[ale] [OT] - system crapped out

[Jim Kinney]

Was ide. Tried ahci with no luck. Pulled drive from mirror for external
mount.
Blank.
Gone.
<sigh>
Really wanted to dodge a reinstall.

No clue on failure root cause.
On Dec 6, 2012 4:53 PM, "Rich Faulkner" <rfaulkner at tux86.org> wrote:

> **
> Jim,
>
> Didn't read through all of this but have you confirmed in BIOS:  AHCI vs.
> IDE mode?  That will often cause a BSOD at GDI on XP.
>
> Rich
>
>
> On Thu, 2012-12-06 at 15:53 -0500, Jim Kinney wrote:
>
> This is OT because the base system here is a zillion year old XP box
> (don't ask - software won't run on new crap)
>
> system became unresponsive to keyboard (USB) on the main connection on
> mobo but worked on front panel connectors. Then those quit.
>
> Clearly a hardware issue.
>
> Noticed smell of overheated electronics from power supply so replaced it.
> System had trouble booting but was OK going into safe mode.
>
> 2 main drives in RAID 1 on a 3ware sata RAID card. System not happy about
> being shutdown uncleanly (many crashes before I was called) and ran a full
> chckdsk /r on boot drives which reported no errors.
> System will auto-reboot on normal startup at splash screen and now
> complains about new hardware (3ware controller!) in safe-mode. The RAID
> controller(s) were not changed so maybe a bit of drive scramble in that
> sector. Time to reload drivers. woo.
>
> Original driver disk nowhere to be found so using latest download from LSI
> (2009 - about when the controller card went in) to add driver to OS
> drive(s).
>
> Can't. Installer requires a VC++ something that requires the windows
> installer to run. But safe mode won't run the windows installer.
>
> reboot and cuss. Try floppy image - dug out usb floppy and found a single
> working floppy disk (thought I had tossed all of those?). Install would run
> but reboot asked for drivers again.
>
> cuss more when safe-mode now automatically reboots on startup. No way to
> access system drives anymore.
>
> Replace motherboard, CPU, RAM, CD drive and power supply. Boots to safe
> mode (YAY!) for new driver install. But original drivers for both RAID
> cards (other is an adaptec with a mirror pair with application data) were
> now needing to be installed. Plus now need to "re-authenticate" (cuss.
> spit.)
>
> ????  How are the originally working 3 days ago drivers vanishing ????
>
> unplug EVERYTHING, all drives, all raid cards, and try to boot from a
> known good XP hard drive built on a different system
>
> It does the same thing as the other drives! Gets to the XP splash screen
> then reboots the systems.
>
> F8 - set no restart on error - no change, set debug mode - just restarts
> with no messages
>
> Insert original installation CD to try for recovery console - blue screens
> after _long_ fight to get driver disk (see floppy) to work.
>
> Try newer XP-SP3 disk - blue screens
>
> memtest says all RAM is just fine (single pass all tests).
>
> W   T   F   !!!!!?????!!!!!?????
>
> <ihatewindowsihatewindowsihatewindowsihatewindowsihatewindows>
>
> --
> --
> James P. Kinney III
>
> Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain
> at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail.
> It won't fatten the dog.
> - Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain
>
> *http://electjimkinney.org*
> *http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/*
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing listAle at ale.orghttp://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists athttp://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20121206/fe596274/attachment-0001.html>