Unfortunately I am the tech resource for not only my mother's computer but my in-laws 'puter as well. So I got called into my in-laws the other day and the weirdest thing is happening. They called me because their computer wouldn't boot up, or sometimes it would and then it would shut down after a few minutes.
After fighting with the thing just to get it started and jumping through various hoops I've discovered that the computer works fine as long as the cable modem isn't plugged in. The second I plug in the modem the monitor goes all wonky. So what the Hell would cause this? They've been using this set up for quite a while with no problems. Seems like most things started to go haywire when Ma in-law upgraded to IE 7 (gee it couldn't be a Microsoft software causing problems could it?) and also when she upgraded her AVG anit-virus program (or gee could it be the freeware causing the problems?). They did have both Norton and AV on the machine, but the problem persisted even after I un-installed both of those.
My guess is it's a conflict of some sort. But how do I find the conflict without the modem being plugged in?
Could this be some kind of electronic noise issue coming from the power cord for the modem or something?
What other things might cause this funky behavior?
If it is the *second* you powerup the cable modem, then I would assume a ground loop or something.
I would get a power strip, get everyting plugged in there and try again. If modem power plug is not keyed, and still have the problem, rotate that plug 180 degrees and try again. Still have the problem, drive over and swap or rent a new cable modem from your ISP.
I'm writing mainly to clarify some ambiguities for the benefit of all. A cable modem has 2 plugs to plugin: power & ethernet. Which? You probably mean power, so are you unplugging the low-voltage at the CM or the 120v plug.
You say the monitor goes all wonky. :) Could you be a bit more descriptive?
Do you know how far the system was getting when it wouldn't boot up? Did it POST? I suppose you weren't there at that time, but ask them what they had seen on the monitor if anything.
The standard question. What, if anything. has changed? Hardware or software or electrical cords and plugs?
Go into Control Panel - Power Options (that's the name in my Win2K) and disable hibernate support. If it had been enabled, then reboot and try again.
I'm also confused about some of the things you're saying, and some clarification would be helpful. It does *seem* that you have an electrical problem, not a computer problem, but that could just be because of the ambiguity in what you're saying.
If it's not an electrical problem, and when you say "plug the modem in" you're actually talking about connecting the Ethernet cable to the network interface card, then you may have a bad NIC. If you're using a USB connection from the modem to the computer, and things fail when you plug in the USB cable, then get a real NIC. USB *can* be used for networking, but it's nowhere near as efficient or reliable than using a real Ethernet NIC, and should only be used if a NIC cannot be used.
Another possibility, but a long shot, could be bad memory chip, and the problem is in the area used by the NIC or USB. But again, this is assuming that you have a computer problem, and not an electrical problem.
Yes, by plugging in I mean powering up. The cable modem is connected via ethernet, not USB.
As for how far the computer getson start up, it's usually starting Windows when it shuts off. If you think of the screen that comes up showing "Windows XP" with the little status bar underneath that repeatedly goes from left to right until the desktop appears it pretty consistently completes the "left to right" sequence 7 times and then shuts down (my father in law counted them). I tried starting in safe mode but got the same result.
By "wonky" I mean the picture on the monitor gets wavy and distorted (colors out of phase). It looks like interference, you know like in the old days when you're TV wasn't tuned in properly. I too thought it was electrical, and I'm still open to that. It just seems to weird to start happening all of a sudden,when as far as I know, nothing's changed in the way the equipments is set up. I do wonder about the house heat causing something, I may have to grill pop-in-law to see if anything's changed along those lines.
Also that fact that it stops at the same point of start up almost every time makes me think it's happening when Windows loads a driver or allocates resources for the modem. On the other hand every once in a while you get through to the desk top and the icons load up, everything looks good and then bam! it turns off. So I'm getting some conflicting results. I tried booting off the XP disk, thinking that the monitor driver file was corrupted somehow, but again it would shut down while starting Windows.
I know enough to be dangerous, plus a little more as I sell software for a living, but I'm pretty stumped. I will bring my modem over tomorrow and see what happens. I may also lug a monitor over there just to check everything-the monitor is a Dell made in 99. I'm also bringing my laptop,so I can get info from the net (you guys) while I'm fighting it. The modem does work fine on a laptop, so it's not completely screwed. I'm guessing that possibly somehow the anti-virus program or IE upgrade changed the resource allocation and now the modem and monitor are conflicting. I have no idea why those programs would do that, but I do know Microsoft seems to like to mess with as much of the system as they can when they upgrade their stuff (especially IE). It may have something to do with increased security. I haven't seen anything like this anywhere though.
Also I had them do a system restore to before the upgrades but that didn't help. I'll likely do that myself first thing tomorrow, pushing it back until last week (there's nothing important on their computer from that time period). I'll probably spend most of my turkey day in the computer room, but hey, it gets me away from watching the Lions game.
Sort of. It's been accumulating dust all along and might have hit a critical threshold. I say that because you haven't mentioned opening up the box and blowing it out. You've mentioned Dell, so I suppose it has motherboard graphics, but if it has an actual video card with its own cpu & fan, that could be clogged up.
That would add to the problem per above.
When restarting and as you would hit F8 to get the menu to go into Safe Mode, enable Boot Logging instead, which I think will show the point of failure.
Understand that you will not be able to use your modem for the internet as its MAC Address is registered elsewhere. Its only help will be as an electrical connection and I personally doubt that you have any problems in that regard.
If that's the case, then it's obviously not screwed at all.
I tend to go with the power / ground loop issue. Or a bad Ethernet port on the computer.
To try and isolate power, I'd put a switch in between the modem and computer. (Or get a router. They SHOULD have one but that's another story.) With modem off but router and/or switch on see what happens. Now turn on modem. If "wonky" then it's in the modem. If not then the router/switch is isolating the issue.
Assuming power I'd check for a bad ground at the cable entrance to the house. Also unplug EVERYTHING else you have from your cable service. Try another power strip and make sure the computer and modem are on the same power strip.
It could also be a blown modem or bad power brick (if one) for the modem.
If not in their house / unit it could be something being done by a neighbor.
If the problem happens with just the router/switch turned on, very likely your computer has a problem with it's Ethernet port.
It seems to have beeen a bad NIC port on the MB. Put in an old NIC that I had laying around, disabled the port on the MB and everything's good to go. This should continue to work right? Should I be concerned about the rest of the MB going or is usually an isolated thing. MB's about 3 years old.
Thanks to every> rred snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote:
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