Hi
I've offered to fix a machine as a favour for a neighbour's daughter.
It's a semi-old eMachines e3019 jobbie (yuk spit, I know).
AMD Tampon 1800
. 256mb DDR, Foxconn MB (Everest is reporting nvidia 6100 chipset).
Anyway, theyve reported problems for a while, they couldnt install any AV, and were suffering from display blackouts and random reboots.
(You know how it is, getting proper error messages and descriptions from non techy people).
They just kept reinstalling from the recovery disc every time it fell over.
I get the machine the other night, reformat, reinstall from the recovery disc.
All is fine. I updated to SP3 from a disc from my own collection.
Installs fine.....reboots....then goes into a continual reboot cycle.
Safe mode indicates it was hanging at agp440.sys.....so I fire up the recovery console and disable it. It then hangs at another, so I disable that.
Cue another half hour of me rebooting, it failing at one service, me disabling it, onto the next one (I think they were mostly driver related services)
In the end I gave up and reformatted again.
This time I updated from Windows Update. Stopping short of SP3.
Success!
However, I try and install AVG Free....
At first it fails, some generic failed error.
I try again, it works. I reboot.
I update, it fails stating a bad control file (just downloaded from the servers)
I try again, it works, updated.
I reboot, it says it's not updated. Cue a continual cycle of the above.
No problem, I'll try Avast. That runs, and downloads the install package....citing file errors or some such. I've just managed to reinstall it while typing this post, not sure how that's going to go after the reboot though.
I think the continual reboots were driver issues.
The failing installs, I thought it could be either memory or HD problems corrupting it at some point.
No lockups or freezes, just occasional fails and strange behaviour.
Ive ran Scandisk which found some bad sectors and repaired them.
I've also ran memtest86 for a good few hours on the default tests, no problems. As soon as I tried to switch test types, it hung (IIRC).
Apologies for the somewhat scatter brained nature of the post, but it's doing my head in.
Avast is now installed successfully, but it didnt update :
Ive done an online scan with housecall etc, which found nothing.
Could it be
Dodgy HD
Dodgy memory
Dodgy on board NIC corrupting the downloads
Virus infecting the hidden restore partition (Which I can't access/browse, but the drive is visible)
Any thoughts? Its annoying me. One of the reasons I went mac last year
Cheers!
I've offered to fix a machine as a favour for a neighbour's daughter.
It's a semi-old eMachines e3019 jobbie (yuk spit, I know).
AMD Tampon 1800
. 256mb DDR, Foxconn MB (Everest is reporting nvidia 6100 chipset).Anyway, theyve reported problems for a while, they couldnt install any AV, and were suffering from display blackouts and random reboots.
(You know how it is, getting proper error messages and descriptions from non techy people).
They just kept reinstalling from the recovery disc every time it fell over.
I get the machine the other night, reformat, reinstall from the recovery disc.
All is fine. I updated to SP3 from a disc from my own collection.
Installs fine.....reboots....then goes into a continual reboot cycle.
Safe mode indicates it was hanging at agp440.sys.....so I fire up the recovery console and disable it. It then hangs at another, so I disable that.
Cue another half hour of me rebooting, it failing at one service, me disabling it, onto the next one (I think they were mostly driver related services)
In the end I gave up and reformatted again.
This time I updated from Windows Update. Stopping short of SP3.
Success!
However, I try and install AVG Free....
At first it fails, some generic failed error.
I try again, it works. I reboot.
I update, it fails stating a bad control file (just downloaded from the servers)
I try again, it works, updated.
I reboot, it says it's not updated. Cue a continual cycle of the above.
No problem, I'll try Avast. That runs, and downloads the install package....citing file errors or some such. I've just managed to reinstall it while typing this post, not sure how that's going to go after the reboot though.
I think the continual reboots were driver issues.
The failing installs, I thought it could be either memory or HD problems corrupting it at some point.
No lockups or freezes, just occasional fails and strange behaviour.
Ive ran Scandisk which found some bad sectors and repaired them.
I've also ran memtest86 for a good few hours on the default tests, no problems. As soon as I tried to switch test types, it hung (IIRC).
Apologies for the somewhat scatter brained nature of the post, but it's doing my head in.
Avast is now installed successfully, but it didnt update :
Ive done an online scan with housecall etc, which found nothing.
Could it be
Dodgy HD
Dodgy memory
Dodgy on board NIC corrupting the downloads
Virus infecting the hidden restore partition (Which I can't access/browse, but the drive is visible)
Any thoughts? Its annoying me. One of the reasons I went mac last year
Cheers!
