![[H]ard|Forum](/styles/hardforum/xenforo/logo_dark.png){kind=logo}
thisismyusername
n00b
- Joined
- Jul 19, 2005
- Messages
- 28
Hello.
I recently have ran into trouble with my current machine. As of today (about 8 hours ago) I have been crashing randomly (BSoD, various different errors), failing to POST (totally unresponsive, except my cd-rom light), and errors came up during a post (it said my CPU was running at half its speed and I should reset the clockspeeds, etc.).
System Info:
P4 3.0C
512MB of Corsair (2x 256mb sticks, PC-3200 I think)
Abit IC7
Radeon 9600XT
It'll be a long post, because I want to explain exactly what I did, in hopes some of you guys can nail the problem.
Here we go...
I built this system 2 years ago, almost to the day. Other than a Radeon 9500 (soft modded to 9700) failing on me about 9 months ago I haven't had a single problem. It ran great.
I mainly play World of Warcraft (WoW), in addition to doing normal computer activities as well. My network card which happens to be a Netgear FA310TX doesn't like WoW. It's a known issue by Blizzard (the company who created WoW). Btw this whole post won't be about WoW tech support, just trying to give ya all the info and re-tracing all my steps.
Anyways, moving on. Their tech support forums said Netgear FA310/311 users should install the updated drivers to fix connectivity issues with WoW. Unfortunately this card isn't supported by Windows XP, when attempting to install them Win XP said it expects a different INF format or something.
So I start googling, and browsing the tech support forums on WoW. I find a link for a modded driver that works with XP, so I install them. In addition to that I figure what the heck, might as well upgrade my Cat drivers to the latest one (previously I was using 5.1s).
I do all that and reboot. BSoD within 5 minutes of loading windows. The error was something like DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_THAN_EQUAL, and it gave a file ref to USBPort.Sys.
"Odd" I think to myself, and power down and let it sit for a few. Turned it back on, and now it's failing to POST. I repeated this a few times over the course of about an hour, however I received different BSoDs, sometimes they gave no file reference. I believe one of the other errors was PFN_LIST_CORRUPT. I also remember once instance where it just BSoD'd and didn't give anything other than a short story saying to make sure my drivers are upgraded and that I should remove any new hardware I might have put in.
At this point I'm getting disgruntled, took a break, figured I'll just open my side panel, blow a fan in, and try again in a bit. I do that, and I happen to fail a post again.
A few hours pass (up until about an hour ago), and I decided it would be a good idea to reseat everything, and give my inner-computer a good cleaning. My room is quite dusty.
When I had it opened sitting on my table, the first thing I thought was "wtf dust bunnies". Then shortly after that I realized this can't even be classified as dust bunnies. We're talking full blown out dust antelopes. I've never seen anything like it in my life. I thought perhaps I was harvesting small mammals inside my case for the last year.
I cleaned everything, resat every card/ram/CPU, and for the heck of it I put my network card in a different slot because I did notice my NIC was sharing the same IRQ as the onboard NIC before I started taking everything apart.
Here we are, the computer seems to be running normally now. I haven't crashed out, but I haven't ran WoW yet, or did anything intensive. At this point I'm just burning everything I want to backup incase things turn ugly in the near future.
It's abnormally hot today, but about 3 weeks it was even hotter and it was spread over the course of a few days and I didn't have issues. The thought of overheating didn't really cross my mind.
My question is this. Could a stupid amount of dust cause system failures? Perhaps it was the modded drivers (but that wouldn't explain why I couldn't even boot up). I thought maybe my BIOS battery was also dying if the CPU clock (which isn't overclocked btw) was resetting but the other options were sticking.
At the moment I'm hoping for the best but in case it doesn't work out, what would you guys recommend for a pre-built system? To be honest, a few years ago I would have considered myself anxious to build a new system. But now, I simply want stuff to work. The thought of ordering 100 parts online through price-watch and assembling a system from scratch makes me want to cringe.
I'll probably scope the local areas over the next few days to get some quotes, but maybe you guys could point me to a solid online vendor? Alienware or other higher end gaming places are a no-no, I wouldn't want to spend anymore than like $700 (no monitor).
Thanks for reading.
I recently have ran into trouble with my current machine. As of today (about 8 hours ago) I have been crashing randomly (BSoD, various different errors), failing to POST (totally unresponsive, except my cd-rom light), and errors came up during a post (it said my CPU was running at half its speed and I should reset the clockspeeds, etc.).
System Info:
P4 3.0C
512MB of Corsair (2x 256mb sticks, PC-3200 I think)
Abit IC7
Radeon 9600XT
It'll be a long post, because I want to explain exactly what I did, in hopes some of you guys can nail the problem.
Here we go...
I built this system 2 years ago, almost to the day. Other than a Radeon 9500 (soft modded to 9700) failing on me about 9 months ago I haven't had a single problem. It ran great.
I mainly play World of Warcraft (WoW), in addition to doing normal computer activities as well. My network card which happens to be a Netgear FA310TX doesn't like WoW. It's a known issue by Blizzard (the company who created WoW). Btw this whole post won't be about WoW tech support, just trying to give ya all the info and re-tracing all my steps.
Anyways, moving on. Their tech support forums said Netgear FA310/311 users should install the updated drivers to fix connectivity issues with WoW. Unfortunately this card isn't supported by Windows XP, when attempting to install them Win XP said it expects a different INF format or something.
So I start googling, and browsing the tech support forums on WoW. I find a link for a modded driver that works with XP, so I install them. In addition to that I figure what the heck, might as well upgrade my Cat drivers to the latest one (previously I was using 5.1s).
I do all that and reboot. BSoD within 5 minutes of loading windows. The error was something like DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_THAN_EQUAL, and it gave a file ref to USBPort.Sys.
"Odd" I think to myself, and power down and let it sit for a few. Turned it back on, and now it's failing to POST. I repeated this a few times over the course of about an hour, however I received different BSoDs, sometimes they gave no file reference. I believe one of the other errors was PFN_LIST_CORRUPT. I also remember once instance where it just BSoD'd and didn't give anything other than a short story saying to make sure my drivers are upgraded and that I should remove any new hardware I might have put in.
At this point I'm getting disgruntled, took a break, figured I'll just open my side panel, blow a fan in, and try again in a bit. I do that, and I happen to fail a post again.
A few hours pass (up until about an hour ago), and I decided it would be a good idea to reseat everything, and give my inner-computer a good cleaning. My room is quite dusty.
When I had it opened sitting on my table, the first thing I thought was "wtf dust bunnies". Then shortly after that I realized this can't even be classified as dust bunnies. We're talking full blown out dust antelopes. I've never seen anything like it in my life. I thought perhaps I was harvesting small mammals inside my case for the last year.
I cleaned everything, resat every card/ram/CPU, and for the heck of it I put my network card in a different slot because I did notice my NIC was sharing the same IRQ as the onboard NIC before I started taking everything apart.
Here we are, the computer seems to be running normally now. I haven't crashed out, but I haven't ran WoW yet, or did anything intensive. At this point I'm just burning everything I want to backup incase things turn ugly in the near future.
It's abnormally hot today, but about 3 weeks it was even hotter and it was spread over the course of a few days and I didn't have issues. The thought of overheating didn't really cross my mind.
My question is this. Could a stupid amount of dust cause system failures? Perhaps it was the modded drivers (but that wouldn't explain why I couldn't even boot up). I thought maybe my BIOS battery was also dying if the CPU clock (which isn't overclocked btw) was resetting but the other options were sticking.
At the moment I'm hoping for the best but in case it doesn't work out, what would you guys recommend for a pre-built system? To be honest, a few years ago I would have considered myself anxious to build a new system. But now, I simply want stuff to work. The thought of ordering 100 parts online through price-watch and assembling a system from scratch makes me want to cringe.
I'll probably scope the local areas over the next few days to get some quotes, but maybe you guys could point me to a solid online vendor? Alienware or other higher end gaming places are a no-no, I wouldn't want to spend anymore than like $700 (no monitor).
Thanks for reading.