Another Computer Problem...! | FerrariChat

Another Computer Problem...!

Discussion in 'Technology' started by 134282, Apr 6, 2004.

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  1. 134282

    134282 Four Time F1 World Champ
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    Carbon McCoy
    Ok, this one looks bad... So bad in fact, that our tech is here, right now, SWITCHING my machine with another and loading everything on my machine to the other, new machine... HE doesn't even know what's wrong with it...

    Before i left for vacation, everything was fine... i come back and it seems that all hell has broken loose... So here's my question: What does the following error message mean and is there any way to correct it...? (this is the error message that shows up on my computer screen every time you restart the machine)...

    SMART Failure Predicted on Hard Disk 0: Maxtor 53073H4-(PM)

    WARNING: Immediately back-up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure may be imminent.

    Press F1 to Continue


    Now that's not really something i wanna wake up to every morning... Anyone have any idea what this is...? Where it came from...? Is it just a virus with a fake message, trying to fool us or is this real...? When i push the power button on the computer, this is the first thing that comes up on the screen, before XP Pro starts to boot up... Anyone have any experience with something like this or know what it might mean...? Is the computer really gonna go off the deep end...? Any help would be much appreciated; thanks, folks...
     
  2. Etcetera

    Etcetera Two Time F1 World Champ
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    SMART is a technology that monitors your drive and warns of impending failure.

    It basically means that you're going to buy a new drive soon!

    And do it while you can still get your data off of it.
     
  3. LAfun2

    LAfun2 Three Time F1 World Champ

    Oct 31, 2003
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    My computer has a problem too. Everytime I turn on AIM everything freezes up. It started happening after I DL'ed DEADAIM in order to have multiple names up at once.

    So I went ahead and uninstalled all of AIM, computer ran fine. Went to AOL's website to DL it again, did it, and walah computer keeps freezing up.

    Well I don't keep anything on my computer so I wanted to reinstall Win XP once again and just erase it all start from scratch.

    Low and behold I find that my CD Rom does not work. Now I don't know what to do. I can't reinstall XP so am I out of luck, or can XP be installed without a CD ROm? I won't be buying a Laptop till summer 2005, so till then I am stuck with this one, and no AIM.

    However my T3 is great :D
     
  4. tvrfreak

    tvrfreak F1 Rookie
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    It's not a virus.

    SMART is a monitoring technology that is supposed to warn you of impending disk failure and thereby get you to switch your data/disk while you can, and thereby avoid catastrophic/expensive data loss and down-time.

    You are switching the disk, as you are supposed to. Good.

    After the techie has moved your data over, check to make sure everything has been transferred to the new disk successfully.

    Keep the old one around for a few weeks in case you need to retrieve more data. When you are sure you have everything on the new disk, reformat the old one, put it in as a secondary disk, and see if the warning reappears when you boot. If it doesn't, you have a spare. If it does, discard.
     
  5. tvrfreak

    tvrfreak F1 Rookie
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    LAfun,
    does your CD-ROM have power? If not, you need to check the power connection inside the computer, the one from the power supply unit to the back of the CD-ROM.

    If your CD-ROM has power, you need to go into your BIOS or setup program (usually by pressing the DEL key or F1 or F10 or ESC) while the computer is booting up. Change the boot device order to have CD-ROM listed first.

    Also, if you have two CD drives, such as a DVD-ROM and a CD Writer, then make sure you are putting your XP CD in the correct drive.
     
  6. 134282

    134282 Four Time F1 World Champ
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    Awesome, folks, thanks... i just wanted to make sure our tech wasn't here wasting his time... He's fairly versed in computer matters and even HE didn't know what it meant, he just assumed we needed to get everything off of there, ASAP... i appreciate everyone's expedient input, thank you...
     
  7. LAfun2

    LAfun2 Three Time F1 World Champ

    Oct 31, 2003
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    Faisal,

    Yes the CD rom has power. The light turns on, and it opens and closes. However when I put a CD/music one in ( I first used it yesterday after 1.5 years), Media Player does not come up or anything, and it doesn't do anything. If I go to Control Panel and click on drive D, nothing happens.

    I only have one cd drive, it does not have burner or writing capacity.
     
  8. djoex

    djoex Karting

    Dec 7, 2003
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    Joe Yeung
    the problem of the error message when the computer starts up, hmm not sure but i remember a couple of years back one of my computers was showing that error. It seemed that the motherboard had a problem (the computer was customized) it seemed that it wasn't compatible or something like that with WIN2K hmm i changed the board and put a new battery on it and the message never came back.

    As for the Xp question.. i f you are using T3 you must have network cables get a friend make a little network put the XP disk on his Computer and open it from your computer, if it is a XP cd from a box, it should pop up a screen and you select fix or repair and this should repair your win XP withouth formating.. hmm if it is real bad then you might want to get a new CD rom external or internal.
     
  9. LAfun2

    LAfun2 Three Time F1 World Champ

    Oct 31, 2003
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    Went back and did what you said.

    The computer is a 3 years old built by me at that time, from parts bought at the computer expo in Oakland Convention Center.

    It is a AMD Athlon 950 Mhz. 256RAM. 40Gig Hard Drive, and 29 gig is free.

    I did the setup and it has it listed this way:

    CDrom
    HDD-0
    LS120

    So the CD rom is listed as first boot.

    I will try what DJOEX said. We do have a LAN network on the dorm. Bunch of guys put up games and such there and play from there. I will try getting XP that way.


    EDIT: My computer does this about once a year. You know how the hard drives make a little noise when they work or whatever? Well once a year stuff on the computer freezes up and the hard drive makes "nuur nuur nuur nuur" noise, and keeps doing it, that is when the computer freezes. I wonder if it is harddrive problem

    Oh well nothing important on my computer, will reformat using the network.
     
  10. tvrfreak

    tvrfreak F1 Rookie
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    LAfun,
    you say nothing happens when you click on drive D in control panel. Don't you mean Explorer? Also, I thought you wanted to reinstall XP. Per your post, you are trying to get it to work from within your current installation of XP.

    Anyways, sounds to me like you need to reinstall the driver. If you want to retain your existing installation of XP, you need to check the driver settings. There's quite a few...spend half an hour on it and get a geeky friend to help out. Otherwise, prolly best to take it down to the local computer store and pay someone $20 to fix it or put in a new one cheaply.

    Don't waste your time on this if you are going to reinstall XP anyways.

    If your computer can boot from the CD ROM, which is determined by your BIOS settings, then you can reinstall XP from the CD ROM. You can test for this without getting rid of your existing installation. Just put the XP CD in, reboot, check that BIOS boots from the CD before booting from the hard disk, and then check that XP starts installing.

     
  11. tvrfreak

    tvrfreak F1 Rookie
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    To properly use djoex's solution of a network boot and recovery, you ought to make recovery disks first. You can look up how to do this on the Microsoft website, or get someone to help. Good luck.
     
  12. LAfun2

    LAfun2 Three Time F1 World Champ

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    Yeah I have nothing on my comp, so reinstalling is no big deal.

    I just want to be able to use AIM without buying a new CD ROM. THus the need to reinstall XP. I will see if anyone around here is bright enough to start up the network deal.
     
  13. LAfun2

    LAfun2 Three Time F1 World Champ

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    Nope I mean press "star" then press "my computer" then press "D" double click, nothing happens. When the cd drive was working, it would make a whizz fan type noise of starting up. It doesn't do that any more.

    Yeah my XP and everythign works fine, just when using AIM it freezes all up, so I wanted to reinstall XP CD again and just start fresh, however with my CD ROM not reading CD's it has become a problem
     
  14. tvrfreak

    tvrfreak F1 Rookie
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    Clicking the Start button, then My Computer, then the drive icons, etc. invokes Explorer, not Control Panel ;)

    If you want AOL to work, then try troubleshooting that instead of throwing out the baby with the bathwater by reinstalling XP (although the idea has merit since your CD ROM does not work and it sounds like a fairly old installation).

    To troubleshoot:
    Download and apply all the updates from Mircrosoft's site.
    Download regcleaner.exe, do a search for all instances of AOL in your registery, and delete them.
    Reinstall AOL and see if it works without locking up your computer.
    Try and get the CD-ROM working.

    If all this fails, then reinstall XP.
     
  15. LAfun2

    LAfun2 Three Time F1 World Champ

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    SOrry about the Control panel thing, my apologies. I wanted to major in Computer Engineering my freshman year, changed mind business andlegal studies is what I am doing, and don't know anything about computers as you see. :)
     
  16. LAfun2

    LAfun2 Three Time F1 World Champ

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    Faisal,

    Since my computer has been acting funny for about 3 weeks, this is now the home page.

    res://mshp.dll/index.html#37049

    I tried changing it through the tools menu, to yahoo.com and it changes it. But when I open a new window, it goes back to the stupid res://mshp.dll/index.html#37049

    I also have AVG virus program and run it every night and it comes up with nothing.

    Also where can I get the regcleaner.exe from?

    I got registry mechanic 2.1 from download.com is that ok?
     
  17. LAfun2

    LAfun2 Three Time F1 World Champ

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    REgistry mechanic did a scan and found 9 Problems but need to register to fix them.

    2 errors detected in shared program

    1 error in start up program

    1 error in add/remove program

    5 errors in scan for shortcuts
     
  18. tvrfreak

    tvrfreak F1 Rookie
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    Google regcleaner and if you don't find it, pm me.

    The homepage that your explorer keeps getting set to...do a Google search for it and you should find a forum or two where someone else has posted this problem and there are usually instructions on how to remove it. This is one of those insidious (and very annoying) spyware programs that bury themselves deep in your computer in a few different places and are difficult to remove unless you have detailed instructions.

    Edit: Click this link to see what you need to do to clean this crap.

    AVG is good.

    Ignore Registery Mechanic and don't pay for it. The errors it found...
    --2 errors detected in shared program
    Probably remnants of office or other programs that share components. No worries.

    --1 error in start up program
    Probably a shortcut with the underlying program removed. No worries.

    --1 error in add/remove program
    Probably a program removed manually, so start remove applet has an entry for the program but upon checking finds the files missing. No worries.

    5 errors in scan for shortcuts
    Targets of shortcuts missing. Click on them and you won't go anywhere. No worries.

    Don't worry. Be happy. :)
     
  19. allanlambo

    allanlambo F1 Rookie

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    Time to get rid of the Commodore 64.
     
  20. Admiral Thrawn

    Admiral Thrawn F1 Rookie

    Jul 2, 2003
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    hahaha

    Don't forget Altair or Atari!
     
  21. LAfun2

    LAfun2 Three Time F1 World Champ

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    Faisal thank you. You nailed all the problems right on the head. Also your link really helped, and I have the yahoo.com back as my homepage.

    Thank you once again :)
     
  22. ctk

    ctk Karting

    Jul 2, 2001
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    Faisal,

    Read your post and took the link. My IE is now CoolWeb free again.

    Thanks

    CTK
     
  23. tvrfreak

    tvrfreak F1 Rookie
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    Yeah, that crap is really annoying.

    Glad you guys are sorted. :)
     

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