. The screen still turns on and the phone charges but the buttons are broken off so I can't just email or text the photos to myself so I'm trying to find a way to connect the phone to my laptop and just copy them from there. Is there anything I can do to have the phone show up as an external drive or something? When I plug it into the USB port of my Macbook it recognizes it as a modem but not as a drive. Any help?
Take it to your local cel phone store (not some mall kiosk, but an actual store) along with a USB memory stick of some sort. They have the software and cable to download/transfer all the info off the phone, and should be able to dump it onto a USB memory stick for you. Might cost you $10 or something, but it shouldn't be a problem.
You are in luck. The Dare is supported by BitPim which means you can do this all yourself at home: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.bitpim.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.bitpim.org/</a> Never used the Mac version myself but it's there for download.