[civ]

Hey guys, Im not sure where to put this thread because it has a lot of problems. So you can move it if you want.

Down to the Problem:

Anyways, my father recently bought a nice computer to replace his old 1.5ghz (damn thats old). So with this new computer, my father wanted to keep the old one and run duel operatiing systems (Xp and 98) so he could play his old dos games and such. After a long battle to get that working, it finally goes through. After a week or so with his computer perfect, he gets some driver conflicts with his audio driver and card. Long story short, he had to disable it in the BIOS and remove its drivers, and his audio card he installed worked. Anyways, one day my father tries to defragment the computer (the xp side), and it is slow as hell. He leaves it on for about 6 hours, and its only 12% done, and his harddrive is not that big. He leaves it on for 22 hours, and its still only 41%, so he says, "screw it". After canceling the defrag, my dad went and checked his email and what not, just normal stuff, then restarted. The next day when he booted, he got the options of which operating system to choose from,and he selected one. When booting up, he gets the BSOD with a bunch of errors, ones similar to the audio driver conflicts. Unfortunately, he did not write these errors down. So my dad then restarts the computer, and his computer absolutely dies. He gets no signal to the monitor, the computer just shows that it is on, nothing is running, no keyboard but mouse response, and no beep. He's switched monitors, and hard drives, and still nothing. At the present time he believes it is a RAM issue, but im not a hardware guru, so im baffled as well. Could this be a PSU issue? Or driver issue gone really really bad? So I decided to post in here to get some help.

His Comps Specs:

1.5 Ghz Intel Pentium 4 Processor
Sony Vaio PCV-RX470DS
Windows XP with Service Pack 2 + 98se split with Partition Magic 8
Sound Blaster Live
Nvidia GeForce2 MX
384 MB PC-800 Rambus RIMM
40GB Hard drive - 10 Gb for 98, 30gb for XP

thx again for your help

[Roush2960]

for one i would ditch Part Magis 8. just format the drive under win98 first and use Fat32. then install XP after that.

Take teh hardware down to minum. Video , Keyboard , Mouse and 1 stick of mem.

See if you can get the system up then and then from there start install the extras one at a time. If the system boots up , Play/Use the new installed component and verify that it survives when used. Dont trust it if you just leave it idle.

?? - Did you remove the sound card completely or just disable it in bios?

Matt

[PangingJr]

how you choose to boot between the two Windows OSes, using the Windows XP's boot loader or using a third-party boot manager?

try installing a clean version of both Windows OSes in this case is Windows XP and Windows 98 that do/will not contain a single vestige of another OS roots.

you want to isolate the two Windows by creating two primary partitions and installing each Windows into its own partition.
then, use a third-party boot manager, you mentioned the Partition Magic, so in this case you can use 'PQBoot for Windows' without having to install another software. the PQBoot for Windows is a boot manager that works within Windows only. if you want to be able to quickly choose between the two Windows at the time of the system booting then you will need to install a boot manager. the boot manager (include the PQBoot for Windows) enables one of the primary partition that has an OS installed to be hidden and also set active to only one of the primary partition.

this system configution will enable you to have a two single-boot Windows system. the other benefit of this will be: you can reinstall, or reformat and clean install any of the two OSes at any time, and can also backup and restore each Windows OS's partition separately and without causing problem to the other OS and its partition.

fact is: any kind of the Windows dual-boot systems can cause problem to any users, depending on the problem that the user has and whether the user thinks or wants to admit it. so if the system never has any problem when it's a single-boot system then remove the dual-boot will be the easiest way to solve all the problems. but if you've already known that but wanted to keep using dual-boot system then try harder and try to find a work around or make it to have less problem as much as you can. good luck.

[MythicaL]

Clear the CMOS... it might be bad RAM or PSU if that doesn't work.

[civ]

Well, i cant even get the computer to boot up, so i dont know how im gonna install 98 and xp, but yeah i cleared the cmos, but that didnt do anything. I do belive it could be a psu or memory problem, except i dont know how much power my psu should have, and the memory for vaios are really expensive so i dont have an extra stick to test,

thx for the replys
-civ

[PangingJr]

ok then, even though there's still not enough information to give specific diagnosis. but i'll try again i'd try changing the hard drive first (don't have to go buy a brand-new one, just another one that is known to be worked.) and see what happens?