El_Gringo_Grande

Last night my 4yr old started playing a game I had paused (prey). After 5 minutes he comes to me and says that it is too hard. I go look and it is at the choice screen where you can choose one of the Safe Modes or "Start Windows Normally".

I figured he pushed the reset button or something so decide and start normally.

It restarts and I then choose "safe mode with network support." It starts up and I see if there has been anything installed or unistalled recently.

Nope.

I check the drivers and everything seems normal.

So I restart and it seems to work. I open my mail app and then the screen goes all funky and seems to freeze. I give it a few minutes then it restarts. This time I get a BSOD and now I am worried. Restart and choose safe mode again. This time I notice that a Windows update was installed at 6:18 pm that evening. So I choose a do a system restore to right before that update.

Restart and gets to the desktop but then I get the funky screen and it freezes and a restart. Go to safe mode again and restore from a scheduled check point that is before windows updates installed 9 Apr. Restart and hold my breath.

Seems to work. Check my mail, do some other things. Am confident so play a bit of Prey then remote into my work computer to finish some code.

Runs fine for 4 hours total I would say.

Put the system to sleep and go to bed.

Get home from work and wake up my computer and it restarts again! But now no matter what I do it won't boot. Even safe mode won't work. Keeps getting to crcdisk.sys and restarts. I look in the bios and everything seems normal. (BTW I know crcdisk.sys has something to do with deamon tools. I fixed that before installing Vista because the upgrade report said I needed to.)

So I decide to boot from the install DVD to do a system repair but after it loads the windows files I get a blue screen that says "Cannot launch Windows. BIOS is not ACPI compliant. " blah blah blah. Open the BIOS again to make sure ACPI is turned on and it is.

I do the memory check that is given as an option in one of the recovery screens and it passes.

I turn on the BIOS status screen during startup and everything responds correctly.

I disable all the motherboard features, networking, wireless, the second HD, the DVD drives and even USB. Anything not needed to start up.

Still can't boot. Fails at crcdisk.sys.

So I say screw it and decide to install XP again. It does the same thing! Says the BIOS is not ACPI compliant. Get on the internet and can't find anything. The mother board is only 5 months old and has the latest bios.

XP ran on this machine since December with no problem. Vista upgrade installed on this exact machine a few week ago with no problem. I have not installed any new hardware since the Vista upgrade.

I get disgusted and shut the computer off. But about 20 minutes later I, being addicted to my computer and hate giving, up turn it back on and....

It freakin' works! WTH? The only thing I can think is that during everything I never actually shut the machine down and left it off for any period of time.

Of course I still don't know if I am in the clear yet. Last night it seemed to work fine. I am posting this in case it doesn't come back up tomorrow.

Any ideas about what I should check? Any diagnostics I can run?



OS = Vista ultimate
2 gig ram
Asus P5-KE mother board
ATI 3850 512mb
2 sata harddrives
DVD rom and HP DVD writer

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Sen. John McCain (AZ) For President '08
---
I知 not racists, I have republican friends. Radio show host.
- "The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity". -Jacob Burkhardt
- "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" - Emerson
- "People should not be afraid of it's government, government should be afraid of it's People." - Line from V for Vendetta
- If software were as unreliable as economic theory, there wouldn't be a plane made of anything other than paper that could get off the ground. Jim Fawcette

=DdogG=

hard drive failure maybe

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Acreo Aeneas

Sounds like your motherboard just went bad Gringo.

If the system is flashing on POST about your BIOS not being compatible, it usually is the case that your motherboard is on its last tiny legs.


Have you talked with ASUS Tech Support over the phone? A lot of times, they're pretty helpful and can help you figure out if it's a certain part in your computer is going bad or whatnot.

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Acreo_Aeneas
Former 9th Member

PanzerHans

Can it be a heat issue? Have you checked your fans?

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El_Gringo_Grande

Well, it has restarted about 5 times with no problems so far.

Did a check disk, no problems. Installed Visual Studio 2008 without a hitch. The temps for the cpu, as reported in the bios, was 21-23c. All fans are spinning.

I don't know what happened.

Thanks anyway.

__________________
Sen. John McCain (AZ) For President '08
---
I知 not racists, I have republican friends. Radio show host.
- "The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity". -Jacob Burkhardt
- "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" - Emerson
- "People should not be afraid of it's government, government should be afraid of it's People." - Line from V for Vendetta
- If software were as unreliable as economic theory, there wouldn't be a plane made of anything other than paper that could get off the ground. Jim Fawcette

El_Gringo_Grande

Well, it just crashed again. And it did the same thing, kinda.

The screen went scrambly and the computer froze. I hit the reset switch and would not boot to safe mode.

But, I know what caused it! Zune software! It was running when all this started before.

I do think there is a bug with the bios/motherboard. I have to shut the power off before I can get it to start correctly.

__________________
Sen. John McCain (AZ) For President '08
---
I知 not racists, I have republican friends. Radio show host.
- "The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity". -Jacob Burkhardt
- "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" - Emerson
- "People should not be afraid of it's government, government should be afraid of it's People." - Line from V for Vendetta
- If software were as unreliable as economic theory, there wouldn't be a plane made of anything other than paper that could get off the ground. Jim Fawcette

Lusitano Louco

That could be your problem right there. Just a few minutes ago I was reading a computer magazine where the writer stressed that according to him there is no viable and stable way of upgrading to Vista, other than wiping the drive and doing a clean install.

El_Gringo_Grande

Nahhh, I really don't think that is the problem. I think it is the zune software.

I just got through editing some home movies and no problems. Played a bit of Armed Assault, no problems. Even watched the podcasts downloaded by zune previously, no problems.

There is ALOT of FUD out there about Vista. To be sure there are problems, especially with older hardware. But I don't think my problem is Vista.

__________________
Sen. John McCain (AZ) For President '08
---
I知 not racists, I have republican friends. Radio show host.
- "The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity". -Jacob Burkhardt
- "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" - Emerson
- "People should not be afraid of it's government, government should be afraid of it's People." - Line from V for Vendetta
- If software were as unreliable as economic theory, there wouldn't be a plane made of anything other than paper that could get off the ground. Jim Fawcette

msdz

I had similar issues when I had a bad hard drive. I did all checks that could be possibly done and they all came back stating the hard drive was perfectly functional. It got to the point that the computer was running slower and slower every time I would use it and then poof, almost the same as you are describing. I could get the hard drive to ocassionally work from time to time though. Sometimes a few minutes then it may have been a whole day.
I ended up getting another hard drive and have had no issues. I still have the hard drive I had taken out before selling the old computer and put the hard drive in an external USb case. The bad hard drive went in the garbage or somewhere.
If you have a second hard drive that is safe to use without delelting any important data then try that first. A riend that is a bad computer techie told me the sleeve bearing or whatever it is called had went bad in the first hard drive not allowing it to spin up right, that is why all the hard drive utilities I tried never showed the hard drive as being bad. They only check the disc and nothing else, if the disc would spin up long enoughtto get these to work then they came out fine.

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El_Gringo_Grande

I have been thinking this may be the case. Or maybe intermittent bad memory? Does that even exist?

It happened again today and nothing was running but the computer went into sleep mode. When it came out the computer was frozen and the screen all garbled. Neither a reset or a restart fixed the problem. Only shutting it down and starting up again works.

__________________
Sen. John McCain (AZ) For President '08
---
I知 not racists, I have republican friends. Radio show host.
- "The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity". -Jacob Burkhardt
- "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" - Emerson
- "People should not be afraid of it's government, government should be afraid of it's People." - Line from V for Vendetta
- If software were as unreliable as economic theory, there wouldn't be a plane made of anything other than paper that could get off the ground. Jim Fawcette

Reaperassault

maybe the voltage to the memory is cause interment trouble

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msdz

Your hard drive I would almost put a bet on is your problem, so much you are saying is almost to a tee of what myine did. It would not hurt tp get a cheap hard drive to check it out. I ended up getting a 20Gb hard drive from a buddy for 2 packs of cigarettes just so I could test mine. maybe you can find a cheap one to do the same. Just make sure if you have any other hard drives to disconnect them till you are sure of the problem, the techie friend told me it can corrupt data on the second drive... never heard of that from an IDE hard drive but I did it anyway. thought it would be better to test it with one hard drive in rather than two anyway.

BTW waht type of hard drive is it? I had a Western Digital that had this happen to. I also ended up replacing a crap load of components thinking that was the problem before actually replacing the hard drive. a lot of $$ went down the drain that could have went to better upgrades later on.

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Acreo Aeneas

Don't believe most of the crap misinformed writers put in their articles.



It sounds like some sort of voltage regulation problem now.

Did you notice of any of the capacitors on your motherboard are raised/bulging?

__________________
Acreo_Aeneas
Former 9th Member

Bamboo

In all honesty though, there is nothing better than a strait up fresh install, rather than an upgrade.

Everyone here knows you can do a fresh install, even with an upgrade disk right? You can even buy just an upgrade disk and install vista on a fresh drive. There are lots of guides on the net, and Microsoft has even said they know about the loophole, but said they don't think it is worth the time patching (and probably the bad PR and pissed off customers more than usual).

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El_Gringo_Grande

No everything looks nice and clean. Was a bit dusty though.

I got a old drive from work I am going to wipe and install nice and fresh this weekend and see if I can cause it again.

__________________
Sen. John McCain (AZ) For President '08
---
I知 not racists, I have republican friends. Radio show host.
- "The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity". -Jacob Burkhardt
- "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" - Emerson
- "People should not be afraid of it's government, government should be afraid of it's People." - Line from V for Vendetta
- If software were as unreliable as economic theory, there wouldn't be a plane made of anything other than paper that could get off the ground. Jim Fawcette