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DDX my computer

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MasterJedi
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30 Mar 2011, 8:06 pm

differential diagnosis:


3 year old computer (HP Pavilion elite d5000z running Windows Vista 64-bit) presents with hang-time at Microsoft Windows scrolling green bar - unable to fully boot.

Over the past month, someone has been spam-bombing me.

Upon "dying', I had the camcorder hooked up to the computer. Once video was uploaded to youtube, the computer froze. Forced restart. Microsoft Movie Maker was used to add effects to the video and cut it together.

That's all I got.


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Last edited by MasterJedi on 30 Mar 2011, 8:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Oodain
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30 Mar 2011, 8:27 pm

MasterJedi wrote:
differential diagnosis:


3 year old computer (HP Pavilion elite d5000z running Windows Vista 64-bit) presents with hang-time at Microsoft Windows scrolling green bar - unable to fully boot.

Over the past month, someone has been spam-bombing me.

Upon "dying', I had the camcorder hooked up to the computer. Once video was uploaded to youtube, the computer froze. Forced restart. Microsoft Movie Maker was used to add effects to the video and cut it together.

That's a all I got.


can it start in safe mode??


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MasterJedi
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30 Mar 2011, 8:37 pm

nope. hangs at a certain point when all the drivers or whatever the text is are loading.


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Oodain
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30 Mar 2011, 9:28 pm

MasterJedi wrote:
nope. hangs at a certain point when all the drivers or whatever the text is are loading.

does your GPU get excessively hot during the boot sequence?
does your computer have any unusual beeps? (might also be a LED on the motherboard)
does it restart or just freeze?

i must admit it's a bit puzzling :?


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the scent of the tamarillo is pungent and powerfull,
woe be to the nose who nears it.


MasterJedi
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30 Mar 2011, 9:58 pm

it'll restart is we press the button on the front.

There's no beeps or excessive heat.

We think the hard drive is toast.


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wrongeverything
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30 Mar 2011, 10:11 pm

Puppy Linux on a usb drive is always fun, then you could take a look at the hard drive.



CloudWalker
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30 Mar 2011, 10:31 pm

Do you have the Windows install disc? If so, the first thing I'll do is boot from it and chkdsk your harddisk.

The next thing I'll try is to create a boot log. Press F8 during the early stage of booting and if you press the key in time, a menu will appear. Choose the option to create a boot log. This way Windows will write the boot progress to C:\Windows\ntbtlog.txt as it boots. Now you need some way to open that file (eg: boot from a live CD). Scroll down to the end of file, the last line should be the driver loaded before the computer hung. That may be the file causing the problem. Search the file for any error or failure message. You may also want to do this a few times to see if it hangs there everytime. If you find a suspicious driver and it's not essential, you can try renaming it and try booting again. If not you may have to do a repair install if you have the Windows disc.

One more thing, disconnect everything non-essential while troubleshooting. Something like a broken USB device can also cause boot failure.