Our native mobile app has a new name: Fora Communities. Learn more.

HTPC Crash???

374 Views 15 Replies 4 Participants Last post by rgathright, Nov 16, 2004

rgathright

Discussion Starter · Oct 12, 2004

I am now finally getting my HTPC working some. I assume it crashed. I have never had one crash before, so was wondering what caused it. Hopefully I can stop it from crashing again.

When it crashed I was unable to get the Radeon video card to work through DVI. Still was unable to get it from DVI, but was able to get the component out to work via the ATI Dongle. I then found out the modem and the MyHD would not work. I will be working on these tonight by the uninstall/reinstall method.

I do not know what else does not work until I try them. Am working on them one step at a time.

Any idea what would make all of this to happen?

Status: Not open for further replies.

1 - 16 of 16 Posts

rgathright

Discussion Starter · #2 · Oct 12, 2004

Hey guys I need some help. I thought I had the problems solved, but it is not. Just about anything I click makes the screen go black and the computer locks up. For example I can click "My Computer" and it happens.

Something must of really happened to make all this go bad.

I am now even afaid of doing anything else without messing up more.

Today I was going to uninstall the MyHD and reinstall it. The computer locked up whenever I hit "MyHD".

I do not know what else won't work, but right now the modem is not even being shown. When I uninstalled MyHD and I rebooted it should have shown up new hardware, but it did not.

My system is as follows.

Asus A7N8X Deluxe nforce2 motherboard

AMD Athlon XP 2000+

Enermax 420 Watt Power Source

PC3200 DDR 400 512MB Memory

Radeon 9500 Pro

MyHD

USR 56k Modem

Lite-On 16x DVD ROM

Microsoft Windows XP Home

HELPPPPPPPPPP !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

See less See more

netman

· #3 · Oct 13, 2004

I would uninstall and remove the modem and the MyHD.

See if the system is stable then. If it is try installing MyHD but no modem. If that is stable there may be an interrupt conflict between the modem and MyHD.

If the "empty" system is unstable you may have bad RAM or other hardware problems. Do the first tests and move on from there.

Karyk

· #4 · Oct 13, 2004

I'd agree with netman. I was having problems a while ago and traced it to half my memory being bad (good thing HTPCs can function well with only 256 MB of memory).

Anyway, I think I used the Memtest86 program to test the memory. I'm not 100% positive.

rgathright

Discussion Starter · #5 · Oct 13, 2004

Quote:

Originally posted by netman
I would uninstall and remove the modem and the MyHD.

(After uninstalling these items I hit "My Computer" to open up the "A" drive and it shut down. I then used the "explore" method of opening the "D" drive to reinstall MyHD. Then after rebooting I clicked on MyHD and it shut down. At that point I shut it off and contacted this forum. This afternoon I will completely remove the modem and MyHD from the computer to see if it is stable then.)

See if the system is stable then. If it is try installing MyHD but no modem. If that is stable there may be an interrupt conflict between the modem and MyHD.

If the "empty" system is unstable you may have bad RAM or other hardware problems. Do the first tests and move on from there.

rgathright

Discussion Starter · #6 · Oct 13, 2004

Quote:

Originally posted by Karyk
I'd agree with netman. I was having problems a while ago and traced it to half my memory being bad (good thing HTPCs can function well with only 256 MB of memory).

Anyway, I think I used the Memtest86 program to test the memory. I'm not 100% positive.

I am not sure, but I believe I have only one stick of memory, but will this evening.

rgathright

Discussion Starter · #7 · Oct 13, 2004

Being I started having trouble with the Radeon video card first should I completely uninstall and remove it also?

netman

· #8 · Oct 13, 2004

Quote:

Originally posted by rgathright
Being I started having trouble with the Radeon video card first should I completely uninstall and remove it also?

You can do that if you have another card but if it was me I would leave that in for the first round of test (computer minus modem & MyHD). You may need to walk through this slowly, putting one piece back at a time so be patient and proceed in an organized way.

rgathright

Discussion Starter · #9 · Oct 13, 2004

Thanks for all of the info, but I have contacted a in-house computer repair and will let them repair it. I need to sleep again at night and quit worrying about this.

The main thing is I am not a very patient person and this computer is getting closer and closer to the balcony.

Will let everyone know what happened.

Karyk

· #10 · Oct 13, 2004

Quote:

Originally posted by rgathright
Being I started having trouble with the Radeon video card first should I completely uninstall and remove it also?

I see you're taking it somewhere, but I'd have them download different drivers. I've found ATI drivers to be very problematic, and often just changing a version or two will make all the difference.

rgathright

Discussion Starter · #11 · Oct 13, 2004

Quote:

Originally posted by Karyk
I see you're taking it somewhere, but I'd have them download different drivers. I've found ATI drivers to be very problematic, and often just changing a version or two will make all the difference.

This is what I was hoping to do, but it crashed anytime I tried something. I even went in there and uninstalled all software that I knew was not needed.

The computer repair company will be coming over to my house to do the repair while it is connected to my HDTV.

Karyk

· #12 · Oct 13, 2004

BTW, just to throw another thing out there, I personally hate non-certified drivers. They can cause a lot of trouble. Unfortunately in the HDTV PC card world, you cannot avoid them (the MyHD card has at least one and the Fusion card has 4 or 5 non-certified drivers).

I had a great deal of problem with the non-certified drivers that came with the Belkin wireless network USB device I had on my HDPC. I eventually put it on the daughter's Dell, which was a newer completely different machine (INTC vs. AMD, etc.) and after about a month it started causing crashes on her machine.

dogmanky

· #13 · Oct 13, 2004

Why not just use system restore to go back a couple days prior to the crash? If you have system restore disabled like me, then periodic MS backups (especially System State Data) are very important for times like this.

rgathright

Discussion Starter · #14 · Oct 13, 2004

That was the first thing I tried. It kept coming up "could not restore to this point". I even tried several dates with no luck.

rgathright

Discussion Starter · #15 · Oct 13, 2004

I had the computer tech come by and he got the HTPC back up and running. He had to completely wipe clean my hard drive and reinstall everything. At one point he had a video card bus error, but after restarting again it was OK. He stated this is the cause of my problems and if it happens again to get a new video card.

While I was reinstalling some of my software the desktop started getting darker and darker.

Is this the card messing up again?

rgathright

Discussion Starter · #16 · Nov 16, 2004

Well just before I got everything back installed the computer goes out again.

Have put it in the shop and told them not to just get it working, but to find out what is causing the problem. The tech made a comment that he may have to flash the motherboard. Is this a big deal? He stated that sometimes you would get a bad flash.

1 - 16 of 16 Posts

Status: Not open for further replies.