Well, the PC seems to be dead. Really Dead this time.
mood: 
annoyed
annoyedI've tried booting from the CD, but even that fails before things get to a point that I can get running.
Replacing memory is not an option at this point. My PC has an ASUS P4T533-C motherboard and uses DDR SDRAM PC-3200 400Mhz chips.
Last time I looked at these they were $200+ for a gig of memory. I'm not going to shell out that kind of money unless I know for SURE that that will solve the problem.
Of course I'd need two gigs, so that's $400 or better right there. The processor is a P4 3.06GHz. It has a Radeon 9800 series graphics card ands a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 audio system.
It has two DVD RW drives, one a dual layer.
Is it even worth fixing? I can get a new Gateway FX PC at Best Buy for about $1200 with a good payment plan (18mo, interest free) but I'm still paying off the laptop.
http://www.gateway.com/programs/fxseries/
Eventually I'll have to get a USB interface for the hard drives so that I can get the data off them. *sigh*
I wonder if I can get an external drive case for the DVD drive too.
For now I'm living with the laptop,Gateway P-6860FX with an Intel Core2 Duo T5550 at 1.83 GHz. and 4 Gb of RAM. It'll run 2nd Life and WoW so it'll do.
Maybe I don't need the PC at all ... Just a good Hi-Def large monitor.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1558844&Sku=C19-4280
If you have more than one memory chip, can you pull one at a time, reboot, and see if that fixes it enough to do a memory check? (Again, lots of memory checkers out there. Just go to download.com and see what's available.)
You can also get an USB Drive for about $29. (either sata or ide) and there are also freeware programs available to "duplicate" the drives. I got one if you need a recommendation - that I used to "dupe" my win xp hard drive for my laptop when I went from a 120gig/5400rpm drive to a 250 gig/7200rpm drive.
Memory Comments: PC800/PC1066 ECC and non-ECC RIMMs (must be installed in pairs)
Fairly typical pricing:
http://www.google.com/products?q=ASUS+P4T533-C+MEMORY&rls=com.microsoft:*:IE-SearchBox&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7GWYE&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=product_result_group&resnum=1&ct=title
a.k.a. http://tinyurl.com/memory-prices
Edited at 2009-01-14 05:40 am (UTC)
1. through it out.
2. have a funeral for it.
3. bash the cr*p out of it for giving you so much grief.
That FX series gates looks good.
How well does your laptop handle SL?
So you think it's REALLY dead then? What might the problem be?
I'd probably gut it and sell the entrails and case.
The case is an Alienware, the sound card is a good one, the power supply is new.
Edited at 2009-01-14 11:11 am (UTC)
try cam's idea and pull the memory and put known good RAM in. IT's cheap, and this could be Ram, mobo failure, or a weak power supply.
The power supply is a brand new 650 watt unit - it didn't help.
Edited at 2009-01-15 05:44 am (UTC)
As someone who is hooked into the PC side very deeply due to using AutoCAD and a couple of other PC only programs (yeah, I know the Mac can now run them) I'm kind of anchored to Windows.
And just to poke at you Mac folks - Software for the Mac is already up to an 11th major version. Vista is only the sixth Windows version.
My brother is a Mac user (he does graphic design) and he does a lot with his system - the full wireless music streaming with iPhone as a remote etc. Nice toys, but do I need them?
I'm stuck with Vista Pro on the laptop, it's been working well so far. The worst thing is that a few of my older programs will not run.
Edited at 2009-01-15 05:46 am (UTC)
Have you tried resetting any number of BIOS settings to see if you can cause it to fail more or less than it has been? That would give you clues.
Like someone said, though. If it's a P4, I'd consider getting something newer and giving that one away. *shrug*