Subject:
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PC Troubleshooting...
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.geek
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Date:
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Sat, 29 Sep 2001 07:08:29 GMT
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Viewed:
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87 times
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Hey Y'all:
Someone I know is giving me slightly old computer parts and I am building
3-4 different computer systems from the parts for use by friends -- I may
even end up with one or two machines in return to give to people in the
neighborhood. These systems are comprised of 500 MHz Pentium III processors
and motherboards, 128 MB RAM, IBM SCSI Hard Drives, 8 MB video cards, 56 K
modems, Yamaha Sound cards, a CD-ROMS drive, a floppy drive, and all of it
housed with ATX format metal case. All my pals have to do is buy keyboards,
mice, and monitors. Well, you get the idea...
Anyway, I have built one system a few times now. After putting together a
bare-bones hardware setup, I usually install the OS (Win 98 se), and run a
series of tests from a utility called Checkit 98 -- which besides testing
most everything, does deep memory testing in DOS mode and also has a burn-in
feature (which I have yet to get to).
My problem after swapping out almost all the possible components at least
once, is that the system keeps hanging. Just to be sure you understand what
I mean -- I mean that the system appears to freeze, the screen image becomes
static, the mouse does not work, the keyboard does not work,
control+alt+delete does nothing. Basically, the only thing I can do at that
point is soft or hard boot the system once again. And it keeps hanging anyway.
This is just about the wierdest thing to have ever happened to me
hardware-wise as the problem defies discovery (hence all the part swapping
and diagnostic testing). The only things I haven't tried is doing tests of
the ports with loopback plugs or swapping the power supply (which is a new
case, BTW -- not that this excludes it from possibly being a problem). The
problem appears to be intermittent, yet it will occur within 45 minutes of
the system being turned on in most cases. The machine never hangs in DOS
mode while undergoing the deep RAM testing.
Does anyone have any ideas as to what this problem might be? Alternatively,
does anyone recommend any other diagnostic tools or software that I should
consider using? Frankly, if anyone has any really kick-ass DOS diagnostic
software I'd be pleased to recive a zip-file of it before purchasing the
whole package.
Do people have any opinions about CheckIt 98? I never minded the expense of
Checkit before now because it has always worked before now in helping me
locate problems or otherwise check hardware -- or so I thought!!! Now, it
fails me completely in diagnosing this particular trouble...
::grumble::
Thanks in advance,
Hop-Frog
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: PC Troubleshooting...
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| (...) Is this while running Checkit, or regardless of what the system is doing? I'm not 100% clear on that. And what do you mean by soft boot? I'm familiar with that term being a restart using software (i.e. cntrl-alt-del) but I think you're meaning (...) (23 years ago, 29-Sep-01, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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