Oddball PC failures

[AllanL]

Since I've been on hols, and sprog had unfettered access to this 2 yr old PC, it has started playing up and either failing to blue screen with messages occasionally alluding to write attempts to non-writeable memory, or refusing to download mail to Live Mail accounts with prompts for passwords wot it already knows, loss of Live Mail contact lists in their entirety, and just now demanded admin rights for deleting a folder in the FS9 when I have never set any user below that level. (and breathe)

Then when I rebooted, it went into checkdisk for both the physical drives C and D with various lost files being deleted. Another recent evidence of icky PC.

Sprog got so fed up with Bluemoon crashing that he deleted it, and now has Firefox crash at very regular intervals, mind you when I ran Cr*p cleaner last night he chucked a strop because he had lost 62 tabs from his last Firefox session. Cue unsympathetic rant from dad about overloading the memory.

It's a dual core E7500 W7 32 bit beast with 4GB of RAM and ATI Radeon HD4300/4500 - supposedly all working - is it a simple case of needing a clean out and reset of cards/drive leads or may I be looking at summat worse?

Can I kill the sprog and claim justifiable defence of the homestead? If not why not.

[Tomliner]

is it a simple case of needing a clean out and reset of cards/drive leads or may I be looking at summat worse?

Sounds like sufficient reason to hang, draw and quarter the sprog(while being careful to avoid making a mess on the carpet.) Hope this advice has been of some help.Free advice anytime.EricT

[SkippyBing]

demanded admin rights for deleting a folder in the FS9 when I have never set any user below that level

I'd suggest setting your sprog several levels below that in future for starters!

Wanders off mumbling about why people think they need to always log on as admin...

[jonesey2k]

Parents are just as bad... My old man asked me to have a look at his pc becase it was a bit slow and there was about 20 yahoo search bars running...

[Dev One]

I've had some recent blue screens & have run the memory repair program in W7, as well as doing a chkdsc & a defrag. I thought a lot of my problems were initially caused by high temp readings & taking sons advice I bought a larger PSU & a PCI fan, which did help a bit, I now run with the side panel off to get more airflow.
It is possible that my main HDD is failing as the memory program says I have hardware issues - take it to your dealer! My son however, who is my 'puter supplier, mender & advisor, is sending me another HDD & appropriate mirror software, so I hope that will eventually cure the problem. Having said that after the last chkdsc & defrag on 23rd its been OK (touching wood.....)
Keith
[edit] Forgot to say that I reseated all connections & RAM, as well as video card, the RAM can be a problem I understand.

[GHD]

Since I've been on hols, and sprog had unfettered access to this 2 yr old PC.

I think it is time to buy a new one (PC that is).

[TSR2]

Stick the restor CD in and start from scratch

[AllanL]

Thanks for the support, my solicitor may be in touch to see if we can pack the jury.....

When I played with the sister-in-laws's infected PC a couple of months ago I made up a couple of CDs that included test software, so I may give them and an internal check a go on Saturday before going for the restore CD. Mind you it has just chucked a memory manager BSOD immediately followed by a crash quoting something about pool header. Just as well I got SWMBO this netbook for her last birthday.

The PC originally came with Vista and I coughed up for the postage for the "free" W7 CD. As it did not seem to give that much benefit going to W7 and some FS gauges seem to have played up since, I may just go for a reload of the original Vista setup. Presumably a re-format of the C Drive would be advisable if I need to take this route. As most nasties don't seem to stray beyond the C Drive would a re-format of the D Drive be needed too?

Some payware seems to have put files onto the op system C Drive (FS9 is on the D drive), I will presumably have to re-install some stuff apart from the base FS9 re-install. Must remember to find and back up the fs9.cfg and scenery.cfg files too.

Then if that doesn't work it may be time to raid the piggy bank for a new beastie, my budget won't be stretching as far as some I've seen mentioned here. But that's a different kettle of Arbroath smokies.

[Dev One]

If your FS9 is on your D drive, you might need to reload FS9 because I think the registry entries need to be on your C drive.
First off though I would just do a simple restore, (not using the CD) just find a date just prior to you going on holiday & before young Sprog started playing!
Not having had Vista I cannot answer for it being better than W7, although my son thinks W7 is better.
BTW I have had some funnies caused by W7 auto updates & have had to do a restore & then inhibit (by trial & error) the faulty ones - the listing can give you an idea of the ones that didn't instal. Possibly the inhibited ones or the non installed ones get overwritten on your next update & are then OK.
HTH & good luck
Keith

[AllanL]

After putting off reloading the opsys, on the grounds that summat always goes awol that you thought was backed up, I finally ran memtest86 and found a faulty bit showing up in the 3rd GB of memory.

I had already persuaded SWMBO that a new PSU - and by the way video card - would help as these may be contributing to the woes. Then I got dabs to put a new 1TB drive in the box, alongside the Corsair 600W PSU and the GTX560. So the resulting newish PC might live a bit longer before filling up.

As the PC had a cruddy old ATI card in before I had fun losing all the ATI driver files that were causing the shiny new GTX to go dark on me except in 640x480 mode. Yesterday I dug open the case after the memtest and put the new drive in. I had thought that Dell had supplied 2x2GB of memory, but luckily for me there were 4x1GB cards in the slots. So removing the faulty one - first time guess how lucky was that - the machine is now seemingly chugging along with the 3GB working that are all it can see anyway. Oh and vastly improved graphics performance as a happy side effect.

Now the new third drive is in the machine I've loaded up FSX on the E Drive, and weren't too impressed with the basic setup. Probably not all that fair given the stuff added to FS9 on the D Drive down the years. Perhaps it will grow on me, at least it is happy enough at 20fps with the new video card.

The resident malingering yoof already has a steam account, so he downloaded the Batman freebie for the GTX card. Apparently it is locked out until the 18th or so. And yes Dave, downloads do take forever on our 512M connection. I shudder to think what the bleeder would be downloading if we got a faster connection.......