Boy, is my face red? Oh yea! At lunch I took my box to a computer shop because they said they'd take a quick 10-min look and tell me if anything major was going on, etc. They did replace the battery for me John, since they had the box open and I was buying the battery there anyway.
You guys kept saying "check the cables" and I kept saying, "I did, I did." But...it turns out the floppy cable was off by one pin, so they think that's what was causing the non-system disk errors. What a dimwit I am! The video driver is still a problem. They reinstalled the driver a couple of times, and checked some other thingsĀbut not since the battery was changed. That was done last since I had to get back to work, so I'll check and see if it made a difference when I get home. He said Windows had switched the IDE setting to PIO (?) instead of DMA, which was causing it to run like syrup. Anyway, besides that, he thought that an indication that the drive is going bad (which is why I bought the new drive--not that I knew about the IDE thing, but someone said I probably needed a new one. I just wasn't sure why, or which one was going bad.) He suggested I put a fresh installation of XP on the new drive and start fresh, and also get rid of the 2nd XP installation that wasn't working. He also suggested to flip-flop the IDE cables on the MB because--for some reason, I have no idea why--the CD/DVD burners are in the Primary slot and the HD's are in the Secondary slot. He also suggested putting one slot between the video driver, sound card, etc. They're kinda crunched together. That's it. That 10-minute quick check turned into and hour and only cost me $29.99 (including the battery). Of course, I still have a lot of things to do. Installing XP fresh when I don't have my 98 CD anymore is going to be a big pain. Thanks for all your help. I just thought you might like to know what the shop said about the problems, since they were actually able to look in the box. You guys are a little handicapped, only having what I tell you in my inadequate way what the problem is--and yet you were right on! Amazing! Diane --- In [email protected], John <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > First, thanks everyone for your help. > > > > Okay, just to cover all the basis I did run a different spyware > > detector/remover. I'd done this before with three different programs, > > and supposedly fixed everything. The new one came up with 272 items-- > > but half of those were only cookies. Still..... > > > > > > I'm still having the driver problem. Here's what I did last night. > > > > 1. Checked the capacitors for bulging. They're ok. > > > > 2. Ran the spyware program--cleaned things up. > > > > 3. Rolled back the video driver. Driver date 10-22-06. > > The yellow checkmark in Device Manager went away. > > > > 4. Set the clock to the current time. (11:15 pm) > > (It was exactly 2 hours behind.) > > > > 5. Rebooted without the XP disk in the drive. Boot OK! > > > > 6. GeForce driver has the yellow question mark beside it AGAIN! > > > > 7. Uninstalled GeForce driver. Received message, > > "Failed to uninstall the device. The device may be neaded > > to boot up the computer." > > > > 8. Clicked Ok. Windows rebooting (without disk). OK > > > > 9. Now "Video Controller" has the yellow question mark. > > > > 10. I run the Install Wizard to install the driver. I choose > > to find the driver myself and direct it to the 10-22-06 > > driver. The wizard installs the driver, with much screen > > flickering, a black screen for several seconds, more > > flickering. Wizard finishes and screen resolution is very > > large and monitor settings are low. I change these back to > > the way they were. > > > > 11. The yellow question mark has gone away. Things look normal. > > > > 12. Uninstalled some of the software that was causing the spyware. > > > > 13. Rebooted. > > > > 14. The yellow question mark is back by the NVIDIA driver. > > > > Went to bed. > > > > 15. This morning the clock was behind exactly an hour. > > > > Well, that's the latest saga. I forgot to try the floppy. > > > > The MB, processor, fans, power supply, graphic card, RAM, and case are > > three years old. Got all new ones. Granted, not expensive ones. Good > > deal on EggHead(?) Floppy drive is two years old. HP CD burner is > > about 7 years old. DVD burner is one year old. > > > > Thanks for all your help. > > > > Diane > > > > Hi Diane, > > Have you replaced the cmos battery yet? I strongly suspect that an old > battery is causing the clock to lose time and causing the problem with > the video drivers. Replace it and those issues should go away. > > Best wishes, > > John. > If you have any questions or problems with any aspect of this site, please feel free to contact me directly [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please do not post personal issues directly to the group. To unsubscribe from this list, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Thank you for using A-1 Computer Tech Yahoo! 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