s0l1d

Tomay: My uncle said he tried to do the memory test and it didn't work. el_vago32: He said he cleaned all the dust out for all the parts. The fans are working. So not sure if it is still a temperature problem dave.green1: I'll tell my uncle to try that. He purchased the computer also with a friend. They both bought the same model with the same specs except that my uncle added a network card and an ATI All-In-Wonder. He was able to borrow his friend's computer and do some testing. He took his friend's RAM and inserted to his own computer but the same problem still happens. He reversed the test and put his own RAM into his friend's computer and it worked perfectly. So I think it is safe to say that it is not a RAM problem. He also connect his own harddrive to his friend's computer and it work flawlessly, so it seems Windows Me is not to blame either. So now I guess it is left with the motherboard as the main suspect as the cause of the problem. Anyone else has any other suggestions??? If there no fix for the problem soon, my uncle is gonna consider buying a few-hundred-dollar low-end computer. He mainly type some letters and use the Internet anyway. Thanks, you guys, for trying to help. Solid

XP's installation asks for the key when it is few minutes into the GUI portion of the installation, I think. Since both keys are OEM, they should both work with your slipstreamed XP. If you don't want/need all the extra (sometimes useless) goodies that came with your toshiba laptop, I would recommend you just keep your partitions and install XP using the slipstreamed disk to the first partition. As for the encrypted files, I'm not familiar with it so I don't really have an answer for that. I guess if the encrypted files are not extremely sensitive, you can decrypt them, back them up somewhere temporarily. Once you have XP up and running again, then encrypt those files again. Solid

I've been having this problem since earlier this year. I'm gonna tell the entire story, it can be a bit long, but at least people who try help me can get a better idea of my situation. I have Asus A7V333 Mobo with a built-in Promise 20276 ATA133 RAID controller. I have two (2) DiamondMax Plus D740X 80GB harddrives [6L080J4] and are setup as RAID-0. I've partitioned the now combined 160GB RAID-0 Drive into C = 10GB, D = 10GB, and E = 140GB. I installed Windows XP (with C in NTFS) with the RAID driver given on Asus's website. At first, everything was fine. However, earlier this year, after a proper shutdown, then next time I turn on the computer, it wouldn't boot into Windows at all, not even Safe Mode. After doing some diagnostics, I found that the registry files (at least some of them) in "C:\WINDOWS\system32\config" are corrupted. I backed up some necessary stuff, then try to re-install WinXP. During WinXP installation, I chose to reformat C:\ with NTFS, and it says cannot format. It seems that in the C:\ 's partition, there is a bad sector. This was reveiled when I formatted the partition with FAT32 with Partition Magic's bootdisk. It shows there's 8kb of bad sector. Although WinXP can work with FAT32, it's not as fast as NTFS and it has some reliability issues. I have tried taking each drive out, connect to regular Primary IDE, and do a zero-write (or write-zero, or whatever) to clear both drives, then run a disk scan again but found no bad sector at all. If no solution is found, I might just connect my drives back to regular IDE and disable RAID. However, I would like to keep my drives in RAID-0 as I do a photo and video stuff (and some games on the side 8) ). Does anyone know a solution to my problem. Any one has any experience similar situation before? Solid

Thanks for all your replies. CyberGenX: After I found no bad sectors, I tried to reinstall WinXP and choose format NTFS during WinXP installation. It ran into the problem saying it cannot be formatted because of damaged disk or something. However, if I choose format FAT32 instead, it formatted and installed ok, but the 8kb of bad sector still exists. I did update all BIOS and drivers. And it'll still the same. A while back, I actually had a chance to replace the Maxtor drives with two (2) Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 80GB drives with 8MB buffer [WD800JB]. I thought, Maxtor's have 2MB buffer while WD's have 8MB buffer, and from the reviews I've read on the web, they looked like perfect replacements. However this was not the case. I installed the WD drives just as I did with the Maxtor drives before. Same BIOS cofiguration and everything, but the performance was terrible. Actually "unbearable" would be a better word for it. With Maxtor's drives, WinXP installation went by with flying colours. However, the WD's were painfully slow during copying files, in DOS part of the installation and under Windows. I search all of the net looking for answers. But because the two WD drives were purchased for two other computers and they had to be installed right away, I tried few more settings, same slowness, and I finally gave up. I know that RAID should not be wasted. But after all this, I don't want to blindly buy two harddrives, costing me over $200, and ending having the same problem/issue as the WD drives. I have no need for extra harddrive space, and not much extra cash to spend if I cannot get the RAID to work.

Norm, I hate to say it, but I think right now you have to fear for the worst ... You might be infected with a computer virus. Try doing a virus scan if you haven't done so already. If you don't have a virus scanner installed, use the online anti-virus scanner from Trend Micro (http://housecall.trendmicro.com/). About 3 weeks ago, my dad's notebook, after couple nights used by my brother, was infected by virus I think. Although I didn't check this with any virus scanner, I realized that there are several exe-s running in the background with filenames such as "1.exe", "2.exe", "explorer .exe", "svchost .exe". Note that the last two exe-s have a single space before the extension. As you probably noticed, there are several regular svchost.exe run by the system in the background. To regular users "svchost .exe" would definitely mask its existence. So is "explorer .exe". I immediately check all the background applications there were running on the notebook, and deleted all the unknown/irregular exe-s. One week later, I finally took the time to check the notebook for virus using Trend Micro's online scanner, and although I've deleted those unknown exe-s (which were probably worms or something), there were still 2 viruses found. Well, that's my story. explorer.exe should only have 1 instance in Task Manager. If you have more than 1, a virus or some kind of worm is probably infected explorer.exe or something else, causing multiple instances of explorer.exe. Do a virus check and hope it'll find something. If not, my best advice would be to re-format and re-install Windows again. solid

I just realized this problem, and I'm not sure when it actually first started. As my subject stated, the computer is running Win2k. I noticed that if I set the clock to a correct time (say 8:15) and then reboot, when the computer finished booting back into Windows, the clock is automatically adjusted 10 minutes slow (to 8:05). I re-correct the time again, reboot, go into BIOS setup to double check, and the time is correct. But once exit BIOS setup and let it boot into Windows, the clock is again auto adjusted 10 minutes slow. There is no Time Server in the network, the network is local and private and it's not connected to the internet at all, and there is no time sync program running on that computer. Does anyone has an explaination for this? Anyone knows how to correct this problem? This is an office computer that I use. I haven't check the other computers in the office to see if they have any similar problem. s0l1d

I'm just wondering, what kind of performance increase (or decrease) would DirectX 9 have when used with a system that has GeForce 4 series or Radeon 8500 in WinXP? I know that Radeon 9700 and the upcoming GeForce FX are built with DirectX 9 in mind. But how would earlier cards benefit (if any) with the DirectX 9 upgrade?

After reading the article, I guess I'll wait a bit long before installing it on my computer

Try the follow suggestions, not sure if they will work for you, but it's worth a try I guess. If your harddrive (or the partition) was formatted as Fat32, just use a floppy bootdisk, boot into DOS, go into your desktop directory (e.g. "C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Desktop") and delete the file there. But from your post, it seems it was formatted with NTFS. It also seems that you still can't delete the file when you boot with "Safe Mode with Command Prompt" option. In that case, I might suggest you boot with your WinXP CD. On the first prompt, press 'R' choose Repair Console. From there it is like DOS, just go into your desktop directory again and try deleting the file. s0l1d

I was running WinXP w/SP1. The last changes I did to WinXP was installing the cumulative IE patch through Windows Update. However, this afternoon when I turn on my computer, it says the following errors when loading into WinXP (nothing else is loaded except the wallpaper): ---------------------------------------------------------- winlogon.exe - Entry Point Not Found The procedure entry point SetObjectOwner could not be located in the link dynamic library GDI32.dll ---------------------------------------------------------- After I clicked OK in the error msg box, then I get this: ****************************************** User Interface Failure The Logon User Interface msgina.dll failed to load. Contact system administrator to replace the DLL or restore the original DLL. ****************************************** I have tried copying the file msgina.dll from my brother's computer (also running XP w/SP1) and also extract the original file from XP's CD. Neither of them work. It still gives me this msg at bootup. Anyone has any idea how to fix this problem without reinstalling XP? My Specs: ---------------------------------------------------------- AMD Athlon XP 2100+ Asus A7V333 w/RAID (RAID and onboard sound are disabled) 512MB DDR RAM MSI GeForce4 Ti4400 SBLive! Value Quantum LM 20GB HD (Primary Master) [2x10GB partitions, XP installed in 1st partition] Fujitsu 30GB HD (Secondary Master) [10GB & 20GB partitions] LG 16x DVD-ROM WinXP w/SP1 (with all other patches installed through Windows Update as of Dec. 8th)

I have Norton Utilities and AntiVirus, but I don't have PCAnywhere. The computer's been working fine with those two Norton programs before. I cannot boot into safe mode. It gives me the same error msgs since in safe mode Windows still need those files for GUI I guess. Boot with "last known good configuration" doesn't work either. I cannot boot completely into Windows at all. I tried copying the file through booting with WinXP's CD. I copied the file msgina.dll from my brother's computer onto a floppy. Then I boot my computer using WinXP's CD, and choose "Recovery Console". I went into System32, backup the existing file, then copy the file from floppy. Restarted the computer and it give me the same error again. So from my brother's computer, I extracted the original file from WinXP's CD, copy to floppy again, and then repeat the same steps to copy to my computer. It still didn't work. Anyone knows how to fix the problem without reinstalling WinXP??

I have a box just clean installed XP Pro 2 days ago. I get this once during the installation and occationally during Windows. It boots up fine right into Windows (with autologon into an account already). I can use my mouse to do anything, but once I press any key on the keyboard, the mouse and keyboard just freeze up, but the computer is still running (e.g. if I had winamp playing, it would still play while only mouse and keyboard freeze). I have to press the power button on the case to get Windows to shutdown (with ACPI on so power button does shutdown Windows properly), then reboot back up and there is no problem. Does anyone know why this happens?? The IRQ for keyboard and mouse aren't shared or have any conflict. This freeze happens around every other bootup. **Just to clarify one detail about my problem. My problem only happens only on reboots (warm-boot), as in from Windows, choose Shut Down, then Restart. It doesn't occur when it's initial boot when I press the power button from an off machine (cold-boot). Any help on my situation is appreciated. Solid P.S. My system (simplified) config: PIII 450 Tyan S1854 Trinity 400 256MB RAM PS2 Keyboard and Mouse TNT2 Ultra SB Live! Value