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[foil]

Do you use Internet Explorer?

[Lord Shonus]

Firefox and Chrome.

[Aklyon]

Have you changed the page encoding at somepoint? Sounds like that would be related.

[Lord Shonus]

Whatever that is, I don't remember doing it.

[Eric Blank]

I have a problem I'd appreciate some help solving:

Spoiler: direct explanation (click to show/hide)

Basically, over the course of the last two years, my personal desktop has spent roughly half of that time as a worthless paperweight, because it either wouldn't boot up or would crash shortly afterwards. The issue most of the time is that when attempting to boot up it will serve me something similar to "windows could not start because of a hardware configuration problem," and secondarily (about 1 in 25-30 of all attempts to boot it up), after it boots up and I actually manage to log in, it will usually stop with a message stating that something-or-other couldn't be written to the disk, and it will just keep repeating that over and over because it can't write an error log on the hard drive about not being able to write an error log on the hard drive, ad nauseum. This began less than three weeks after completely reformatting the hard drive. Prior to that it was also having issues with crashing/failing to boot consistently, although it would usually crash with a BSOD.

So, I'm thinking the hard drive is the most likely culprit, especially since all of the other components were replaced while it was more reliable (although it still had problems) and each one didn't cause the problem to increase or decrease noticably, but I'm not sure whether I need to test every single one, or how to go about doing that. Only issue I note that points to anything besides the HDD is that it refuses to play any audio. That problem cropped up only after the most recent reformatting attempt, and it has never happened before.

Does anyone know how I can safely go about testing it? I technically have another hard drive available, complete with operating system, to donate to it for the purpose of testing, but that hardrive needs to be able to be returned to its place in another machine afterwards. The donor machine won't be able to accept most of the components from the problem machine or vise-versa, but the hard drives' power and data connections are identical. Will I need to install drivers for all of the components in my personal desktop before transferring it, or could that be accomplished afterwards?

Spoiler: actual component specifications, in case they're helpful (click to show/hide)

Problem system:

Harddrive: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 160Gb HD.
PSU: Seasonic SS-620 GM Active PFC F3
Motherboard: Gigabyte P67A-D3-B3 Intel P67
GPU: Galaxy Nvidia GeForce GTX550 Ti 1GB DDR5
CPU: Intel i5 2800k 3.3Ghz unlocked
RAM: 2x PNY XLR8 4gb DDR3

Ultimately, I do have the option of replacing the machine as a whole, but if all I really need to do is isolate and replace one component, that'd be much preferred.

[Sensei]

That almost certainly sounds like a bad hard drive. Of course, to test that you'd need another hard drive from somewhere. However, it sounds like its worth replacing the hard drive rather than the whole computer.

[gimlet]

You can (usually) boot off a usb stick, that has either a Live Linux or bootable utilities suite like Ultimate Boot CD or Hiren's Boot CD

Just to make sure I have the latest utilities, I update the utilities disks with the latest manufacturer's test programs - for those look at the brand of disk you are having a prob with, go to their site, look around the support section for their disk test utility.  If you can't find it post the brand (and ideally model) and I'll try to find a direct link.

In linux, the command I use to test drives is "badblocks", although there's a couple other shorter tests and SMART diagnostics available through the gui - these are a good 1st start, they'll show blatant problems.  Badblocks will test every sector on the drive.  Using badblocks usually needs you to open a shell window and type in some stuff on the command line, it's not hard at all.

[Sensei]

So I think I might he getting some hard drive failure soon. This would be the second time in about nine months. I have a Lenovo Ideapad Y580, which I've heard are notorious for bad hard drives. Last time around christmas, I got the click death and sure enough the hard drive failed. This time, about a month ago, I thought for sure I was hearing the click of death... but a restart of the computer fixed it. Just today, I started hearing it way worse- constant clicking, motherboard beeping, and even programs failing to start. Just to see if it would work, I restarted, and after restarting twice my computer is "fine" now.

TL:DR, I occasionally hear the click of death but it goes away when I restart, and the last time it happened was worse than before. Should I be worried? I also feel like if I try to get the drive replaced on warranty right now, it'll show up at Lenovo's support place and not have any problems and they won't replace the drive.

[Tellemurius]

most of them dont really care and will switch them out

[gimlet]

Yeah you should be worried, there's something bad starting to happen and that stuff rarely fixes itself.   Either way, I would be backing up all your important stuff like NOW.  Then I'd find out the brand of hard drive in there, and get the manufacturer's diagnostic program, and see if it is reporting errors.   Also you can run the windows disk surface scan:  when you have a windows explorer window open, right click on the drive, pick tools, "error checking" and "check sectors for errors", or however it's labelled now.   WARNING, on any size disk this will take a LONG LONG time, 10,20+ hours is not out of the ballpark.   I run the linux "badblocks" test when I get a new hard drive, and a 2T drive takes about 30 hours :p  (It's a little faster per pass than the windows one but the default is for it to do 4 passes).

The other thing to think of running is "memtest" - memory does go bad and it can cause all kinds of flaky behavior.

PS:  Back up your important stuff NOW.

[Rolepgeek]

Argh.

So I start playing a Star Wars RPG, it gets me excited about Star Wars again, I want to play KotOR, I install both, try and start up KotOR 1, and it tells me I don't have the right OS.

What.

This is the saved report when it says I don't have the goods.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[SWKotOR]
ReportDateTime=11/10/2013 9:44:30 PM
SysInfoVersion=v1.00.60
GameExists=1
GameVersion=v1.03.514077
GameInstallLocation=C:\Program Files\LucasArts\SWKotOR\

[OS]
Name=Win9x
Version=Windows 9X v6.1 build 7601 Service Pack 1
Service Pack=None
Status=Fail

[SwapFiles]
?:\pagefile.sys=0

[CPU]
CPUCount=8
CPUSpeed=3392
CPUFamily=6
CPUModel=10
CPUStepping=7
CPUVendor=Intel
CPUName= Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
Status=Pass

[Memory]
RAM=4096
Status=Pass

[Disk Free Space]
C: (NTFS), UNICODE=485.72GB
D: (NTFS), UNICODE=1.50GB
Status=Pass

[CD-ROMs]
DriveLetters=E:\,J:\
Drives=

[Video]
Video Card Name=RDPDD Chained DD
Video Memory=4096
Desktop Resolution=0x0x0
DirectX=DirectX (9.0+) (4.09.00.0904)
OpenGL Version=4.3.0
OpenGL Vendor=NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL Renderer=GeForce GT 530/PCIe/SSE2
NVidia Driver=(null)
Vid Card Status=Warning
Vid Card Driver Status=Fail
GL Status=Pass
DX Status=Pass

[Audio]
Sound Card Name=Speakers (3- Logitech USB Headset)
Status=Pass


;Game Options from swkotor.ini

[Sound Options]
Music Volume=85
Voiceover Volume=85
Sound Effects Volume=85
Movie Volume=100
Force Software=0
EAX=3
Disable Sound=0
Number 3D Voices=16
Number 2D Voices=24
Environment Effects Level=0.60
2D3D Bias=1.50
Environment Effects=1
Environment Effects Nonstreaming=1
Environment Effects Streaming=1

[Game Options]
Hide InGame GUI=0
Use Small Fonts=0
Keyboard Camera Deceleration=2000.000000
Keyboard Camera Acceleration=500.000000
Keyboard Camera DPS=200.000000
Hide Unequippable=0
Tutorial Popups=1
Subtitles=1
Mini Map=1
Floating Numbers=1
Status Summary=1
Enable Mouse Teleporting To Buttons=1
Mouse Sensitivity=33
Auto Level Up NPCs=0
Mouse Look=0
AutoSave=1
Reverse Minigame YAxis=0
Combat Movement=1
Enable Tooltips=1
Difficulty Level=1
TooltipDelay Sec=1.000000
Memory Access=1
Memory Level=1

[Movies Shown]
Movie 0=0
Movie 1=0
Movie 2=0
Movie 3=0
Movie 4=0
Movie 5=0
Movie 6=0
Movie 7=0
Movie 8=0
Movie 9=0
Movie10=0

[Alias]
HD0=.\
OVERRIDE=.\Override
TEMP=.\Temp
MODULES=.\Modules
LOGS=.\Logs
LOCALVAULT=.\LocalVault
DMVAULT=.\DMVault
SERVERVAULT=.\ServerVault
STREAMMUSIC=.\StreamMusic
TEMPCLIENT=.\Tempclient
SAVES=.\saves
CURRENTGAME=.\currentgame
TEXTUREPACKS=.\texturepacks
STREAMWAVES=.\StreamWaves

[Graphics Options]
V-Sync=0
Anisotropy=1
Frame Buffer=1
Anti Aliasing=0
Texture Quality=2
Emitters=1
Grass=1
Soft Shadows=0
Shadows=1
Brightness=57
EnableHardwareMouse=1
FullScreen=1

[Autopause Options]
Mine Sighted=1
End Of Combat Round=0
Enemy Sighted=1
Party Killed=1
Action Menu=0
New Target Selected=1

[config]
firstrun=0

Anyone able to help?

[Tellemurius]

did you try running compatibility mode? i been able to play KOTOR fine.

[HFS]

Try running it in windowed mode, with Compatibility Mode for XP SP2 or 3 enabled. Run as admin, of course. This seems to work for a lot of older games, for me.

[Tellemurius]

Also if you are running 64bit windows, get that folder into the x86 program files, that screws up alot of legacy programs.

[Sappho]

ARG I'm getting very frustrated. Some background process on my Windows 7 machine is constantly stealing focus from whatever I'm using. This only just started happening yesterday, which happens to be the first time I actually restarted the computer in a long while. So something took effect at restart that I now can't seem to track down. Even while I've been typing this, the window has lost focus THREE TIMES and I had to re-focus on the text box to keep writing.

I have tried to use Process Explorer to find the culprit using some instructions I found online, but I couldn't find anything. I can't play games, I can't type, I can't do anything. Can someone please help me? How the hell do I figure out which program is doing this so I can kill it?

ARGH that's about ten times now, I'm going to throw this fucking thing against the wall! Please help me!