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Trojan Horse

Trojan Horse

Trojan Horse

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27 Jul 2012
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1,705
Hello,

I'm going to restore an old PC and turn into a makeshift "home server".. basically it's just going to hold lots of data, could use it as a streaming device (will need to find more about that), cctv monitor/dvr, minecraft server, remote pc, backup pc... just thinking of exploring the possibilities of using an old PC as a server.

Anyways when I'm booting into a fresh install of win 7 64 there is lots of wierd random blocks that appear on the montior. It can be seen on the 2nd and 3rd images on the link below.

http://imgur.com/4uZ6nV4,AiICo2K,4zMbd35,VEPTchK,iyDWeW2#2


Whats the best way to isolate the problem? Could it be a motherboard issue, cpu issue, or a RAM issue?

Thinking about replacing the motherboard and getting 8GB of DDR2 to rectify the issue.

This is the spec:

the mobo: HT2000 mcp61pm-am rev 1.0A
gpu: 8500GT
1GB DDR2 (512x2)
athlon 64 x2


What I have in spares: OCZ 500W ModXStream Pro, Case, 2x160gb hdds


is the athlon low power and good enough to just idle all day and be used as a remote pc + other things mentioned above?

is there anything wrong gettign 8GB 1.8v Non-ECC unbuffered DDR2 from china (i understand that sentance in itself is wrong but it has life time warranty)
 
Banjaxed graphics card most likely. GF8000 series were not the most reliable things.

Two things :
1) Lifetime warranty from China eh? Sounds easy to claim under! ;)
2) Look into the HP MicroServer. They're around £90-100 after cashback from HP, and additional DDR3 RAM will be much cheaper than buying DDR2. They're perfect for this sort of thing, big thread elsewhere on the forum.
 
It looks like the motherboard has on-board graphics, so try using that (there's no point having a separate graphics card using power in a server anyway).
TBH the motherboard is pretty old and IMO isn't worth spending a lot of money on obsolete ram. It should be able stream files but it wouldn't be up to HD or any sort of on-the-fly transcoding.
 
OK well uninstalled the GFX card which was faulty and system works on VGA however on boot my HDD is detected (set first in BIOS) and does not boot because it says something like "verifiying DMI pool data... update success
DISK BOOT FAILURE. INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER"


it is a fresh win 7 64bit install on a working HDD.. hdd works on main pc and is detected in the BIOS on the broken PC
 
UPDATE:

It now boots and goes into "Yukon PXE v5.16.13 (20060811)
Pre boot eXecution Environment (PXE) v2.1

and thats all i get

edit: tried load optimized defaults still get error
 
PXE is network boot, mainly used by corporates for booting off a remote server. It's usually last resort if the optical drive and HDD are not available.

There's some sort of problem with the hard drive or the BIOS detecting it. Best to find an optical drive and reinstall Windows 7 on that actual machine.
 
I understand, after some googling I figured that is so..

I think its the BIOS detecting it.. there is no problem with the HDD, BIOS detects in SATA 1 port and has its name capactiy etc

I'm going to install via USB drive as have no opt drive nor CD
 
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