I think I killed my computer

[EZ_Gered Shadowblade]

This is a little long, but I'm not sure what I did, so I tried to be detailed. Any help would be appreciated.

My computer running Windows XP has always crashed a lot, at least several times a day. Yesterday and today, however, it was crashing at least once every five minutes. This was frustrating, to say the least. I ran msinfo32 and looked up sharing conflicts; aparrently, my video card, sound card, unused modem, and ethernet card were all trying to use IRQ 11 and my video card was having conflicting in three memory locations and one i/o port. Additionally, yesterday and today I got several BSOD Stop Errors lamenting about "PAGE_FAULT_IN_NON_PAGED_AREA" and referencing ntfs.sys and tcpi.sys. On IRC, I got little help when I asked about all this, except that it was likely a driver problem.

I decided to uninstall the video card, remove it, and reinstall it, hoping to correct any driver problems that may exist, and also hopefully get a new IRQ for it. I went to Device Manager and uninstalled it, clicked yes to the reboot pop-up, and powered down the computer while it rebooted, before it loaded Windows. That may have been the mistake, I'm not sure; can powering down a computer while it is rebooting after removing a device kill it?

I then took it downstairs and seeing the unused modem, decided to take it out too. This is mistake number two, I never removed it from the device manager before removing it, but I don't think that would be too harmful. Next, we come to the third possible mistake. Seeing all the dust in the computer, and without a can of compressed air, I got a small desk fan and blew out as much dust as I could; does having a fan motor, albiet a small one, in close proximity to a computer damage it?

I took it back upstairs and plugged it all back in, and it made a long beeping noise, and never came on. Every following attempt to turn it on resulted in nothing, not even the long beep that characterized the first attempt. The fans all go, you can hear the hard drive spinning, but nothing happens. No picture on the monitor, none of the noises that normally happen during boot play. I have to turn it off with the power switch on the back on the power supply, the normal power button the front does nothing.

Anyone know what's wrong, what I should try, or how to fix it? I really don't want to have to buy a new computer. Thanks, folks. Gered Shadowblade - 61 Assassin
Sun Tzu Council - Officer

[Ruccus]

Powering down the computer while it's booting will not kill it (it's not particularily good for the hard drive, but it wouldn't kill it) - that is unless "powering down the computer" is just your euphemism for hitting it repeatedly with a baseball bat . Holding a fan near the internals of a computer shouldn't damage the computer either.

I wouldn't worry about your concerns regarding what you did in software - software will very rarely kill hardware (and I only say very rarely instead of never because it isn't absolutely out of the realm of possibility). If you're going by Occam's razor, software would be one of the last things to blame for dead hardware. You may be greeted to an unhappy operating system when to do boot up, but it won't prevent you from booting up.

My guess is just that you didn't properly reseat the graphics card - make sure the card seated in properly. The long beep on the first try and silence after tells me that either you did break something, or the motherboard's BIOS went into a safe mode to prevent damage from repeatedly trying to boot the computer while it still has a problem. You may have to clear the CMOS (which resets the BIOS).

It also could have just been a last gasp for a dying part - the repeated crashing getting more severe after time tells me that you might have had a hardware problem long before you started fooling around inside the computer.

[EZ_Grinkle]

Every single time that has happened to me, and it has happened perhaps a dozen or so times over the years, the cause has been some variation of what Ruccus suggested - a card not seated properly or a plug not connected properly etc.

It can be very easy to think you have a card well seated in the mb slot - its very hard to see sometimes if the contacts are still exposed over the lip of the connector, and one does not want to crack the mb by pushing too hard. Remove all the cards and re-seat them - try booting again.

I suspect your crashing problems are related to a device that is not 100% plug and play compatible. Once you get your comp booting again, try removing as many devices (hardware cards) as possible, boot, run what software you can given what is still in the comp, and add one thing at a time to see if you can isolate the problem.

[EZ_Bitts N Pieces]

Quote:PAGE_FAULT_IN_NON_PAGED_AREA

Had this happen, and constant reboots when a RAM stick went bad. Replaced it, and no more probs. Pril
63rd Level Monk
Well Of Souls
Tarew Marr
Reverse the Monk Mitigation Nerf!

[Biggwin]

Yep probably an unseated card and I would definately check the RAM, most of the big companies have lifetime warranties on RAM so that shouldnt be a big deal

[Mithrilhall]

This might come in handy if you want to test your RAM.

www.techtv.com/screensave...20,00.html

[Kambic]

Sounds like your RAM finally died, and your video card may need to be reseated as well. I think your biggest bet is that your RAM went out, there is the small small possibility that the RAM just was ever so slightly improperly seated, but your chances don't run high there.

In my experience if you keep getting whacky errors like those you kept getting, and they just can't be trace or linked to any computer part, it's either RAM or Windows itself. But Windows being broke isn't going to cause your computer not to boot up, of course.

[Krimzan]

Good link Mith! I think I'm gonna save that just in case.

[Dragynphyre]

It's not completely dead until you see the magic blue smoke (that what makes computers work, you know) escape!

Sounds like a RAM chip died - had similar problems with an older machine, as well as the one that preceeded the one I'm running now, when the memory went fizzle. (Back In Black)
Delissandra Splitshadow - Marauder of Clan X
Grandmaster Poisoner (250), Master Potter (191), Grandmaster Lush (200)

[EZ_InvisiBill]

Meant to add this before, but was too tired at the time. Everything using IRQ 11 is because of ACPI. Basically everything gets virtual IRQs assigned, so they're all given 11 to start with.

Several tweaking sites have guides about how to disable ACPI, and how doing so will speed up your games a few percent. I didn't notice much of a speed increase, but I had all sorts of stutters when I was using ACPI. Network activity would make my sound skip, etc. Everything just seemed to be interfering with everything else. As soon as I disabled ACPI, everything was smooth.

Disabling ACPI involves changing the Hardware Abstraction Layer that Windows uses. It's basically the same process as manually installing a driver, so it's not that hard. MS's documentation claims that it can only be done when reinstalling. That is not true, as I simply changed the HAL and rebooted and it was fine. Other people I know have done the same. -------------------------
Invissibill
Llibisivni