Fun with Windows
Okay. I hate Windows. I hate it with a passion, especially now that Vista is coming out. My desktop is having issues (think it’s a memory problem).
On Thursday evening I was trying to get my desktop to behave. I had a book layout due on Friday and desperately needed to get some work done. Hoover did not want to. I updated some drivers and windows and rebooted… machine wouldn’t get past the btkernel.sys file. Maybe that file was the issue? So I attempted to reboot to safe mode. Locked up at the same place. Restore to last known configuration didn’t work either. Even the Windows installatin CD hung and couldn’t do anything.
A friend reminded me about Linux Live CD. Maybe this would work and get around Windows-related issues (or what I thought were Windows issues). I’ve downloaded the Mutagenix vesion of Linux live. Hopefully the ISO image will burn successffully on the portable (which has also been having major issues).
did you ever fix the problem? i’ve got the exact same issue, and i’m on the verge of thinking my mobo has serious issues.
only problem is, it’s far too common of an occurence. i’ve noticed a lot of people with the problem on one forum, but nobody has a solution!
I never found a solution. This motherboard died a gnarly death: the machine quit responding after I could smell burning plastic. There was something seriously wrong with the motherboard. The machine with the mobo in it is sitting here in my office. It has been replaced by a Mac.
I’m not sure if it was the motherboard or a power surge that caused issues initially. A few years back I had replaced the hard drive, upgraded RAM, and the power supply when the power supply died (see post for details). Both of the 8x AGP graphics cards have had odd problems with stuttering (playing a game smoothly, screen jerks for a few seconds, and then continue smoothly). This effect happened with two graphics cards, one an nVidia GeForce 4400 and the second an ATI x1600 512 MB. I used to think it was a driver problem, except that nVidia and ATI both have good drivers (and updating to the latest versions never helped).
I thought at first that the RAM socket was going out on my machine. In fact it took a Linux Live CD to actually figure out that the problems I saw were caused by the RAM DIMMs and slots going bad (see post for details).
What issues are you having? This is a common problem with just this board or with other Gigabyte boards as well?
If the problems you are having are anything like the ones I described, I would backup your data and replace the mobo. The issues in my motherboard seemed to have spread through out the board — not just to the memory but to the hard drive. On top of the RAM chips and slots going bad, my primary data hard drive also crashed. I have not tested the other cards in the box to see if they are salvagable (5 port USB 2.0 PCI card, firewire card).
Wish I could offer more help… If you do find a solution, let me know. I would be curious to see what, if anything, helps.
It’s a wierd, wierd problem. So far i can pretty safely say that the CPU is stuffed. When i stick it in other computers they experience the same issues. That said, swapping other CPUs in has so far failed to fix the issue so there’s suspicion around the motherboard too.
Interestingly, i was working somewhere (contractor) when i overheard some of the employees complaining about a computer not working. It was freezing at the windows loading screen, and after i booted into safe mode it stopped at mup.sys too! Googling has turned up loads of other cases with similar symptoms – so who knows? Anyway, i think it’s pretty safe to say that my HDD is not my problem. And lets hope it’s not part of it either ;).
Thanks!
I hope you’re able to fix the problem. My motherboard was toast. Painful to have to suddenly get a new machine.
Any word on what happened with your machine?
I abandoned the idea of trying to fix it because it was becoming disruptive to other people in the house. In order to troubleshoot my pc, i had to pull theirs to bits. In the end i decided it was too much work to revive an old computer, even though it would have made for a great box to play with a new operating system.