My new system

[BouncingSoul]

Hey all,

Read here for the back story:

http://www.ntfs.org/forum/showthread.php?p=27122#post27122

Basically it seams my system is totally F****D. I'll probably end up building a new one. Anyone know anything about the Athlon 64's? Or should I stick with Intel? If I do go with a 64 do I need a new version of XP (I know they're making one I just don't know if its out yet) or can I stick with my current version and not experience problems. Let me have some opinions.

Thanks

 

[Sazar]

currently.. a64's are the way to go

its cheaper to stay with the athlonXP's... your call really...

 

[ElementalDragon]

To answer your OS question, They do have a test version of XP 64-bit edition that i believe is downloadable off of MS's website. You don't HAVE to use a 64-bit OS, but that would kinda eliminate the point of the Athlon 64.

 

[Electronic Punk]

yeah, but the driver support atm is horrible.

 

[Goatman]

You don't HAVE to use a 64-bit OS, but that would kinda eliminate the point of the Athlon 64.

not really, they are still faster, and he will always have the 64 bit there for when the OS is released. I would go A64 best bang for the buck after the AXP.

 

[Electronic Punk]

The only problem then is whether to wait for the next generation of 64bit processors, which I think will be here before May, but no-one quite knows for sure.

I will prob go with the 3400+ 64 at the end of this month when I am out in the states, but who knows

 

[Sazar]

a64's do 32 bit work faster than the 32 bit processors @ the moment... so why not use em

if you do wanna wait.. wait for the socket 939's...

 

[LeeJend]

Why give up on the old machine yet?

-Fans spin so power supply is good.
-Keyboard lights flash so you are running power on self test which means the CPU is good, your bios is not erased and your MB is at least partially working.
-You have 2 video cards to try so video is probably ok.

All that leaves is the RAM sticks, the MB or a bad setting in CMOS RAM.
-Check the RAM sticks in another system one stick at a time.
-If RAMs good it's the MB or a CMOS setting.

Tunr off the PC, unplug the power supply wait one minute. Pull off the CMOS reset jumper, put it on the other side of the 3 pin header for 30 seconds then move it back to the original 2 pins. MAKE SURE IT IS BACK ON RIGHT!

Plug the power supply back in and try booting again. If the system doesn't come up it's probably just the MB. A cheap replacement is $50-80 dollars. Get a new MB with the same chipset and you won't even have to do a Windows repair.

The only thing bothering me is why you aren't getting a beep code failure during POST. Check to make sure your internal speaker wire to the MB didn't get knocked off. If you get beeps after that post the MB info and we can tell you what the beeps mean.

 

[BouncingSoul]

Why give up on the old machine yet?


The only thing bothering me is why you aren't getting a beep code failure during POST. Check to make sure your internal speaker wire to the MB didn't get knocked off. If you get beeps after that post the MB info and we can tell you what the beeps mean.

I'm hoping it's something cheap like the MB. I'll know in a few days when the tech's call me back. I know its not the speaker wire, thats always worked in the past and I double checked it before taking it in. I didn't try refreshing cmos before I took it in, mainly cause I've never done that before and didn't know how. I'll post again when I know what the issue was.

Thanks

 

[BouncingSoul]

Heres the verdict:

PS fried my MoBo. So I guess I'm going shopping. Still not sure what to buy. Might just say f*** it and go amd64. They are some how cheaper than a P4 @3ghz.

 

[LeeJend]

If that power supply is an Antec or Enermax try contacting customer service. I have a friend who got a new MB, CPU and RAM when his Antec fried and took the system with it. (I should say when he fried it. He won't admit it but I think he was replacing the Floppy with power on.)

 

[BouncingSoul]

Nope its not, just some crap that came with the case.

I got another problem now, Basically I just kept all my same hardware except I've got the new MoBo. I got everything plugged in and it boots but I get a stop error before I get to windows. I boot with the cd and try chkdsk /f like the stop error tells me. Except /f apparently isn't a valid parameter so that doesn't work. Anyway now I'm just pissed, all the hardware has been tested and is fine but it won't boot. Do I need to just reformat (like I was originally planning on doing) and hope for the best or what?

 

[cryogenic]

Honestly, yes... go ahead and reformat... Windows most likely is complaining about hardware differences somewhere along the way. I would say, however, since the PSU fried your mobo, why not go buy a new power supply so that this doesn't happen again? Antec & Enermax are probably the two best choices in my own personal opinion, and not many people would actually disagree with that, I don't think. A 400watt PSU is not a 400w PSU is not a 400w PSU. Antec's 350w SmartPower puts out more wattage than many 400+ watt psu's out there. It's worth your investment, especially if you plan on going to an A64 or higher-clocked P4 (EE, maybe?). I bought a cheap case with a cheap power supply when I built my computer a year ago... the power supply lasted 4 hours on my Athlon XP 2000+ system. I bought an Antec 400w SmartPower the next day... no problems since. Need I say more?

 

[LeeJend]

If you changed MB chipset manufacturers (Via to SIS, Via to Nforce, etc.) you need to do a clean install. The drivers on windows will crater the boot. Not recoverable at this point. If you went from Via to Via you may be able to jsut do a "repair install". Say NO first time it asks to repair and the next time it asks say Yes to get a "non-destructive repair".

Boot off the CD and do a new install. You will loose setup info and the registry will not have your installed programs but your data should be ok. Now to get tricky when you reinstall use a different user name for yourself. For example LeeJend1 instead of LeeJend. The new windows install will make a new My Documents and leave the old one alone so you can lift stuff like your Favorites, email folder etc out of it into the new profile.

Or if you have a lot of valuable data you can boot off a floppy and backup your data and My_Documents folders and recover a lot of it afterwards.

 

[BouncingSoul]

I got a new MSI board to replace my gigabyte. And I got an Enermax 400W PSU, the dude at the store told me that it was 2nd only to Antec which was out of stock. I didn't do a complete reformat, after trying to search for the stop message codes on google for a while I eventually realized that I could probably just reinstall. Sure enough little less than an hour later I had everything going. Thanks to everyone who posted here recently, its been a big help.

 

[LeeJend]

Enermax is as good as Antec. I'd use either.

 

[cryogenic]

I think the only advantage to antec is the fact that you can go buy them at your local computer store in most cases... CompUSA and Best Buy both sell them, so if you blow one up, you can always just run down to the store and get a good power supply (obviously at a price premium since you're buying in a store). The same may hold true for Enermax in some cases, but in my area Antec is really the only decent PSU that can be had.