Diagnosing computer failures:

[DarkAngel]

Many times when our  computer parts are going south we need to roust about the insides of the computer to see which component is going bad.... here are some helpful links on what and how to do this:

Diagnose and replace a failed PC pwer supply

How to tell if processor is going bad

How to empty a full hard drive to make it more manageable

How to fix an invalid portion of the hard drive

How to test hard drive for speed and errors

how to know if your motherboard has failed troubleshooting is on page 2 of this article.

How to dianose bad ram

Motherboard, CPU, RAM Diagnostics Flowchart  for diagnosing/troubleshooting.

[Jherrith]

Well, now this ought to put the finger on the naughty bit in a timely manner ... oh my naughty bit we like .... oops ... wrong thread again

[thelufias]

I still say LL's best bet is to contact the folks she got this from...or in the least....the maker of the computer.  You know how it goes.....you screw around with it to much and then they tell you....Oh Well....YOU did it to the computer.....not us.....

But great tips for sure...and a keeper.

[Jherrith]

RFT

[Skhilled]

I know this is old but listening to the POST (power-on self-test) beeps will tell you a lot about what hardware problems you may have. when your PC boots up, it will beep. the number and length of beeps is its way of tell you if it is Ok or not Ok and what is wrong if not Ok.

Based on your motherboard's BIOS manufacturer (AMI, Phoenix, or Award) you'
ll hear different types and lengths of beeps:

http://www.pchell.com/hardware/beepcodes.shtml

[thelufias]

Great tip....Thanks....

[Jherrith]

Well, we certainly have some of that nature going on and we needs some help

Symptoms

Blue screen of death when logging in

How it got there

Allowed the AVG anti virus to reboot to finish installing updates

What it does

Turn it on and it starts booting up get to the log on screen and get a pop up saying duplicate name on the network Never had that before ... it thinks for a second then bang blue screen of death.

Have tried to use F8 to get into safe mode ... nope, nada, doesn't work. I get a Bios message about auto detecting and so forth but no safe mode at all, it just cycles through again ... and again ... and again

Got desperate and decided to plug in my XP disc and have it run nope, .... nada the drive started up but it never read from there to try to get it to boot.

Went into the BIOS to set it to boot first from the CD and again still nothing.

So far not a damn thing I have done has worked

I am so in need of suggestions

Thank you.

[thelufias]

I'm assuming you did all of this without being connected to the internet....correct?

I'm heading over to the AVG site to see if anyone else ran into this. 

You mentioned that you may just try and upgrade to Win 7 from here...Not sure if that will work if you're XP isn't operating properly.

[Radkres]

Pull the main hard drive replace with blank unformated one. load windows XP disc in Cd  format Blank Hard drive make it new Master slave old Drive to New Master see if you can repair the old Drive once you have a bootable system. if not fixable pull data off it and wipe and rebuild using old system back up if  you have one.

[Aelin]

Have you try to stop it with a brutal way ("snatch" to the wall jack)? Or its battery? I don't know the model you have so...
Other idea: have you hit it to bring back good ideas in its stupid memory?