Some Moral Support Please....

Lightfall on 22/11/2006 at 14:55

Same thing happened to me once, Shayde. That moment marked the end of my pre-built computer purchases. At least if I build it myself and one component goes wonky, I can deal with it.

As for reformatting, many of us feel your pain, suewan. To me it felt like moving. Completely overwhelming the first time, but once you've done it once or twice, you get used to it and you've probably figured out a few ways to streamline the process. I actually reformat about once a year as a basic brainscrubbing procedure. Ironically enough, I've also moved once a year since I first built this computer.

I hate being good at that. :p

Anyway, I have a few tips that could help if you haven't already done the deed. If you don't mind me asking, how big is your HD and what OS are you running? If you have enough room, I'd suggest partitioning your drive into two units, dedicating C: exclusively to the OS. Install only the OS, hardware/mobo drivers essential to operating the computer, and then NOTHING ELSE. EVER. All your games/music/software/whatever stay on the D: partition. If you're running winXP, you can get away with 10 gigs, but I'd suggest up to 20. This leaves plenty of room for the memory swap file to do it's thing.

The biggest advantage for this (aside from one small extra measure of safety against losing your stuff to an OS crash) is that you can format C: alone next time as that's where most of your problems will happen, leaving all your personal stuff ready to go. Some games and software will need to be reinstalled for the fresh OS anyway, but that's just part of the process.

Rogue Keeper on 22/11/2006 at 15:02

Quote Posted by Ghostly Apparition

What kind of friend gives away a computer with those kinds of problems?

Even better, what kind of person can give away a computer for repairs with a hard disc full of intimate personal stuff!!! :wot:

One more reason for not buying complete PCs. Ok, laptops are different song.

suewan on 22/11/2006 at 19:23

Thanks for everyone's kind words and helpful advice.

The operating system is windows xp professional and I have 80 gb hard drive. It is a custom built and pretty screwy. Yes, I have often asked myself many times why on earth didn't he just reformat and double check the whole system before he passed it onto me. Needless to say I found a back up folder he created full of his crap (old school work, game saves, etc.) and it was 4 gb of stuff. I swiftly deleted it.

What happens is when I reboot to reformat, it says it can't find the hard drive and when I check the bios, well, it say the primary master is the dvd player..go figure. Anyway, one of my friends is coming over tomorrow to see what on earth is up with the bios setting and internal working and then hopefully I can reformat this stupid machine. My old crappy machine never had the problems this one has!

Bomb Bloke on 23/11/2006 at 01:39

The BIOS typically reflects how the drives are physically wired in.

If your hard drive is configured as the secondary master, then all you need to do is open the case, and swap the IDE cables around (those being the wide grey ones).

If it's set to primary slave, then you'll find that both drives are attached to the same IDE cable. Again, you'll need to swap their positions on the cable, but you'll also most likely need to mess with the jumpers.

This should allow you to reformat without any troubles, but note that your current setup won't boot from the hard drive after you perform the switch. Perform this little tweak first:

There is a hidden file on your drive, "c:\boot.ini". If you open this up with Notepad, you'll see a bottom line like this:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=somethingsomethingsomething

Yours will most likely be different to this as your hard drive isn't primary master. Copy and paste the line so that there are two of them, and edit the lower one to match mine. This creates a boot menu on startup: One option for your current setup, the other for when you switch the drives. You can remove the first line when you know it is no longer required.

If the drives are both attached to the one cable (as I suspect), what I'd recommend is buying an extra one so that they can have one cable each. It speeds drive access times no end if they don't have to share.

On the other hand, the cabling issue most likely has nothing to do with your other problems. A reinstall is the simplist solution there.

suewan on 23/11/2006 at 09:17

Hey there Bomb Drive,

Yes, thank you for your advice. Clearly, I had figured out that it is the physical wiring on why the stupid thing is playing up but there is only one hard drive and lots and lots of wire that aren't connected to anything and wires that are. The Grey Wide cable you refer to is connected to the dvd player and I can't see a slot on the hard drive for said cable. The inside of this pc is a mess....All said and done, once I sorted out that problem, I still want to reformat the thing. Personally if I had the money, I'd just buy a new pc and stop putting up with this machine.

Matthew on 23/11/2006 at 10:48

In that case, perhaps the hard drive is a SATA drive. Is there a thin (usually red) cable connecting the drive to the motherboard?

Bomb Bloke on 24/11/2006 at 12:53

If so, that'd explain why the DVD was primary master. No need to change it if so; Just find some SATA drivers.

Nameless Voice on 24/11/2006 at 14:17

Quote Posted by Lightfall

If you're running winXP, you can get away with 10 gigs, but I'd suggest up to 20. This leaves plenty of room for the memory swap file to do it's thing.

You should easily be able to get away with 5-6gb. I'd recommend putting the swapfile on its own 2gb partition and set it to use up the entire partition*, so that it can't get fragmented across the partition. I forget what the maximum swapfile size is, but 2gb should be more than enough (1gb will probably do you).

* If you get the swapfile to use the entire partition, Windows will keep pestering you about running low on disk space on your pagefile drive, so you should keep ~150mb of free ('wasted') space on it to get rid of that nagging message.

Shug on 24/11/2006 at 14:29

Can't quite remember the source, but apparently partitioning for windows vs applications/games is not a good idea for best performance in WinXP

DaBeast on 24/11/2006 at 23:17

Quote Posted by th|3f

Once you finish, get in the habit of backing up whatever you need to and reformatting regularly, especially if you're a Windows user. It might become self aware (or completely full of shit).

After installing a new fatass hard drive, and in the process screwing the old one, I thought I'd lost all 80 gigs, though luckily I was saved by a repair. After that I decided to ghost the hard drive so that in the future when it finally dies I'm not screwed.

So I set up ghost, came back 3 hours later, said 15 hours to go :eek: ....fuck that.

Reboot, Hitman:Blood Money