Sick PC thoughts

Just been round to a friend who has a sick PC (old'ish Compaq running XP Home). Basically when I got there Windows started with "Failed to close, choose one of these options" type message. Choose Safe Mode and the list of drivers scrolls up the screen, then after a few moments it goes into a reboot, round and round that loop.

I had a look round the BIOS, nothing seemed to be amiss. Decide to power down and leave few a few minutes. Powered it up and immediately the power (?) light on the front of the PC flickers but nothing else happens. The monitor power light flashes gently indicative of no data signal so the graphics isn't getting going. I tried 3 or 4 times but couldn't get past that point. No idea why the power light flickers in that situation.

Looked around inside, moderate amount of dust but I've seen much worse, nothing appeared to be loose.

I'm picking it up in the next day or two to bring home to look further, check power connections, graphics card seating, etc.

Clearly the fact that it scrolled the list of drivers on the Safe Mode load means the HDD is not (completely) faulty. Though any of memory, mother board, PSU, could be problematic - the PSU is a 250W LiteOn (IIRC).

Any thoughts on what may be wrong?

In reply to a post by cheshire_man:

Any thoughts on what may be wrong?

I would guess at the PSU for starters, both because of some of the symptoms and the age and wattage. If it's not too old and can have another PSU test it, that would remove that one as doubt.

After that it gets more complicated.

Try googling for a WinPE disk. Use that to boot the machine and run chkdsk /r taking care to select the correct hard disk drive letter. Failing that you, if you have time on your hands, you could buy Spinrite6 and use that to boot from and check the hdd condition.

Yep, if I can get the PC to the point of booting from somewhere I'd try Hirens. But, when I left it yesterday it wouldn't even get to BIOS initialisation let alone trying to boot from some media.

My cousin had a similar problem with an "old'ish Compaq running XP Home" and it did turn out to be a failed HDD...although, in his case, he could not boot into safe mode.

If it doesn't get past BIOS it isn't a HDD problem causing the specific issue.. Unless the HDD is shorting out or something - extremely rare.

Surely it can't be worth replacing any components on that? Tell them to by a new one.

I'm thinking motherboard.

Edited by Pipexer (Tue 24-Jan-12 19:15:02)

Still worth checking the HDD though - stick it in an enclosure and give it a health check on another pc perhaps?

Oh it's definately worth testing yes, but the easiest way is to just disconnect the SATA/IDE cable from the mobo end, restart the system, and see if it makes any difference. If the HDD was at fault it would most likely come up with some sort of error such as INSERT SYSTEM DISK or No Operating System Present, it shouldn't stop the BIOS from handing over.

Note above I suggested to remove the data cable only at first in case it is due to the PSU not being able to deliver sufficient power, which may otherwise give a false impression that the HDD was causing the problem, should the power cable be removed and free up power demand, when it is actually a PSU problem

A CHKDSK will likely find errors with the MFT but they are probably a result of the system spontaneously crashing and due to it's age - power interruptions in the past, etc.

Edited by Pipexer (Tue 24-Jan-12 20:17:24)

If you've got a multimetre, open the computer case and stick the negative on the computer case and the positive on to the round button battery.
If your multimetre says anything less then 3 volts DC, it's the bios battery which is flat. They only have a service life of 6-10 years.

should be a CR2302 and usually costs around £1 for a pack of 3.

If the clock on the bios is correct then proberly not that and I think it just makes the user settings on the bios go to default and clock not right. Does not stop the computer going. But might be wrong but put my money on not that!.

I brought the PC home this afternoon. Tried booting it and it booted to the Safe Mode menu options but went into a reboot after displaying the Safe Mode driver list. Tried Normal Windows and it came up with the Windows Graphic, then went into a reboot.

Tried booting a Hirens CD and that booted into mini-XP fine. Have run various HDD surface tests from that any they seem to pass ok. However mini-ZP file manager cannot see the C drive and display, for example, its size and free space, it hangs (though I can get the size from other utilities).

I'm beginning to wonder whether there is a corrupted Windows system on the HDD, but don't see why that would stop the displaying of size & free space. Could the partition table be corrupt? But how would it manage to display the driver list or the Windows logo?

I've tried repairing the MBR but that made no difference.

I'm beginning to wonder whether it may be necessary / worth reformatting the drive and seeing if that brings it back to life.

Your collective wisdom would be appreciated.

[Apologies for replying to myself but it seemed to be the best way of replying to all]

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

If it doesn't get past BIOS it isn't a HDD problem causing the specific issue.. Unless the HDD is shorting out or something - extremely rare.

IDE drives can certainly stop a comp getting past BIOS.

Definitely try reformatting the drive and a clean reinstallation Windows - it wont cost anything other than perhaps your valuable time

Guess the owner had previously backed up important files before the machine became sick? If not you may still be able to transfer them onto another drive but I would certainly check them for any malware first.

No important stuff on there at all I believe - though will double check before trying a reformat and reinstall.

Sounds as though there may be OS corruption, possibly caused by HD failing.
Could boot from OS CD and reinstall windows. Before going down the format route.

Having tried various options on the Hirensboot CD this morning I booted form an XP disc and went into the Recovery Console. Ran FIXBOOT and FIXMBR and it now boots into Windows fine.

I'll be returning it this afternoon so will of course double check that it's all working.

Clearly there may be an HDD problem starting to emerge. I know the PC is not used for anything 'critical', web browsing and email is about it, so I'll copy any possibly useful files to a USB stick - just in case.

Murphy's Law strikes. Got it back, set it up, PC booted up into Windows just fine. But...

The screen wouldn't display, just the power light gently flashing saying no signal. Tried a spare screen and cable, still no joy. So have brought it all back. Clearly the graphics card must now be suspect. When time I'll remove and reseat, just in case.

That's the kind of behaviour you'd see on a card capable of running two screens (or two cards able to run together), where the bios thinks one is the primary and windows thinks the other one is.

The card only has a single VGA connection and worked fine while I was fixing the MBR & Partition Table. It's an old PC with very basic hardware, it does the job but the idea of running two screens would blow the owner's mind and certainly not one that this PC would need to do.

A very basic graphics card would be perfectly adequate for the user's needs. Though not sure where one would get a totally basic graphics card these days.

Depends if it's agp. I have an agp card, but it's only 32mb iirc.

eta: looks like they go pretty cheap on ebay.

Edited by deleted (Wed 25-Jan-12 17:05:01)

Until I open it up again and have a look I'm not sure. I know it's physically pretty large by modern standards, nearly A5 size and, IIRC, no cooling fans.

It's a Compaq Pressario S000 DF131A, the graphics card slot is moderately short - less than the length of the card - and is seated in a brown socket that finishes an inch or so from the card mounting bracket. I think it's an AGP socket.

There's a lot of dust in the PC so a clean is called for.

I won't have chance to do any more with it until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest.

I agree with the PSU being suspect, had it happen myself in the past. Lights on mobo & case but PC wouldn't boot, wasn't giving the usual "boot" sound after POST, instead the PC shut down. Mine gave a crack sound when the PSU failed and although there were still case lights and power to the mobo etc there wasn't enough power to boot. For the times you can boot there than might not be enough power for the graphics card.

Another past experience was a HDD fault where the disk was still spinning but not fast enough to boot, it would boot occasionally but not reliably. I managed to clone the HDD to a replacement which then booted OK.

Try booting off a Linux Live CD too, the disk checker might flag up a disk fault almost straight away. I've done Windows scans and disks given the all clear but Linux flags a disk error...... more confusion.

I did all the fix work (fixmbr, fixpartition) with a perfectly working PC, everything, including the graphics card just fine.

It's only today's inability to display anything that makes me suspect the graphics card now. But given the amount of dust inside it could well be that returning the PC, and its short car journey, may have affected the card/MB interface. Perhaps the journey back here has reset it again .

It also has two unneeded cards including a wireless lan card which I will probably remove, that will reduce PSU consumption fractionally.

Look for bulging capacitors on the motherboard, a nice free thing to check.

It might also be a good time to strip the PC down totally and put back together, to cure any issues of that sort.

There's a manual for that computer here, which suggests that it has on-board graphics. So you should be able to use that rather than trying to find a new card.

With the varying symptoms that you have experienced I would have to agree with others that a PSU problem is a possibility. That can lead to all sorts of strange, inconsistent behaviour. Problem is a PSU for something that old is going to be difficult to find.

I'd seen that manual. The relevant (I think) bit is

An expansion card is a circuit board that fits into a PC expansion slot. Your PC contains several expansion slots that can be used to add components to your PC.

Component configurations vary by model.

Expansion cards you can replace or add to your PC include:
...
� Graphics Card
...

I read that as meaning a graphics card could already be there, and replaced, or a graphics card could be added.

Although there is an Nvidia chip on the motherboard the only VGA connector is on the graphics card itself. If there had been another I'd have tried that.

I'll remove the wireless LAN card and the other card (may be a modem) to marginally reduce the PSU load. The 2 CD drives work fine.