Serious problem with new XP Home:

[Smellincoffee]

Last night, I arrived home from church and logged into my account. I did my normal activities (browsing at CFC, working on my modern-civs mod, etc) then got off to do some reading. My mother came home from church an hour later (women talking) and logged onto her account, which isn't an admin like mine. (Mine is the admin acount). She got off maybe an hour later, and I logged back into my name.

Here's where my problems start. I took C3C out of the drive so I could listen to the music cd provided in my Music 101 textbook. However, no autoplay started. This isn't unusual; so far the only cd-roms with autoplays that work are the Civ3 and C3C cds. I tried to open My Computer from the desktop icon. I double-clicked; the cursor changed into its busy form, but then went back to normal form. I tried opening it several times, then tried other folders. Nothing worked.

"No biggie," I thought. "I'll just restart." Unfortunately, it wouldn't LET me restart. I would hit "Restart", but nothing happened. Same for shutting down. With no other way to cut the computer off, I turned the surge protector off; waited, then turned it back on.

I got back onto the computer and tried numerous times to do ANYTHING; nothing worked. After my inital log-on, I was stuck. I decided to give the computer a rest, thinking it might be a problem of resources. I doubted it, since this computer has over 256K ram.

Today, I started it up, opened the "My computer" folder with no worries. Then an error message popped up.

This computer has just recovered from a serious system failure. An error report has been prepared.

(Not sure if it was failure or problem, but..) I was trying to get online to send the error message when the computer restarted on its own. What the...

I got back on; got online. Opened an IE window and the same error message came up. This time I could hit send, and did. It wasn't done sending when the computer restarted again.

This time I just tried to launch C3C; error message and restart. I tried twice more and returned to the manual, only to find...

..there's no help-support contact information. I don't want to call Best Buy again because they thought the motherboard was the problem on my last system when it was simply a case of the old monitor wearing out. So I figured I'd come back to campus and ask around online.

Anyone know what's up? This isn't a BIG serious problem-- I have another system I can use for online activites and C3C, but it's aging, and it has its own idiotic quirks. (Something wrong with the CPU's power system).

 

[Smellincoffee]

Edit: I tried it again tonight. It's "system error", not failure.

 

[Turner]

I had something simular happen to my work computer. It would be fine, then reboot without warning. I thought I had the blaster worm, but it turns out there's a short in my power cable. Check the leads on your power cable, and make sure they're tight. Also might want to move the cable around and see if your computer looses power. Mine wasn't a power loss, but just enough of a burp to cause the unit to reset.

When you get it up long enough, try checking for virus'. Perhaps you're infected with something.

As for being unable to reset, sometimes that happens. HP Open View (Our help desk system) decided to hang, and wouldn't release the program from memory. I had to crash the system to get it to boot. Fortunately, our systems here are pretty crash tolerant. But perhaps something got hung up on the system, and it just didn't want to reboot. And coincidently, you're having power problems.

I'm sure there's a better explaination. I'm just throwing out some personal experiences I've had.

 

[Smellincoffee]

Thanks for the reply; I would've replied sooner but I kept forgetting.

Anyway, everyone I talked to said I had the blaster virus. However, the fix didn't work. I decided to reformat-- and it works. This also fixed Best Buy's deed of disabling my task manager. The only problem is all the stuff I have to redownload.

 

[Turner]

Yeah, that's the succky part. But at least you're system is stable again. Well, as stable as it can be.

 

[kcwong]

Originally posted by Smellincoffee
Thanks for the reply; I would've replied sooner but I kept forgetting.

Anyway, everyone I talked to said I had the blaster virus. However, the fix didn't work. I decided to reformat-- and it works. This also fixed Best Buy's deed of disabling my task manager. The only problem is all the stuff I have to redownload.

Then this time remember to install a virus shield, keep it updated, and install all fix in Windows Update...

Any discs and CDs you used before could have virus in them.

 

[sebanaj]

The blaster used to said something like : RTC call, computer will shut down in 60 seconds, etc.