windows lag start up

[MrNah]

Hey all, I recently had a power outage which shut everything off in a blink of an eye. Everything seemed fine as I had serge protectors installed however every time I start up my windows vista computer, when the green loading bar is working it stops and starting moving at a snails pace. Eventually after minutes it loads windows however things don't work like normal. Firstly my network doesn't register, and secondly I can't turn off my computer. I have a small solution for the time being and thats to start up with the safe mode menu but still load windows normally. For some reason this fixes everything as shown by me writing this thread. What do you think? pop in windows vista and try to repair it? Or is a format needed? or Is it some hardware. thanks for reading, MrNah.

 

[johnb35]

Usually after a power outage, some damage can result. First, you may want to do a diagnostic on the hard drive by downloading the hard drive makers disk diagnostic utility and run it. If that don't fix it, you may have to do a repair install of the OS.

 

[MrNah]

awesome thanks for the feed back, I'll try the manufacturer's diagnosis now

 

[MrNah]

Not the hard drive. Went through all of the Seatools and no errors where found. Tried the windows vista repair tool but that came up with nothing. Still having the problem. any other suggestions or should i save all my files and reformat? The computer could use one but if I don't have to then why bother.

 

[MrNah]

need help. Installed vista. All seemed great until I try to install the network card from the motherboard cd. As soon as I do that the computer freezes and i get the blue screen of death. I'm reinstalling windows vista again and am going to download the most updated driver from the asus webpage (m3a motherboard). Anything I should know and why would this be happening now? Just decided to crap out one day? doesn't make sense to me but what do I know.
Any help or feedback appreciated thanks,
MrNah.

 

[deanj20]

Have you tried going back to a restore point?

 

[MrNah]

Continues to freeze while installing atheros l1 driver installer. Is this a malfunctioned m/b? Like i said up top, I had a power outage. how can i be 100% sure its the mobo before I replace it? Anyone know of a beter serge protector mine is quite old.

 

[deanj20]

Remove all of the hardware from the computer except for the primary HDD and a keyboard and mouse. I'm assuming the NIC is onboard? Does Vista not install a default 10/100 Ethernet driver for this device? I would try buying a PCI NIC before buying another mobo. The onboard NIC crapped out on my Vaio a while back, but I replaced it w/ a PCI NIC card from Best Buy for $20 and it works great. Or you can get them for around $10 online...

I've never used a surge protector. I've never had a motherboard get fried (well, OK - maybe once, but I'm pretty sure the PSU was to blame for that mishap ). Just another money-making scare-tactic if you ask me... sort of like antivirus software...

But to each their own... :good:

 

[MrNah]

okey I can deal with a network card problem but I just went out and stole my friends windows 7 cd to see if it was vista.. and its not. It gets stuck at completing installation. Well not necessarily stuck, just slowed down like crazy. The blue screen I got gave me the warning that m device driver got stuck in an infinte loop. What causes this? it's not in the operating system because right now I dont have one. Whats the next step?

 

[deanj20]

warning that m device driver got stuck in an infinte loop.

Was it the device driver for the NIC? Or do you know? What happens when you reboot? Nothing else attached to the mobo right? (No USB/PCI/AGP/PCIe cards or devices, no extra HDDs or disk or optical drives right?)

What happens when you restart the machine? In safe mode? Have you tried going to Device Manager and disabling whatever hardware is throwing the error? Or can you even get that far?

If none of the above helps... hell, I dunno...

Since you've already tested the HDD, and if you've had nothing else attached to the mobo besides a PS/2 mouse and keyboard and a monitor, then I'm going to assume that the power outage fried your board. I've never seen this happen in fifteen years of repairing computers, but I have heard that it can happen.

If you want to cough up the cash, you might have someone look at it, or you can mail it to me and I'll look at it (fat chance huh? Just an offer - )

Just to clarify - everything was perfectly fine before the outage, correct? Not one single little error message ever, right? :good:

 

[Atrosity]

You need an Offline UPS, it is recommended that everyone has one. A surge protector can only do so much but it can't save your hardware. An Offline UPS will kick on when your power is cut and will shut down your machine so that no harm goes to your hardware.