The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

That's now the least of my worries...

I tried hooking it up to his HDTV finally today, and running at 1080P(Max resolution), didn't look right. I'm thinking that the visual aspect is a problem with his tv. It seems to crop out some of the windows desktop. I hooked it up to my 24" monitor today(Same exact resolution), and it looks exactly as it should. But now, the system froze, and upon trying to reboot, it tells me the OS is missing!
Guys, it's official. My luck has hit rock bottom. Excuse me while I go off myself...

 

I've seen this bug with several HDTVs. They are capable of displaying properly, but some tweaking needs to be to the TV or the PC.

Sounds like possibly another bad drive. Sometimes a drive will hold data just fine, but has problems supporting an OS. Try installing the OS to a different drive and see if it happens again.

I don't think we need measures that drastic

Oh well. Give it a break, take some time to read up, and try again.

 

Actually no, underscanning happens by default when HDMI screens are hooked up to PCs. All you need to do to solve it is set overscan in your graphics control panel. I believe it is a legacy of CRT TVs that overscanned the image beyond the visible area. This affected console games in the past. If you played Fable 2 on a CRT TV the subtitles appeared mostly off the screen in the overscan section so you couldn't read them!
As for the missing OS, unlucky. Just hope it's a bad S-ATA cable!

 

I'm gonna install windows 7 this time. Windows XP is outdated to say the least. I had the two running side by side for a time. Guess which one had bugs first! XP!!!

Windows 7 is a godsend. It's abilities are nothing short of extraordinary. I suppose it could be the ram too. Faulty Ram can cause some VERY weird issues. Trust me LOL! I suppose I am leaning toward the HDD though. It's been around a little while, and done some sitting. HDD's don't like to sit Its the 5000AAKB if you're wondering. I was planning on going sata anyway. Perhaps now is the time...

 

Again, cable first before drive, though if it's IDE the cable is likely to be fine.

 

Well...it is a round cable LOL! Never had a problem with IDE ribbon cable. Perhaps something is going on there. I simply wanted to free up some air space

Thanks for the tidbit on overscan. That's sounds extremely promising I'll test that out tomorrow. I have the HTPC here, but the TV its connecting to is 3 miles away. The only test subject I have here is a 50" plasma but it's only 720p...
A genuine thank you sam. I really do appreciate your help.

 

Don't worry, nothing that drastic LOL! I'm simply having one of those days.

The way my luck is going, it wouldn't surprise me to be a bad drive. I'll hope its the Round cable though.

Unfortunately, the TV is not giving me settings that will help me. It's all on the PC. I think sam may be correct on the overscan. If not, I'll be at a loss LOL!

 

Looks like the Harddrive quit. I replaced the round cable with a standard IDE ribbon cable. The error about OS missing disappeared, but the OS would not boot. It froze on a black screen.

Rock bottom...

This is why when I'm at work, the utmost care goes into my work ethics. If I worked for a company like Western digital, or Seagate, I couldn't do a bad job if my life depended on it. And yet, If I were to sit in an interview with either, they would see me as nervous, unpredictable, and unstable. Too bad, I could be the best employee just about anywhere. That's no joke...

I suppose I could try running the old PSU. That's another change that I made to the system. That should be highly unlikely though. Unless my luck is REALLY BAD!

 

Oman7,
More than likely something in the boot sector was damaged when it failed to find the OS. You will also get that error if you had installed Win 7 on that drive before. I had to wipe mine with Killdisk, otherwise I got the same error message as you got! Part of the reason it was removed from my computer.

I don't know about problems with XP, but aside from Updates that I allowed and were mistakes on my part, I've never had a real problem with XP. I think the last one was the AMD Bug with Service Pack 3. I'm also a big fan of System Restore. The first sign of trouble, I back it up a day or two and run my AV, MalwareBytes and a couple of other Registry cleaners. A little "overkill"? Perhaps, but I've only found one virus I couldn't recover from, and that was on a customer's computer. She was locked out of her own computer with her own password. Desktop with no Icons, Taskbar, Keyboard, no nothing. You could move the mouse pointer, that was the total extent of it's capabilities. I had to wipe the partition in order to get rid of it completely. If you didn't, much like Win 7, the stored settings in the boot sector took you right back to no Icons, etc. With XP you can wipe about 5% of the Partition, and it will work, but with Win 7, it makes you wipe the entire partition to be able to do anything but a repair.

There's no advantage for me to use Win 7 at all, and to have to put up with having to google every time I can't find something, is totally frustrating. The Help Index is for sh!t, because it only works when you know what to look for. Since I have neither the time left or the desire to learn a whole new way of doing things, I'll stick with XP-Pro, thank you!

Same way with Oxi and Oxi-II. I haven't touched it since April of 08, when SP3 blew it up. Since then the HDD has been moved to Oxi-II, with a different CPU and Motherboard, and is still running on the same install that was put on it in April of 08. That was the last unrecoverable problem we had with it. As far as I'm concerned, XP has been damn near bullet-proof, so far!

Between a Firewall/Router and the AV, very little ever get's in. MalwareBytes, Tuneup Utilities and Secure Systems, One Click Fixer has taken care of any problems we've had, so far. Like I said, I'll stick with XP-Pro!

Russ

 

Aha thanks for the info. Not really having had one to use myself, you can see where I might not know about overscan and underscan...

Fable 2 never seemed to have that problem for me. Though I suppose my TV isn't your average CRT

My only PC NOT using XP is my gaming rig, and that's only because Win 7 works better for Crossfire

Windows XP may be outdated, but it is far from the grave yet. And it won't be going anywhere any time soon. I, for one, love XP especially now that it has fully matured and 99.9% of the bugs are worked out. It has always been steadfast and stable for me, and holds a close place in my heart right next to the Athlon 64

But yeah that's just me. I'm heavily nostalgic about my computers. Somewhere in my mind is an X800GTO cranking out Far Cry for the first time

Actually, certain round cables seem to have a failure rate. I used two one-after-another that gave me loads of issues with my DVD-RW. Had problems getting it to open properly, and sometimes game installs(namely Orange Box) would take ages to do. Finally got my hands on a set of XFX round cables from a burnt up 680i board and have never had a problem since

Haha you're stubborn like my dad. "Nope don't wanna learn new things I wanna do it the old way."

This I can agree with though. Windows XP drove Vista back into the ground for a damn good reason: Because it simply works and Vista still doesn't. Funniest thing ever when I heard about the new cancellation dates for Vista support. They literally abandoned it because response was so negative. LOL

I'll argue a bit for 7 though in that it's just XP rearranged and with some new features. The performance is just fine and I haven't had issues finding anything after a bit of searching. I swear my whole first week using it was just delving into the folders and sub-menus, finding out how they changed everything. IMO they made it simpler without dumbing it down. With Vista, I felt like my intelligence was being insulted. "Ooh that's pretty. Maybe I won't notice the rampant bugs and compatibility issues. A durrrrrrr"

 

Estuansis,
I still have fond memories turning my Sapphire X800GTO, into an X850GT by enabling all the pipelines. Overclocked pretty good too, as I remember!

Russ

 

I found out my X800GTO was based on the X850 die. I was able to fully unlock the extra quad and overclock it to X850XT PE specs(vs an X800XL with stock clocks). And because the unlock used a BIOS flash, it detected as an X850 as well. I benched it next to my X850XT and it performed almost exactly the same. They were the same exact card if not for the different coolers. In fact, my only issue was cooling, and the card eventually burnt up. Good run while it lasted though

That X800GTO was my first proper video card as well. Fond memories

 

Omega: You do realise there's a lot more to faulty products than ignorant workers right?
Russ: I imagine what you have to wipe to get rid of a virus varies on a per-virus basis, not per-OS. Also consider that over 90% of viruses will only work with 32-bit OSes, so viruses are much less an issue with XP/Vista/Win7 64-bit anyway.
I intend to make one of my PCs XP for compatibility, but other than that, they will all be either Win7 or WinServer 2008R2.
Jeff: As for Fable 2, I remember you saying your CRT is HD. This may not have been an issue for that reason. SD seemed to be the biggest problem.
I disagree quite strongly with the comments about Win7, it's suggested that Vista was a confusing new OS with a load of changes people disliked, yet Win7 is more like XP.
This doesn't really make much sense. Vista introduced a lot of new menus that were different to the previous OS (To those who criticised this, remember that the menus in XP are also different to those from 98) but preserved quite a few of the old submenus.
Windows 7 removed the rest of the menus that were in common, and ultimately, is a poorer interface than Vista, as it missing several things Vista still had. In Vista you were able to use the 95/98 style Start Menu, but not Win7. In Vista you were able to use the classic display properties tab, in Win7 no longer.
Yet despite this, if you bother to learn where things are, there is no reason to be averse to Win7 over XP really. The memory use of Win7 x64 is around double that of XP, versus 3.5-4x with Vista x64, but RAM is pretty standard at 3-4GB these days for a system with any reasonable amount of power. Once you become used to Win7, you almost forget about the little bits it's missing.

As a gamer, Win7 is essential for me. XP is limited to 2 GPUs and supports neither DirectX10 (properly) or DirectX11. Last week, I actually bought it! :O That's two legitimate MS OSes I own... granted the first was free

As for the X800GTO, it was a bit of an odd one, the X800'what we found in the store room'edition. As far as I recall, some of them were X850 based, others X800 based, and overclocking results were quite variable as a result.

 

Yes some are based on the X800XL, and at stock clocks they are an X800XL with only 12 pixel pipes. Unlocking the extra 4 to make it a full XL model was about all you could do.

But some of them were based directly on the X850XT. These ones not only unlocked, but were able to OC to X850XT specs, perfectly stable, because they were made to run those clocks. Obviously, though, an aftermarket cooler is recommended because the X800GTO only has a single slot cooler vs the X850's dual slot.

 

The X800GTO came with a range of aftermarket coolers I believe, some good, some not so good. Most were of traditionalised cooler design, meaning they offered substantially better cooling than graphics-based coolers.

What do I mean by this?
Graphics-based 2-slot:

Graphics-based 1-slot:

Traditionalised:


However, googling around I can't find any traditionalised X800GTOs... Hmmmm...

 

Most of them came with the reference stock cooler ala Sapphire. It was the X800GT0-2 that came with "traditionalized" coolers.

The first one is an X850XT I think. Looks like mine.

 

Correct, the latter is an X800 standard reference (XT/Pro and also XL I believe) Makes me kind of sad to see how small these cards are considering they were flagship.

 

Note my edit...

The X800GTO2 is the one that used lots of aftermarket coolers. It was actually advertised in much the same way a Black Edition processor is. They were almost guaranteed to unlock, and a larger percentage of them were based on the X850.

 

wasn't the GTO2 a Sapphire only product?

 

Not entirely. There was a GeCube version as well for AGP.