Omega Owners Forum
Chat Area => General Discussion Area => Topic started by: hotel21 on 04 February 2008, 12:39:35
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I had an 'Oh Fek' moment yesterday whereby a half glass of red was spilt upon the docking station for my Dell PDA and my desk. Apart from turning the grey cloth of a speaker cover a nice shade of pink, it has shorted and melted the electrical contacts of the docking station, singed the PDA contacts and thrown up a Root USB controller or similar fault on my PC.
PDA seems to be working OK and can be charged via the same pinout as the docking station so seems to have survived. Can get a new Dell docking station for about a tenner from E-bay.
Problem appears to be the PC. Its a couple of years old P4 3.2ghz and now runs like a dog taking virtually 7 or 8 minutes to boot. Once up and running, some progs work OK others are really slow. The USB connector that the PDA was plugged into seems to be working as I can plug another device in and alls OK.
The question is, will it be a hardware type fault or a software type fault? I can easily claim on the house insurance but it carries a £100 excess so if it can be sorted with a new motherboard/processor for less than that, its not worth a claim.
Comments and/or way to explore whats actually wrong for someone who is not the best at computer type things....?
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Do you get any error messages on boot ?
or do you see any exclamation marks on system devices window ?
(from my computer- manage-device manager)
or its opening slower then normal ?
if last one is the answer you need a full re-install of op.system and sofwares you use
(if I understand correct)
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also too many deletes on the system registry and File alloaction table
may slow the system..
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No exclamation marks on 'my computer' all appears as per normal.
PC simply takes an age to boot, no error codes or similar.
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What Disk capacity and RPM ?
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I use P4 3.0 in job with 15K RPM SCSI still fast..
Although become a bit slower with Personel Firewall
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What Disk capacity and RPM ?
how does WDC WD1600JD-00HBB0 sound??? Thats what shows under disc drives....
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Also if you mapped many network disks this also will slow your PC
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checking ...
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What Disk capacity and RPM ?
how does WDC WD1600JD-00HBB0 sound??? Thats what shows under disc drives....
Hard Disk : WDC WD1600JD-00HBB0 (149GB)
1.5 Gb/s, 8 MB Cache, 7200 RPM
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two of those are fitted...
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Broocie, have you tried to do a Disk defrag? Also, might be worth checking for registry clutter??
:-/
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Broocie, have you tried to do a Disk defrag? Also, might be worth checking for registry clutter??
:-/
Not yet. Just trying to do a damage assessment this morning!! ;D
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Broocie, have you tried to do a Disk defrag? Also, might be worth checking for registry clutter??
:-/
Not yet. Just trying to do a damage assessment this morning!! ;D
Or learn to type quicker to compensate for the reduction in machine speed? ;D
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160 GB 7200 RPM SATA...
But when I make a search seems to be slow on the net and there are
complaints..
Options:
Either format the disk and install everything from scratch (this would be the one I'll try first) or
buy a faster model (10K RPM) or
a new model Samsung (7200 RPM)..
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defrag will help a bit
but not sure will change the picture radically..
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so are we talking a software problem requiring a fresh install, or more a hardware/broken drive? If the latter, may be an insurance claim. If the former, its only going to cost me a tenner for the docking station and my time for a reformat/fresh install....
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if it was a hardware problem you need to see exclamation mark on system devices..This mostly become a software issue meaning you need a fresh install...
By the way check the net for your drive model there are complaints about this drive for being slow/ incompatibilty with linux etc..
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No faults showing in device manager other than network adaptors that have been disabled deliberately and have been for a couple of years....
Will try a defrag later this afternoon as I am away to the hospital just shortly.
Looks like a fresh install is in the offing then...
Thanks all for your input thus far.... :y
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No faults showing in device manager other than network adaptors that have been disabled deliberately and have been for a couple of years....
Will try a defrag later this afternoon as I am away to the hospital just shortly.
Looks like a fresh install is in the offing then...
Thanks all for your input thus far.... :y
:y
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Also:
if those network adapters are not on board take them out..
if onboard make them hidden-disable from the bios..
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H21 - disable all the USB controllers, see if that speeds it back up (obviously, USB ports won't work)
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It may be irrelevant but if your speed issues began since the spillage, have you tried booting without the cradle plugged in? If that speeds up again then it's likely to be damaged contacts in the docking station (as you mentioned I think?) causing the PC to scan for hardware it can't detect or communicate with properly resulting in wasted time during boot.
If it's still slow without the cradle plugged in the first port of call should be a thorough defrag.
Also look at the amount of free space on the disk (if it gets too low it forces Windows to use the page file excessively which severly affects performance), the size & location of your paging file (virtual memory), RAM allocation etc. Different versions of Windows require different amounts of free RAM to perform well.
Google "performance tuning your PC" and have a trawl through the results...
Hope that helps a bit :)
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I have unplugged the damaged dock station from the USB then shutdown and rebooted. Still sloooooow boot but no error messages such as USB Root Hub failure or similar.
Plugged seperate USB device into same port and all worked OK.
Run scandisc - all ok - and also defragged C with no change. Shutdown and reboot again and stillas slow as a slow thing....
Looks like a reinstall... :( But it will at least get rid of some accumulated crud in the process.... :D
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Now I finished eating , so brain start working ;D
can you list the external devices attached to the system
usb camera, usb printer,
some devices on com port
more than 1 ethernet card etc..
also
is there any extra firewall (except xp orignal)
or complicated graphic design tools what have working
services on the background
These questions are important will give some idea about the picture..
Also if you start re-installing the system after every device driver
install re-boot and check the boot times so you can see one of the device drivers create problem or not..
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dont forget to backup critical files and before starting check every device driver is under the hand..
and check the bootable op.systems cd when xp is already working..
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I have unplugged the damaged dock station from the USB then shutdown and rebooted. Still sloooooow boot but no error messages such as USB Root Hub failure or similar.
Plugged seperate USB device into same port and all worked OK.
Run scandisc - all ok - and also defragged C with no change. Shutdown and reboot again and stillas slow as a slow thing....
Looks like a reinstall... :( But it will at least get rid of some accumulated crud in the process.... :D
Always a good idea to reinstall periodically, it's amazing how much junk you collect on the HD that slows down the whole system.
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H21, did you try disabling USB stuff in BIOS to see if that speeds up.
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or try removing activesync
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Just this moment back in, done nowt more than earlier today.
Not really in the mood to do much with it tonight. This evening, something may well find itself leaving via a window. Just not decided yet whether its going to be animal, vegetable or mineral..... :(
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Just this moment back in, done nowt more than earlier today.
Not really in the mood to do much with it tonight. This evening, something may well find itself leaving via a window. Just not decided yet whether its going to be animal, vegetable or mineral..... :(
My laserjet printer left the room earlier. The mains lead pulled out cleanly, but I'll be making a new cat5 lead ::). Once I've fixed the printer that is....
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Just this moment back in, done nowt more than earlier today.
Not really in the mood to do much with it tonight. This evening, something may well find itself leaving via a window. Just not decided yet whether its going to be animal, vegetable or mineral..... :(
I feel the same when I was re-installing a foobar machine for a friend and my #1 in home become foobar also by the jumpin electricity..
And the reason : ups has gone before and was not repaired in 40 days of time >:(
Also loose the omega service archieve sheet with that disk >:( >:( >:(
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Just to make sure I back up the important stuff like my files, folders, outlook info, my docs, photo's, music etc as well as net favourites, what else would be suggested to copy?
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1 ups two PC *? ? k these pc shops >:( >:(
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if you have a usb removable disk copy everthing..
oops 160 GB no way!!
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Just to make sure I back up the important stuff like my files, folders, outlook info, my docs, photo's, music etc as well as net favourites, what else would be suggested to copy?
Last reinstall I did I ran the transfer documents & settings wizard onto another hard drive on my network, seemed to work quite well.
I think it works with an external drive if you have one availible
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Just to make sure I back up the important stuff like my files, folders, outlook info, my docs, photo's, music etc as well as net favourites, what else would be suggested to copy?
got a portable drive you can image it too? in case you have stored something somewhere odd?
My Documents (which should inc My Pics/Music etc)
Email msgs and contacts
Browser Favourites
Accounts data (these tend to store in odd areas)
Note of all web passwords etc
cant think of others, but go down root directory in case
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if you have a usb removable disk copy everthing..
oops 160 GB no way!!
I have about 130GB free on a physically seperate drive. PC has 320GB on two seperate drives.
Was thinking of doing a ghost image but would this not also copy existing errors when reinstalling?
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if you have a usb removable disk copy everthing..
oops 160 GB no way!!
I have about 130GB free on a physically seperate drive. PC has 320GB on two seperate drives.
Was thinking of doing a ghost image but would this not also copy existing errors when reinstalling?
dont take the image only copy all of the files-folders sure there are important files on odd addresses as TheBoy said..
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if you have a usb removable disk copy everthing..
oops 160 GB no way!!
I have about 130GB free on a physically seperate drive. PC has 320GB on two seperate drives.
Was thinking of doing a ghost image but would this not also copy existing errors when reinstalling?
dont reinstall from the ghost - its just a fallback should you forget something. Ghost has Ghostexplorer - a utility to extract single files from image.