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Strange issues with laptop of a friend.

J

Jamie

This morning my friend said he bought another 1 128 meg stick
to replace the 2 64 meg sticks he had in there.
It worked fine, recently he decided add another 128 meg stick
since now he has a free socket which was the reason for doing this.
When he did , Windows XP fail to boot all the way. It would restart
on the boot and get to the same place and reboot again..
so, he removed extra 128 stick. same problem. then put back in the
original 2 64 meg sticks, same problem.
He stated as it was booting when adding the second 128 meg stick.
the bios did display that he had a total of 256 megs which indicated
everything worked and passes the memory test.

Question:
Did Windows XP get screwed up from some error of his or is
it possible it detect a machine difference and is now rejecting his
attempts to load? or is this some kind of caching issue that can
be cleared up!
P.S.
He stated that it won't boot all the way in safe mode either.
He does have another HD with Windows 2000 which he popped in
and that worked fine with all the memory in it.

Any takers?
 
A

Arfa Daily

Jamie said:
This morning my friend said he bought another 1 128 meg stick
to replace the 2 64 meg sticks he had in there.
It worked fine, recently he decided add another 128 meg stick
since now he has a free socket which was the reason for doing this.
When he did , Windows XP fail to boot all the way. It would restart
on the boot and get to the same place and reboot again..
so, he removed extra 128 stick. same problem. then put back in the
original 2 64 meg sticks, same problem.
He stated as it was booting when adding the second 128 meg stick.
the bios did display that he had a total of 256 megs which indicated
everything worked and passes the memory test.

Question:
Did Windows XP get screwed up from some error of his or is
it possible it detect a machine difference and is now rejecting his
attempts to load? or is this some kind of caching issue that can
be cleared up!
P.S.
He stated that it won't boot all the way in safe mode either.
He does have another HD with Windows 2000 which he popped in
and that worked fine with all the memory in it.

Any takers?
Click to expand...
Jamie
A mate of mine who fixes these things for a living, told me that anything XP
and later, takes a 'snapshot' of the system that it's installed on, and
allocates some laid-down points value to each piece of hardware in there,
and this then 'defines' the machine that the OS is loaded on. Whenever any
hardware changes are made, this definition is re-evaluated, and the points
value alters. This is tolerated by Windows up until a certain amount,
whereupon it finally decides that this is no longer the machine that it was
originally installed on, and refuses to run any more. Supposed to be a
pretty foolproof way of stopping pirating of Windows, I think. Could it be
that your friend had made enough hardware changes since the original Windows
installation, that he was very near the point where it was going to reject
its 'host' as being a different machine, and the changing of the memory
configuaration was the last straw that drove it past that point ?

He also told me that when he gets a machine in where this has happened, he
phones MS, and they give him a new registration code or some such, which
allows the OS to be reloaded with the new configuration. Might not be
anything to do with it, or I might not have it quite right, but just a
thought ??

Arfa
 
J

Jeff Liebermann

Jamie said:
This morning my friend said he bought another 1 128 meg stick
to replace the 2 64 meg sticks he had in there.
It worked fine, recently he decided add another 128 meg stick
since now he has a free socket which was the reason for doing this.
When he did , Windows XP fail to boot all the way. It would restart
on the boot and get to the same place and reboot again..
so, he removed extra 128 stick. same problem. then put back in the
original 2 64 meg sticks, same problem.
He stated as it was booting when adding the second 128 meg stick.
the bios did display that he had a total of 256 megs which indicated
everything worked and passes the memory test.

Question:
Did Windows XP get screwed up from some error of his or is
it possible it detect a machine difference and is now rejecting his
attempts to load? or is this some kind of caching issue that can
be cleared up!
P.S.
He stated that it won't boot all the way in safe mode either.
He does have another HD with Windows 2000 which he popped in
and that worked fine with all the memory in it.
Click to expand...

I have no idea what happened. However, I have a guess that booting
with the two 128MB SODRAM boards caused Windoze to crash and possibly
scrambling the data on the drive. Sometimes Windoze can recover,
sometimes not. If you can get it to boot to the inital boot screen
(hit F8 during bootup), try "restore to last successful boot" or
possibly "safe mode". If nothing works, boot the Windoze XP CDROM,
select "install" and then "repair". That has saved my posterior a few
times. If XP Home, also see:
<http://www.windowsxphome.windowsreinstall.com/installxpcdrepair/part1.htm>

However, first do some RAM testing. Go unto:
<http://www.memtest.org>
or
<http://www.memtest86.com>
and create a bootable floppy or cdrom. If paranoid, remove the hard
disk from the laptop before running. Boot one of these memory tester
and convince yourself that the RAM is working. Any error are
considered a failure. I run it several times, usually overnight, to
be sure. Self-heating makes a big difference.

Also, if your friend's laptop is a Gateway 2900 series, or older Vaio,
overheated RAM and extreme sensitivity to the brand and type of RAM
are common.
 
R

Ron(UK)

Arfa said:
Jamie
A mate of mine who fixes these things for a living, told me that anything XP
and later, takes a 'snapshot' of the system that it's installed on, and
allocates some laid-down points value to each piece of hardware in there,
and this then 'defines' the machine that the OS is loaded on. Whenever any
hardware changes are made, this definition is re-evaluated, and the points
value alters. This is tolerated by Windows up until a certain amount,
whereupon it finally decides that this is no longer the machine that it was
originally installed on, and refuses to run any more. Supposed to be a
pretty foolproof way of stopping pirating of Windows, I think. Could it be
that your friend had made enough hardware changes since the original Windows
installation, that he was very near the point where it was going to reject
its 'host' as being a different machine, and the changing of the memory
configuaration was the last straw that drove it past that point ?
Click to expand...

That's correct, only last week it happened on my machine when, whilst
having some network problem I deleted the drivers for the network card
expecting Windoze to reinstall them on reboot. However what happened was
that although the machine rebooted, a requester came up telling me that
the computers hardware configuration had changed and the computer needed
reauthorising which normally takes place by clicking on the screen,
selecting authorise by phone which brings up a 50 digit (I think) code
and a phone number. The whole process is automatic, you just follow the
prerecorded instructions and bob`s yer uncle.

He also told me that when he gets a machine in where this has happened, he
phones MS, and they give him a new registration code or some such, which
allows the OS to be reloaded with the new configuration. Might not be
anything to do with it, or I might not have it quite right, but just a
thought ??
Click to expand...

Seeing as the machine refuses to reboot, I don't think that`s the
answer. I do have a memory stick that when fitted into any Windoze XP
computer, causes that computer to fail to boot and shows something like
"NDIS is Missing" on screen. refitting known good memory cures the
problem. Maybe the OP`s problem is something along those lines

If it`s getting past the Windows welcome screen, it might be some device
driver that`s failing to load, but a boot into Safe Mode should work.
Sounds like a WinXP repair job is on the cards

Ron(UK)
 
S

Smitty Two

Ron(UK) said:
erm... It means all will be well.

The phrase has an interesting origin should you care to look it up.

Ron(UK)
Click to expand...

I deduced its meaning from the context, and hoped you'd 'splain it's
origin to save me the bother.
 
A

Arfa Daily

Smitty Two said:
I deduced its meaning from the context, and hoped you'd 'splain it's
origin to save me the bother.
Click to expand...


It quite often gets extended to "Bob's yer (your) uncle, Fanny's yer aunt"
as well, though without looking it up, I'm not sure why ...

Arfa
 
S

Smitty Two

Smitty Two said:
I deduced its meaning from the context, and hoped you'd 'splain it's
origin to save me the bother.
Click to expand...

never mind, got it.
 
R

Ron(UK)

hooch said:
Now how about an explanation for "how's your father"?
Click to expand...

slang for 'a bit of the other' I dont know the true origin of that one,
but it sure as hell ain't the 'internet' version


watch out for the usenet cops!

Ron(UK)
 
M

Meat Plow

This morning my friend said he bought another 1 128 meg stick
to replace the 2 64 meg sticks he had in there.
It worked fine, recently he decided add another 128 meg stick
since now he has a free socket which was the reason for doing this.
When he did , Windows XP fail to boot all the way. It would restart
on the boot and get to the same place and reboot again..
so, he removed extra 128 stick. same problem. then put back in the
original 2 64 meg sticks, same problem.
He stated as it was booting when adding the second 128 meg stick.
the bios did display that he had a total of 256 megs which indicated
everything worked and passes the memory test.

Question:
Did Windows XP get screwed up from some error of his or is
it possible it detect a machine difference and is now rejecting his
attempts to load? or is this some kind of caching issue that can
be cleared up!
P.S.
He stated that it won't boot all the way in safe mode either.
He does have another HD with Windows 2000 which he popped in
and that worked fine with all the memory in it.

Any takers?
Click to expand...

Corrupted registry due to bad memory. Just because the memory passes the
POST does not mean it's good.
 
C

Chuck

This morning my friend said he bought another 1 128 meg stick
to replace the 2 64 meg sticks he had in there.
It worked fine, recently he decided add another 128 meg stick
since now he has a free socket which was the reason for doing this.
When he did , Windows XP fail to boot all the way. It would restart
on the boot and get to the same place and reboot again..
so, he removed extra 128 stick. same problem. then put back in the
original 2 64 meg sticks, same problem.
He stated as it was booting when adding the second 128 meg stick.
the bios did display that he had a total of 256 megs which indicated
everything worked and passes the memory test.

Question:
Did Windows XP get screwed up from some error of his or is
it possible it detect a machine difference and is now rejecting his
attempts to load? or is this some kind of caching issue that can
be cleared up!
P.S.
He stated that it won't boot all the way in safe mode either.
He does have another HD with Windows 2000 which he popped in
and that worked fine with all the memory in it.

Any takers?
Click to expand...


I had a compaq desktop computer do this when I installed two sticks of
PNY 512 m ram. After booting a few times with the original ram, XP
began to load correctly. I took out the old stick and put in 1 stick
of the PNY ram and the system booted. I then put in the second stick
and it booted correctly with both sticks. This happened about 6 months
ago and the system has worked fine since the install. Chuck
 
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