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General discussion

Installing me

Mar 9, 2004 1:27AM PST

Hi there.
I am currently running windows me but I have been having problems and my local computer shop has recommended me to reinstall windows.
I have the windows disk and was wondering if anyone had any tips or steps a could use.
Thanks

I have a 20b har drive
xp2400+
512mb sdram

Discussion is locked

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Re:Installing me
Mar 9, 2004 1:48AM PST

I find it easier to correct an issue than for new system installers to install the OS (there is no "reinstall"), find all the drivers and then do the updates.

What's the issue?

Bob

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Re:Re:Installing me
Mar 9, 2004 1:57AM PST

well firstly the first boot in the morning is always a disaster.
I find myself stuck here for about 10minutes waiting for it to load.
Sometimes it freezes on the start up screen "syntax" (my motherboard make.)
Then once it gets past that in a different attempt it gets stuck on the black screen, "building dmi pool"
And I have found that the only way to get it to start is to go into hte bios and then come out of it then it will load up and programs won't run and error messages come up. So I restart and then it's fine. Also I get AVG Core error messages. My avg doesnt pick up and virus's nor does housecall.
I am completly lost to what hte problem could be!

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There's your clue it's not the OS.
Mar 9, 2004 2:43AM PST

"building dmi pool" is a BIOS message. The OS has yet to begin loading.

I'm glad you wrote this.

Now that this is out of the way, how about details about the machine and age. You can also open it up and look for the power supply wattage plus inspect for the bad motherboard capacitor issue. Here's pictures to see what to look for.

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=195
"especially when they force a dreaded system reinstall."

I've seen this one a lot, but in short, with what you've written, installing the OS is not going to cure this.

Bob

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Re:There's your clue it's not the OS.
Mar 9, 2004 2:59AM PST

My pc was built by a friend then checked over by my local computer shop (csd technology).
The pc is about 6months old and it has a 300watt power supply.
The capacitors look in good condition and there is no signs of leakage.
However I think the ram is causng some problems as every so often I get error messages statin " corrupt registry" which I blame on the fairly new piece of ram.

Furthermore the motherboard only gost about

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Re:Re:There's your clue it's not the OS.
Mar 9, 2004 3:13AM PST

I did ask for details about the machine, but 300 Watt PSU's are fit for the under 1GHz crowd. Past that and the PSU ages very rapidly.

Do this test.

Turn on the machine one morning and just let it boot and fail. Wait about 5, 10 or so minutes for things to warm up. It will likely just boot.

This is a sign of an overtaxed PSU. Sadly, an overtaxed PSU causes stress to the motherboard as well.

Here's an article on how to pick a power supply, but remember to read the second link to learn that the 300W isn't really 300. They fib!

http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20040122/
http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20021021/

Best of luck,

Bob

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Re:Re:Re:There's your clue it's not the OS.
Mar 9, 2004 3:17AM PST

do you suggest that I should get a new power supply and motherboard and start afresh with this info?

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Can't tell.
Mar 9, 2004 4:42AM PST

All I know about the machine is that it has a 300W PSU and hangs on a DMI message, but boots after warming up. This isn't enough to go one way or another.

In fact, if the machine's PSU is not being overtaxed such as running some 500MHz Celeron or such, then the hard disk could be the issue. I've seen those cause hangs at the DMI Pool message.

As it stands, I can only guide what would be likely and without swapping in a proper sized PSU, one can't really tell if that's it or not.

Bob

PS. Here those generic 450 Watt PSUs are in the 20 something dollars so I never pick anything smaller since I want the machine to run for years. No reason to stress that part.

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Re:Installing me
Mar 10, 2004 4:53PM PST

I have Me, I have ran the recovery Cd only till the pop up window ask if i want to run recovery or format & recovery, I hit cancel & removed cd when prompted to do so, rebooted & my pc was back again, this won't work everytime but to me it's worth a try.

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In this case, it's not worth that try.
Mar 10, 2004 8:11PM PST

Please read the full discussion.