United3dArtists Archive

Well I finally got my new box together and ready to install some software.....

I will share this... I had to return the motherboard.... 3 of the pins in the cpu cradle were twisted and could not make contact with the cpu connector.

This is a space difference of microns ...not enuff to short everything out but enuff that contact was not made.

It took 7 hours and every magnifying glass I could find (just short of phoning the university to use the electron microscope) of ever increasing magnification to find the damaged pins...

In short... boy are my eyes getting bad.... and my legendary patience is rapidly degenerating as well.

Can everyone gripe about PC's here? Here's mine: "NTLDR is missing".

What OS are you running?
If XP and you have the CD then you can run a repair from the CD.
Press "R" to repair from the screen this will take you into the console.
Type "copy d:\i386\ntldr c:\windows" (without quotes), where "D" is the letter of your CD/DVD ROM drive (your optical drive may be different, especially if you have more than one). Eject the CD from the drive and type "Exit" (without quotes) to restart your computer. The NTLDR file will be copied from the installation disc to your hard drive.

Thanks for the feedback jeff ... I didn't explain this well ... the issue was the cpu sitting in its cradle in the motherboard... there are gold pins that extend up from the cpu base which are supposed to mate with matching contacts on the physical cpu. 3 of these pins were twisted and did not mate which stopped the cpu from doing anything. Replacing the motherboard was the only way to properly fix them... manually adjusting these pins would void warranty.

If the pins had been bent it would have been obvious to the naked eye or a low magnification glass... they were twisted which I did not identify for several hours.

@finis... a pc help thread might help us out here so using this one as the start could work... up to Steinie and the gods of control....

v3rd3,
I have had that happen before with new mother boards and it is frustrating because you can not figure out why its not working and after hours of disconnecting everything except for the video card and power supply.
I feel your pain.
I am a MSCE/A+ certified computer tech but do not do it any more for a living.
I do work on all the computers here at work but that is not my primary job.

Hate hardware issues....RAM always seems to clap out with me (the root of all blue screens)

Fixed! Thanks Jeffroig!

I don't have an install CD. XP Pro was installed at the factory. Not enough sense to make restore points etc. I tried what you said with a "restore" CD and I could not access all the directories on C:. However, looking at the drives made me think about the second HD in the machine. I scavenged it from another computer and it might have had an OS on it. Well, I set BIOS to boot from that one and guess what? It booted fine except for a little trouble with the mouse.

Now the strange part. There is no OS on the second HD.

Now to prepare the restore things and make an emergency boot disk and back stuff up and ...

jeffroig wrote:v3rd3,

I am a MSCE/A+ certified computer tech but do not do it any more for a living.
I do work on all the computers here at work but that is not my primary job.

I was the PC guy when they came out and am really glad that I got into programming mainframes.

There are certain professions where you are like knowing what you know but regret other people finding out... like doctors... lawyers and IT guys. My favourite stories usually start with the guy from the corner office following me to the washroom and detailing his problems while I was in the stall... best farewell party ever

You are more than right about that, My neighbors call me all the time asking me stupid questions that if they would just take a minute to google they would find the answer out.
Most of the time they get viruses from go places they shouldnt and then wonder why the computer is acting funny.

yep..lol... the best part is we are all independently wealthy so we can help them for free...

Good for you v3...

I've given up on fiddling with computer guts, just too frustrating to trouble shoot problems which could be anywhere!

Oh Yeah got loads of money so much I use it for toilet paper...LOL

Here is a good one that happened to me not too long ago that took about 3 weeks to solve.
First the NIC card went out and it is built on the mother board.
So I installed another one and it then came up with the error that two NIC cards can not reside on the same board.
Turned off the built in one from the bios then restarted.
Next it said I had a bad PCI slot and the nic card still would not work.
Installed the NIC card into another PCI slot and once again it said that one was bad.
Then the built in video card went out and all the video was scrambled looking.
So I installed a new video card in the AGP slot and it came up with a conflict with the built in NIC card.
at this point I was say what the heck, never had I seen this before.
I then removed everything and started back fresh and got the video to work again but still no NIC card.
The next thing that happened was that it could not find the HD and at this point I thought this is hopeless the computer is done.
I had to put it aside and say its time to buy another one.
So I went about my business and left it sit for a week and didn't let it bother me.
Well after a week I decided I wasn't going to let this get the best of me and I was smarter than the people who designed the computer.
I removed everything, all SATA and IDE cables, disconnected the power from the drive and basically just had a mother board with power hooked to video.
Turned it on and all worked, it went through the prompts and the NIC was working.
Hooked up the HD to see if it would boot and all of a sudden just like before the NIC card was bad and the video was doing wild things.
So the only thing that had changed was hooking up the HD.
I have had some wild things happen in the past that were similar to this and it had been the power supply.
I installed a new power supply and tried again and once again it did the same thing.
I tried the power supply that I pulled out in another computer and it worked fine, so I knew it was not the power supply.
Changed out the SATA cable on the HD and tried again and everything worked with no problem.
It turned out that the SATA cable was bad and was causing the whole problem.
I would of never thought that a SATA cable would cause all of those problems.
Even stranger was a friend of mine who owns a PC shop called with the same exact problem about 2 days later.
He said he had built the system new for a customer and could not figure it out.
Told him to try the SATA cables and sure enough it fixed the problem.
It is always the simplest things that cause the biggest problems, as I was always told K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple Stupid).

Yes, Virginia, there is a SATA Clause.

If I press 3 on my TV remote while holding F9 on my computer key board while thinking about lizards my computer is mysteriously redirected to Spacekdet's photo blog. Could this be related the latest Windows auto-updates?

WOW! that sounds like one heck of a update....Or it could be a downgrade....LOL

Finis wrote:If I press 3 on my TV remote while holding F9 on my computer key board while thinking about lizards my computer is mysteriously redirected to Spacekdet's photo blog. Could this be related the latest Windows auto-updates?

I think it means you're using Win 7 Ultimate ... the photo blog is a feature ...

Hi my son just scewed up his pc for the 5 time,
He was in face book and he is to hectic with his mouse clicking and keybord.
a porn side poped up and he clicked on it insted of clicking it off.
now when i fire up his pc all i get is a pop up fenster that says pay and download.
There is nothing i can do to get rid of this
Its a bugger of a thing

This will help depending on the OS he is running.
Turn computer on and right after it displays its logo such as dell or gateway etc... press the F8 key and you will get a menu.
Select safe mode and press enter.
Use another computer and download the free version of this software http://www.superantispyware.com/
When in safe mode the USB still works.
The program you just download from the above website put it on a USB key and then install it on the computer running in safe mode.
Run the software and it will find the MalWare.
The other thing you can do depends on the antivirus software you have installed is to run a boot time scan and it will find it and delete it.
Left undone and it will continue to download other viruses and rootkits that can can more damage.
I would also suggest using Avast antivirus it is free and can be found here http://www.avast.com

Darn, the curse of the "Accidental Porn" strikes again!

He he ,i thought the same when he told me
I think it maybe time for that little chat about the birds and the bees.
He is 12 years old

But Dad I really didn't click on the link it popped up on its own.
Or the ever so famous one "Billy" sent it to me..
The best thing to make sure you do not yell, remember you were his age once and you were curious too.
Its natural to be curious about this, take him for a walk and have the talk.

Is it possible for a mailware virus from my sons pc to get into mine
i ask this becuase my internet security is going crazy and keeps finding mailware problems
at the moment its dizinfecting my pc complete. it crashed me also with a serios prob
the two pcs are on the same network joined with netgear wireless

It is possible only if the two computers share files between them.

I sorted it out my virus program found 6 mailware probs ,they had somthing to do
with google crome , I only surf in foroms from my apps and ebay so where these came from
i dont know, but all is well and good
Thanks

It also depends on what version of windows you are using and if you have the latest updates installed.
Some version of windows such as 2000 and ME are still in use today and have open holes in them that were never resolved that can allow malware/viruses to come in through open ports without you knowing.

I have one PC totally deconstructed. I think it needs a new power supply but
just Need The Time to work on it. Not sure if it is worth the effort.
I have a 2nd PC that is just powered off. I have a wireless connection which is a
P.O.S. so no point using it. So SOMEDAY we can run LAN cable down here.
Strangely enough the laptop net connection works just fine. Hmm...

Take the one PC with the bad power supply and fix it and then do a fresh install of Windows XP and turn it into your server.
Take the 2nd PC and use it as a render node and install a net render software so that your laptop and the other PC render together and send the images to the server.
Then you have a small render farm.
Call it Froo's Farm...LOL

Heheh yeah that'd be nice!

You might create a user with no administration rights. This way virus cannot install any software on your computer. Only problem Microsoft updates do not install.

And yet another good idea makes it to the table.

Windows 7 has a great backup program. You backup the system partition as a image. If you loose the system disk drive or it gets corrupted, it only takes a couple of hours to restore it.