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A friend of mine asked me to reformat the harddrive in his computer. Heres the specs: AMD 64 Athlon 1.5gb of ram (in 2 x 256mb and 2 x 512mb) 160gb IDE HDD onboard graphics and a 288W PSU
Ive spent the last 10 hours trying to get it to work. and i havnt gotten very far. At first, it kept turning off about a minute after booting from the XP disc. Eventually, i figured out its overheating. The temp monitor in the BIOS said it was sitting at about 100C. When it gets to 125, it turns off. So I cleaned it out, added a bunch of fans, cleaned the CPU heatsink and replaced the thermal paste, took the side off, and after all that, it was only down to like 92C in bios and still overheated when installing XP. Right now I have it running by an open window (its about -20C outside) and the bios says its about 78C. It does work, but thats hardly a practical solution. Is it possible theres something wrong with the sensor?
Well, that would seem like its enough trouble for one computer. but no. Ive finally reformatted the harddrive, which seemed to go relatively well, when it was done, it did its stuff and then restarted like it should. When it restarted, it got to the XP loading screen and now its just sitting there, endlessly loading. smae thing happens in safe mode except it sits at a giant list of directories.
I should mention that the reason im reformatting it in the first place is because when it turns on normally (this is before I did anything to it), it gets past the XP loading screen normally, then it flashes blue and restarts. If it helps, the blue screen says this:
STOP: c0000218 {Registry File Failure}
The registry cannot load the hive (file):
\SystemRoot\System32\Config\SOFTWARE
or its log or alternate.
It is corrupt, absent, or not writable.
Beginning dump of physical memory
Physical memory dump complete.
Conact your system adminisstrator or technical support group for further
assistance.
Any help or advice would be much appreciated. Aside from pouring holy water on it, im pretty much out of ideas. Thanks
Update: Well, heat sink is definitely installed right now. Ive tried using a different PSU, different harddrive, still nothing. I did a mem check. ram seems to be fine. After all the advice ive gotten, i think the problem is the CPU is fried causing it to overheat. If not, then its cause the motherboard is fried. If was just a matter of the sensor being wrong, I wouldnt be having all the problems with formatting and corrupt files. I have quite a few spare parts, but i do not have a spare CPU so i cant check. Does anyone know of some program that can check the CPU in boot?
Im still open to any suggestions but i believe i have done all i can do. Thanks for all the help and advice.
Regarding the processor temperature, my guess would be that temperature sensor on MB is not working correctly. If you have a heat sink positioned correctly, with thermal paste, then it should be nowhere near 90°C in idle. – T. Kaltnekar – 2010-01-29T08:43:51.967
1Sounds like sensor is faulty. Have you tested the RAM as well? I've had faulty RAM that will prevent an install, but works fine after the OS is up and running. – None – 2010-01-29T12:19:00.687
Sounds like multiple problems TBH... you'll probably need some known-good components to hand to reliably narrow down what bits are bust. – bobince – 2010-01-29T14:02:40.427
Where in the world is it -20C outside?! Yikes! – Russ Warren – 2010-01-30T03:20:06.200
@Russ - at my place (Zagreb, Croatia, ... you know ... in the Medditeranian) it's currently -11C :) And it has had a few drops the last couple of days :)) – Rook – 2010-01-30T04:12:33.010
@bubbzilla - Oh, forgot to mention ... please change the title :))) Reminds me of Poltergeist every time I see it ;))) – Rook – 2010-01-30T05:39:33.603
1that would be an accurate description. – None – 2010-01-30T07:54:49.990