F*** windows (But the Cricket was good)

[Brammers]

Ok my fellow members may know about the frustrations I am having.

Yesterday evening, I was zoning from Cycrow UG to the topside, as some pro-city scum shot our R&D Director. Bullets was suppose to fly, and the offending pro last thought on their mind mind was finding out what it feels like to have a Revenger drome put somewhere where the sun doesn't shine.

Instead Neocron froze while zoning, the hard drive goes nut, and the music stops playing, before going nuts as the PC has crashed.

Ok Reboot...Windows 2K stops loading, and freezes on the 2nd loading screen. Odd.

Boot into safe mode, all is well, although it did for some reason find some new hardware. Check the discs, and reboot.

This time... a new error. STOP 0x00000A5 your system is not ACPI compliant. Excuse me? It's been ACPI compliant for the last 5 bloddy years. No amount of tweaking the BIOS settings makes it going any futher. A scan on the internet sugguest using safe mode and changing the computer driver from ACPI to Standard PC.

That works, Windows boots agin, except it seems to detect all my hardware again, except the soundcard. The only soundcard it found was a bluetooth soundcard - thats normal, as it talks to my phone. But the though of me using my mobile phone like a yuppy to talk to the rest of Phoenix on vent while slashing mobs up...

Anyway, the soundcard would not budge, no matter how many times I told it to find the drivers reinstall. So I though, move it back into ACPI mode again? Nope that put us back to STOP 0x00000A5 your system is not ACPI again - please kiss Crahn's ass.

Back to safe mode, I put it into ACPI Uniprocessor mode. Big mistake. Windows 2k will not boot at all. Not even safe mode.

So ok, reinstall time. Grab the Windows 2k Boot CD, put it in, and a essential file is corrupted. The 2nd copy is nowhere to be seen, but I do have a Windows 2K image with SP4 slipsteamed on the file server for burning to CD.

Except the PC with the CD burner is the dead PC.

So ok, screwdriver out I swap the CD-Roms around and burn a new image. All looking good, I pop the CD in, it's booting...it's booting....ohnoz It's not.

"CDBOOT Cannot Boot from CD-Rom: Code 5"

And to add to insult, the other PC boots the CD fine. So ok, swap the CD-Rom drives back around. I get...

"CDBOOT Cannot Boot from CD-Rom: Code 5"

Argh! So some scouting on Google reveals things like bunch of newbs replying to simular problems on the lines of "Your motherboard needs flashing" Nope...bootable CD-Roms have worked before here, until one suggestion was the image was buggered.

Anyway after 3 reburns, it turns out the Nero had reset the sector count for the boot image from 4 to 0. Reburn, and finally it's booting.

I've just tried the repair option - Microsoft need to rename that optiont to "You have no hope" as it did nothing.

Looks like a reinstall time.

</rant off>

And now for some good news. England beat Australia in the Cricket by 2 runs. It was a cracking match to watch.

[[TgR]KILLER]

time for a new comp bram doing doy tunnels atm with ff not getting that much xp tho but got 2 slotties and 3 techparts anyway

[Tratos]

Doesnt sound fun at all sounds like when my harddrives were playing silly buggers the time before last i reformatted, oh it was great, not.

Hope your technical problems get sorted soon.

England For The Win

[sanityislost]

damn thats fucked, soz dude :/

SiL ..:..

[Brammers]

Ok after surgery it's alive again! Just patching the dam thing....full reinstall....Grrr

[Drikie]

Did you manage to get any of your important data off of the computer before having to reformat?

[[TgR]KILLER]

if hes smart like me he has most on other disks i got 2 real hd's and 4 partitions.. 1 windows 1 progs / games 1 music / random and 1 games / movies and random.

and have a copy of my docs on the last partion to.

[Brammers]

Did you manage to get any of your important data off of the computer before having to reformat?

Yeap my Neocron installation is safe on the D drive!

Like Killer, most of my documents and files are on other drives than C or on the network server (aka the Phoenix vent server). It's been like that ever since I've used NT4.

I don't think I moved my profile to the other drive in the last reinstall. (Which was only last December) So lost a few things, but nothing major.

[Trillian]

Didnt understand a single word you said bram, but im sorry your computer died. Mine did that THE DAY I got the internet back. Go figure.

[garyu69]

hehe, that sounds like I was when my PC died at least its up and runnning again

[Drikie]

I really need to get myself a switch for my room so that I can start backing shit up to my linux box and use that as a fileserver... Although I am thinking of building a mini-itx 1TB fileserver just for kicks and giggles (if only I had £500 or so lying around).

[Brammers]

Hmm....1TB...not sure if my ancient P233MMX can address that much hard disc space. Mine has 2 x 160 gigs discs in it, in a mirror configuration. It's already paid for itself, as one mirror died just before Christmas - and the last thing I want is the source code for the THN vanishing....

Anyway, my main PC aka Merlin is all patched up and alive again. Just all the apps I need to reinstall, like Office, .NET Studio, Eclipse and loads of other dev stuff.

Oh yeah, and the FEAR demo!

[Dr J Zoidberg]

Instead Neocron froze while zoning, the hard drive goes nuts, and the music stops playing, before going nuts as the PC has crashed.

Brammers, i have had this problem, not only while zoning, but with turning arround fast, over the quart-sector load lines. it annoys me greatly aswell.

I have a feeling that is someting to do with networking, as my http server and TS do not work on my desktop, I can see it on my laptop.

But the screen stays on. and the processor window on the front of my case still ticks at 70% and fluctuates.

The HDD light on my hotswap also flashes.

Yet... the network light on my PCI card. ceases to flash.. which must cause something on the motherboard to stop all other processes.

Next time it does it (if it does) check the network card, and tell me the results.

[booglebox]

One spammy question.

How the f*ck can Neocron f*ck up a computer to that extent?!