Muzman on 9/1/2013 at 08:55
I've had one of these problems for a while and I'm not sure they're actually related, so here goes.
One is that my PC won't come back up from suspend/sleep about 30% of the time. It powers back up but the screen won't come on. I've troubleshot the idea that it's the screen pretty well. No alternate monitors or ports make any difference. It doesn't want me to hit space or anything and any keys to restart or shut down won't work. No input appears to be accepted and no video is actually coming out.
The only thing to do is power it down and start it up again. Sometimes doing this will get you a 'Windows was improperly shut down' message and/or firefox will act like it crashed (as that's usually running when I put it on suspend).
So in short, it's like the PC only half wakes up. Video and input are all still dead asleep. Any ideas what's going on there?
The other recent thing is that now restarting has become screwy. Probably a bad install of something. When I restart the taskbar is stuck below the screen and I have to fiddle with the options to get it back again. But it doesn't work properly and no windows actually show there.
Also several services refuse to start automatically, despite being automatic, like Print Spool and Windows Audio. Which is annoying, as you can imagine.
How do you fix that?
cheers.
Ladron De La Noche on 9/1/2013 at 13:49
All I can think of atm is to do a system file check.
sfc /scannow
Have the WinXp install disc ready in case it asks for it.
The problem could be any number of things, do the check first.
bikerdude on 9/1/2013 at 20:04
It sounds like you either have fault RAM (memory) or a faulty PSU (power supply), but the obvious thing to check as well is do a full system virus scan.
Al_B on 9/1/2013 at 20:10
Quote Posted by Muzman
Also several services refuse to start automatically, despite being automatic, like Print Spool and Windows Audio. Which is annoying, as you can imagine.
First thing I'd check for this (and it might give a clue to your other problems) is to see if anything is recorded in the event viewer. Run it with "eventvwr" from start / run or a command prompt and take a look in the System section. If you can take a look at errors from the Service Control Manager around the time you restarted they might give a bit more information about what the problem is with those services.
Muzman on 13/1/2013 at 17:24
Cheers folks
So I tried a system file check. It took a few goes to believe the disk was in the drive, but then it went through without a hitch. Can't tell if it made any changes. But after restart there was no change. All the same problems recurred.
The evntvwr log was clean as a whistle after restart too. Unsettlingly so.
I wonder if I should try a repair installation thingy. I forget if that makes a big mess or not.
Interesting about the power supply. It's probably the newest part of the machine though, and quite a good one. Maybe I just have to jiggle a few cables or something.
Muzman on 18/1/2013 at 09:25
So I tried to do a repair from the install disk and it gets to the point of asking me for an admin password and won't go any further. I'm pretty sure I never set an admin password (it's the sort of thing I'd forget, so best not to have one). It doesn't outright say the no password is wrong, but nothing happens. Troubling.
Also, in running out of ideas, I got a widget that forces repairs on the taskbar and other things, since I couldn't manage it manually. Nothing it tries works. It always says access is denied.
This and other little things suggest something has cut a nice swathe through my machine and tried to hide itself. But nothing I've used can turn anything up. I've done full scans with AVG, Malwarebytes, Spybot search and destroy. Nothing as yet. Maybe there's some better ones I should bring in.
Then, for perhaps some good evidence of a power problem, one of the drives started thrashing about and clicking etc. It didn't sound like outright failure. Lots of clicking and spinning up and down. I guess its hard to tell exactly. The PC bailed itself in self defense and I rewired the innards a bit to see if that helps (not if it's a serious power problem, but oh well).
Back up and backing up like crazy now. No new trouble as yet. The trick is I don't know which drive of 3 that it was. My PSU is also a Corsair "Rolls Royce of power supplies" job and not that old. So if that's failing I'll be annoyed.
Al_B on 18/1/2013 at 09:58
If you
have got a virus or similar infection then using the infected copy of Windows to scan itself may be ineffective. If you have another machine that you know is clean then a better option may be to connect your hard drive as a slave in it and scan it from there. An external hard drive dock would make this a lot easier if you have access to one.
Alternatively, it can be useful to have an anti-virus boot CD to hand. As you mention password problems it might be worth trying the (
http://www.ubcd4win.com/index.htm) Windows Ultimate Boot CD which I've found to be very handy in the past. It's not quite as simple as downloading a single ISO - due to its reliance on Windows files you need to have a Windows XP CD and "build" the boot CD image but it's not too painful a process. It contains some tools that will allow you to reset the administrator or any other password but be aware that if you've used the encryption built into Windows to protect folders that they will be inaccessible after doing that (probably not an issue in your case).
Muzman on 22/1/2013 at 04:17
Thanks, that looks quite interesting.
It's all academic right now unfortunately. I did something really silly. Since I wasn't sure which drive was failing exactly (although it was fairly obvious in retrospect), I was scattershot grabbing stuff from all over my 3 drives and while copying I went out for a while. When I came back the machine was twitching away and had been for some time. When I caught it early before, I could get some use out of it before the problem came back (heat related maybe). Failure to pacify the 'fit' quickly this time killed it for good.
So, new(ish) drive, clean install and sifting though all the things I customised and lost and can't get back.
How much the dying drive explains everything that was going on remains to be seen. One thing I noticed was that on suspending and rewaking the computer you usually get the user account login screen. At some point I had made my admin account the absolute one, so it would just skip that screen entirely and take you too the desktop how it was left. I can't remember how that works anymore.
But the thing is, while doing the differential diagnosis on the symptoms I was getting before, one thing came up on several occasions; A corrupt user account.
That explained a lot of things I was seeing, but I never got to do anything about it.
If I had an admin account set to automatically come back after suspension like that and the account was corrupt, would that explain why the PC sometimes wouldn't come back after suspension?
Muzman on 1/6/2013 at 08:29
A little follow up on this tale.
So after the big reinstall/ drive replacement everything was fine for a while. Being a bit worried about biker's idea I shifted everything thing around and reseated/rewired what I could and nothing was wrong for a time. But then it started happening again. I've been steering clear of suspending the machine ever since, just in case. Even so it would sometimes start up with just a black screen and take a few restarts to get the video card up. This would be totally at random and nothing much would make any obvious difference (fidgeting with cables, unplugging the power or internally or externally -got some weird idea some capacitor somewhere might need a kick. Not based on any real knowledge or information-).
The thing was the machine sure sounded like it was booting up, even though I couldn't see anything.
Then, haha, I remembered this machine has on board graphics (hey, it's stuck in a corner behind another one and I don't look at the back much). And bingo, kinda. Turns out, yup, it is booting up but not finding the PEG graphics card (even though its powered etc) and switching to the onboard as a backup.
Annoyingly just switching over doesn't work very well because 1) its AMD where the other is nVidia and 2) it doesn't support 2560x1440 (monitor native) properly (either the DVI port or the chip is too low bandwidth or something).
Still, that's better than blindly restarting all the time.
And the next turn up is that the GPU is an 8800 GTS and this kind of thing is a known problem for the 8800 series towards the end of their life.
Bummer.
Well that's an answer at least that fits the symptoms.
I've recently seen people claiming you can "fix" them by sticking them in the oven at like 200 degrees for ten minutes. Yes really. What this is supposed to do I have no idea. I sort of wonder if voodoo incantations and chickens blood wouldn't work almost as well, but what do i know.
Still not trying it just yet.
Al_B on 1/6/2013 at 16:22
The oven trick is likely to try to reflow the solder under the graphics card BGA chip(s). It's personally not something I'd recommend but people have reported some success.
