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8 hours straight of computer powering on and off... yikes! [long]

904 views 8 replies 5 participants last post by  BEL6772 
#1 ·
Ok.. So I'm using Win2k Pro, and the computer automatically powers down when you shut down the system. That's dandy and all, until I installed my printer [hp deskjet 960c].. then some weird things start to happen. If the power on my printer is on, and I shut down the computer, it will power off, beep, and reboot, then power off, beep.. and repeat... in about 3 second intervals - indefinitely. It eventually completely shuts down if I turn off the power on my printer. I figure, no big deal... I only turn on my printer when I need to print something anyways.

One day, while in a hurry.. I just shut down my computer and knowing it will automatically power off, I run off and leave. Little did I know, my printer was still on... and as it turns out, the computer had been switching on and off the entire time I was gone... about 8 hours straight. I turn off the printer power, and it finally shuts down. Hoping nothing bad had happened.. I turn the computer back on, to find out that my hard drive is now dead... windows won't load and everything on it has been corrupted. Luckily, only the partition that Windows was on got damaged. I say damaged.. because I can't reformat it or repartition it... Ok, fine, only 10 gigs gone.

I do all the reinstalling of Windows on the other part.. got everything up and running, installed all the drivers over etc etc... but I find that my computer's speed has decreased quite a bit. I guess it was the damaged partition of the hard drive... making it harder to access the files on the non damaged part... so I get a new hard drive (I needed a new one anyways). I go through the entire installation of everything again, in hopes of getting my computer back to it's tip top shape. Still.. to no avail!

Before all of this.. I was able to watch movies, play mp3s, run multiple versions of IE, and burn a CD in the background without any noticable lag and "choppiness" AT ALL. Now... I can't even run one IE without it slowing down. When I hit the MINIMIZE button on applications, the entire system slows down... it goes into "MATRIX TIME." I think... wow, I guess those 8 hours of on and off must have sent some constant voltage through all the circuitry.. and maybe it ruined a component somewhere.

I'm not really sure which one it might be, if at all any of them. My computer, every so often now, would spike and slow down, as I can see by observing the CPU Memory usage in the Task Manager thing. It shoots up to 100% sporadically, and it's not fun. Also.. I have a 56x CD Drive... that before would actually copy at that rate. Now it takes me up to 10+ minutes to copy the files of a CD onto my hard drive.

Could this have to do with the IDE cables or the memory... or anything with hardware? I'll replace whatever it might be... but I don't want to go out and just buy new parts that won't fix this problem (as I did for the hard drive). Anyone know what might be causing this? It's really annoying because my computer never.. _never_ even crashed before or had any problems at all... until the "incident." Any help would be appreciated!

Here are my system specs:

1.4 Ghz AMD Athlon
512 SDRAM
40gig Maxtor HD (that's the new one...)
Windows 2000 Pro...

Looking at the task manager, there still plenty of Physical Memory available.. Kernel Memory is at total ~40k, paged ~32k, nonpaged ~8k... are those at all weird numbers? I wouldn't know..

I'm not sure if anything else would matter, since everything worked perfectly before.

Anyways.. if you actually read through all this, thanks! And if you have any idea what I'm talking about and can help me out.. that'd be even better - more thanks! This is my second time typing this since I accidently closed IE ...
 

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#2 ·
Sounds like you narrowed it down yourself. It seems your printer is either sending a signal via the printer cable or keeping a pin at a certain state and this is causing the reboot. The BIOS is probably looking at the LPT port during boot, seeing something isn't right and rebooting. I would check with the printer manufacturer for any reported problems and the motherboard manufacturer for any BIOS updates. I would also take the cable out and get a newr one, unless it's USB and then everything I stated is meaningless....LOL
 
#4 ·
Hi again.

Yes, the cable is USB... I'm not concerned about the printer - rebooting problem though, as long as the printer prints.. it's good enough for me!

What I was mainly trying to figure out was why my system keeps slowing down so easily... how when I minimize a window, it would slow down and get really "choppy."

The attached image (jpg) in the first post is a picture of my task manager and all those numbers that come along with it! My Kernel Memory section looks a little low... a lot of is "paged" ... whatever that means, haha. Maybe that's normal, I'm not sure... so I'll stop there. Anyone know what that stuff is ?

When I mentioned "cable" ... I was referring to the IDE cables inside the computer itself... Could turning the computer on and off repeatedly could have "shorted" the wires or something... causing them to ... uhh.. slow down my computer?

I'm not sure what else I can say to further explain my dilemna... I'll check the memory thing though, testing each stick of ram one by one hoping maybe one of it is causing all this trouble. Thanks !

... no, I'm not writer.. I hate writing. I'm more of physics ... calculus guy... but either way, that's pretty nifty, thanks!
 
#5 ·
The slowdown is a resources thing, probably caused by things running in the background you aren't aware of. Run msconfig and click the startup tab....post us back all the items running in there.We can give you some idea of what to shut down to free up some resources.
 
#6 ·
Er, why would resources be a problem now, if they werent a problem before the 8 hours of power on/power off? I've always been told that resources arent as much of an issue with NT based systems, unlike Win9x.

Edit: Win2k doesnt have msconfig, BTW. You have to download it seperately.
 
#7 ·
Hi, again.

No, there aren't any background programs I'm using that would hog up resources.. I don't even have anti virus software running. Windows 2000 does not have msconfig... but I can use the 98's version anyways, and I disabled all those little things that load up at startup since I hate having my taskbar all cluttered with little icons. So I'm pretty sure it's not something as relevant as some spyware.

Yea, resources aren't as much of a problem in the NT 's as they are in 98... something to do with how windows manages paging I think. So I don't think it's a memory leak... I'm really pushing toward the hardware.
 
#8 ·
Ok, I found it's not RAM since I tried a totally new stick of ram... but while checking it out, I noticed my old stick had a bunch of "dust" on one spot.. sorta like it got burnt there. It was sort of like a blotch of grey dust.. but it comes right off, there were some in the slot hole too. The system itself is pretty new.. and there isn't any dust at all... this was more grainy. But anywho.. it wasn't RAM. So I guess it's the CPU.. which makes sense since it's the CPU Usage graph that's going all crazy on me.

Ok.. I don't think anyone's reading this anymore.. and since I'm answering most of my own stuff... oki doki.
 
#9 ·
You mentioned that you installed drivers etc. I was wondering if you got the latest MoBo chipset drivers, or at least the same ones you had on originally. If your chipset drivers are installed incorrectly, you can usually still install video, sound, etc, but have a very poorly performing system.

Just a thought ...

Brian
 
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