somethings broken....but what?

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richms

28185 posts

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#257192 20-Sep-2009 15:19

Well you have already established that you need a new harddrive, and the smallest you can get in a shop is well over the cost of a whole ex lease machine. Thats assuming you can get one that will work on it since an AGP era machine probably has a parallel ata drive in it.

Being a student shouldnt stop you from doing some cash work to get the money together for a computer. Even if its PAYE the amount that you can earn in a week is plenty to be able to get ex lease machines.

IMO messing with the machine that you are using as a tool while studying is a bad thing. I dont do any updates or anything to that machine since I have been burned before with a bad adobe update 4 days before something was due.

Richard rich.ms

snowman

30 posts

Geek

#257222 20-Sep-2009 17:24

ok, so I need a new hardrive, I've got some sitting around that should do the job. I will test those and try them out.

Ive already paid $90 for this computer (yes, it was working when I got it), swapping the hdd and adding RAM shouldnt fry it (right?) and that's most of my money gone, which is why I'm trying to fix it.

and no, i would not mess around with the computer that I am using to study, that is lappy, he is staying untouched. The computer that I swapped hdd's with is an old server that isnt being used, but still works

snowman

30 posts

Geek

#263002 10-Oct-2009 11:38

sorry for the long wait...had school holidays and spent most of it in aussie......but anyho...

I put the computers orgional hdd in it and lo and behold! it booted up!
not all worked though, it took about half and hour to boot, and then it was working really slowly.....I clicked on start and it took five minutes for the start menu to appear
any ideas what or why?

soleil24

124 posts

Master Geek

#263018 10-Oct-2009 12:08

snowman wrote "any ideas what or why?"

Yes, something's broken !

As you've been concentrating on the hdd being the problem, might be worth downloading a Live CD of a Linux distro and seeing if that runs (a Live CD won't install anything to the hdd, will just load an image to RAM). DSL would be a good one as it will only be a 50MB download and uses a lightweight window manager. Booting a Live CD shouldn't be as quick as booting from an hdd-installed OS but not by much and certainly not as slow as you've been experiencing *if* the issue is just the hdd.

If that takes forever to load then the problem is elsewhere...and probably time to consider re-cycling that bargain buy. What are tha basic specs of this machine? SHould give folk an idea of the sort of performance you might expect?

IG

tomgeeknz

923 posts

Ultimate Geek

#263023 10-Oct-2009 12:21

Specs from original post:

Trademe computer:
1.7ghz intel celeron processor
1gb DDR RAM
Shared graphics
Any other specs/info you need, just ask

soleil24

124 posts

Master Geek

#263028 10-Oct-2009 12:42

thanks @ thefatmould - must remember to actually read stuff ;-)

snowman

30 posts

Geek

#263045 10-Oct-2009 14:05

booted from an ubuntu live cd, The cddrive and hdd start making a lot noise, just normal reading/writing sounds. This goes on for about 10min then it just stops and nothing else happens

Sharesies

Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

soleil24

124 posts

Master Geek

#263055 10-Oct-2009 15:13

OK, so I've woken up and read the whole thread now...

snowman: booted from an ubuntu live cd, The cddrive and hdd start making a lot noise, just normal reading/writing sounds. This goes on for about 10min then it just stops and nothing else happens

Doesn't sound promising !

If disk diagnostics failed on this machine (but same disk performs ok on other h/w) could be simple & cheap IDE cable ; or simple & not so cheap IDE controller.

Probably go through something like this:

Checking BIOS settings was suggested earlier? Have you checked BIOS for out of the oridnary settings (or evn just reset all to defaults) to make sure it hasn't been tooled around with.

Assume mainboad has 2 IDE slots? If both hdd & CD are on one cable, check device jumpering , then try other IDE slot.

Get spare IDE cable & try just last known working hdd.

After that consider how much time/money you want to throw at this - unless you just like a technical challenge it's probably not worth pursuing much further and unless you have 20 years' accumulated spares (or "junk" depending who you talk to

) kicking around, it's going to be relatively expensive compared to original purchase price to take this much further.

IG

snowman

30 posts

Geek

#263280 11-Oct-2009 15:05

Replaced the IDE cable, checked the BIOS, the HDD and CDD are on different cables, devices are jumpered correctly, HDD and RAM has tested out ok........still the same problems, no change whatsoever.

soleil24:
I wouldn't like to just give up on this, if I have to buy parts that would be rather expensive, I probably won't (asbefore mentioned I do not have a truckload of money sitting around). However I do have several old computers doing nothing and can use parts from them....... besides a challenge would be nice.

Karameadave

15 posts

Geek

#263282 11-Oct-2009 15:21

Alternatively you could try a live cd of Puppy Linux
sometimes ubuntu can be stubborn.

soleil24

124 posts

Master Geek

#263381 11-Oct-2009 23:59

snowman, from the problems you've described it could be anything from a dodgy power supply through anything on the mainboard to a flaky IDE cable and without specialized test gear you're looking at a methodical "swap and see" to try & isolate the fault from your box of spares - as long as you know the item you're swapping is good.

if you ran memtest from UBCD then it might be worth firing up a different Linux Live distro as suggested above - Puppy is reasonably lightweight (which is why I suggested DSL); or if you're feeling adventurous and the machine's BIOS supports it, create a bootable Linux USB (avoiding the disk I/O) just to prove the machine will run something.

admire your tenacity & good luck with it (from someone who has managed to keep his first "shop-bought" PC running just for fun - it has a 486-33 processor and that was an early upgrade, so that should age it - and me - for you !)

IG

snowman

30 posts

Geek

#264517 17-Oct-2009 12:04

downloaded puppy and ran it, got to the Isolinux screen no problems. Told it to boot live and was rewarded with a blinking terminal cursor, and nothing else. The CD does work fine, I tested it out on lappy, and LOVE the speed!

so as soon as I have time I will be doing a huge "swap and see", and well, I guess we'll see

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