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Location: NJ | I just can't win.
I am trying to put together a machine for recording.
the MB I have is a P3 850 mhz it worked fine until I disabled it a year or 2 ago.
loaded a new hitachi 160g HD
loaded win xp pro
now I get a mircocode error
and when it finally boots it says that win bat. dll or something like that file is missing.
I reinstalled winxp and still get the error
any suggestions?
and buy a mac is not an option or suggestion |
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Location: 6 String Ranch | hit the side of the box and try again. used to work on the TV. |
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Location: south east Michigan | Take it to a local 'puter fix-it shop, tell them what you are using it for and let the pimply face kid wipe the hard drive clean install your programs. If he looks at you though his thick glasses with tape in the middle and suggests you upgrade your RAM or ROM or RAP or whatever, do it.
Sometimes it's just not worth expending our ever decreasing life force over. |
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Location: Tychy, Poland | hard to say. have you formatted C: drive before reinstall? |
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Location: Sydney, Australia | Originally posted by alpep:
and buy a mac is not an option or suggestion Damn! That blows my suggestion out of the water.  |
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Location: NJ | Originally posted by LBJ:
hard to say. have you formatted C: drive before reinstall? new drive formatted it before I even put in windows.
not worth taking this beast to anyone for an install, I have done this a hundred times at least with little problems, this time of course when I need the damn thing to run it won't |
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Location: south east Michigan | I have done this a hundred times All the more reason to realize that something is very different THIS particular time. |
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Location: NJ | Have you unplugged the computer and plugged it back in??
(evidently, that works in India . . .) |
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Location: Latitude 39.56819, Longitude -105.080066 | Total discharge of electricity....works 30% of the time.
Al, before you go to bed tonight tell it to do a deep format. This will take hours but you will be asleep.
Tomorrow take a deep breath and reinstall. |
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Location: NJ | stephen
can't even get into windows and it will no longer boot from the hitachi disk
maybe I have a bad cd drive |
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Location: big island | probably need to do a BIOS update from the MB's manufacturer. |
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Location: Capital District, NY, USA Minor Outlying Islands | Sounds like either the hard and/or cd drive died.
My hard drive was sick once, not dead, just crippled. I replaced her and have been happy ever since. And this is on a computer that's now 8 years old. A dinosaur in computer years. |
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Location: Capital District, NY, USA Minor Outlying Islands | I know buying a new one is out of the question, but I believe you can buy a Dell mini tower for less than $500. And you don't need to get any of the other stuff, just the computer. sometimes it's best to just bite the bullet. |
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Location: NJ | bios recognizes the CD and the HD drives but when it says press C to boot from the CD drive it does Nothing.
I will swap out drives and see what happens. or just find another MB |
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Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | Dear Al,
I sent the wrong power supply. |
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Location: Colorado Rocky Mountains | Stick to playing live and leave the recording equipment to the engineers. |
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Location: NJ | Originally posted by ProfessorBB:
Stick to playing live and leave the recording equipment to the engineers. problem is no body cares if I play live or not |
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Location: Phoenix AZ | So Michael Dell and Bill Gates walk in to a bar and they see Steve Jobs with a parrot on his shoulder ...
Dave |
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| and the parrot says to Gates and Dell....
Byte this! |
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Location: Phoenix AZ | OH! That's good !!! |
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Location: Latitude 39.56819, Longitude -105.080066 | Al, if it turns out you need a drive I have several lying around here in the 150-300 gig range. |
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Location: Jet City | I'm trying really hard not to say it Al.... I really am. |
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Location: closely held secret | Take the hard drive back and get a different one. Chances are good it's defective. This has been happening since chinese components became so widespread, manufacturers discover whole batches get out with bad components and don't do anything about it until people start complaining. I bought 5 500g drives for my machine at work and 4 out of 5 were defective... |
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Location: Sunshine State, Australia | Originally posted by Damon67:
I'm trying really hard not to say it Al.... I really am. There are many here that share the sentiment and anguish Damon.  |
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Location: Phoenix AZ | Originally posted by alpep:
any suggestions?
and buy a mac is not an option or suggestion Rent, borrow, or steal a Mac.
dave |
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Location: NJ | sure dave and tell me how to mount the PCI card in it??????????????? |
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Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | It's time to walk upright, dude. |
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| I can't believe I'm agreeing with jeff and dave at the same time.
I'm having to do a reinstall of everything on my daughter's laptop and it's like being back in the 19th century.
Bite the bullet al, then you can forget all this crap. Forever. Step out into the light. |
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Location: NJ | fine tell me how to install a PCI card into the mac and I will go out and buy one NOW |
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Location: Marlton, NJ | Al - I have a load of parts, cables and stuff - let me know if you're looking for anything.
MIke
p.s. - that's probably an subliminal way of telling us both to go get macs.
BTW - it's not all roses and sunshine in the MAC camp - my daughter has a macbook and has to bring it to apple to have the battery changed and to replace the cd/dvd drive - things I could have accomplished in no time. |
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Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | Originally posted by alpep:
fine tell me how to install a PCI card into the mac and I will go out and buy one NOW What are you plugging-in? |
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Location: Phoenix AZ | Um, this article talks about installing PCI cards in a Mac.
http://www.macease.com/pci_cards.html
Don't worry Al, you'll get used to the mighty-mouse, Finder and Safari pretty quickly...
Dave
Al, of course I was just being a smart arse.
You've got money invested in your current hardware and "within reason" you should do what you can to make it work. Once you cross the line, then there's other options. The line exists at a different place for each person and I've already crossed mine. 'nuff said.
I'm no computer jockey, but I think you're trying to install your OS on a new drive and need the ability to install the interface card for your yamaha mixer, right? Do you have other boxes you can try the HD in? Do you have another drive you can wipe and try it? You might want to invest minimal money and have a shop wipe it and load the OS. I bet the problem is simple and obvious, just not obvious to any of us.
Now IF that doesn't work ....
Dave |
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Location: Marlton, NJ | Al - I've had a couple of problems over the years that we're almost impossible to figure out - both times, it came down to a faulty memory chip. If you have more than one memory stick in there, try them separately to see if that fixes the problem. |
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Location: Phoenix AZ | Good suggestion. Actually my work PC had problems recently that to my untrained eye were video card related. The IT camel jockeys fixed it by swapping memory. They couldn't explain why.
Dave |
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Location: Phoenix AZ | Good suggestion. Actually my work PC had problems recently that to my untrained eye were video card related. The IT camel jockeys fixed it by swapping memory. They couldn't explain why.
Dave |
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Location: Latitude 39.56819, Longitude -105.080066 | I am shocked at how many Mac-homos we have on this site. They crawl out from under their rocks as soon as a PC person says they have a problem.....like Macs are error free....HA!
Be strong Al...we got yer back! |
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Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | heh-heh-heh,
good one, Dave
good one, Dave |
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Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | Originally posted by stephent28:
I am shocked at how many Mac-homos we have on this site. They crawl out from under their rocks as soon as a PC person says they have a problem.....like Macs are error free....HA!
Be strong Al...we got yer back! Denial is a river in Africa... |
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Location: Latitude 39.56819, Longitude -105.080066 | I like how Apple has installed the "Mac insult" alert button in all their browsers so that users are instantly notified whenever someone negatively refers to a Mac......... |
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Location: Latitude 39.56819, Longitude -105.080066 | Unfortunately, it goes off constantly 24/7.... |
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Location: NJ | (ding!) |
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Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | quit it, Stephen... the alarm is beginning to pester me... |
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Location: NJ | (ding!ding!) |
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Location: Phoenix AZ | This isn't helping Al at all but ....
I'm convinced that Ovation is the "Mac" of the guitar world. Think about it. It's not overly popular, somewhat quirky in looks compared to the norm, does an outstanding job in most situations but not all, it's owners and fans are rabidly loyal and love to wax glowingly about it on internet forums. Am I wrong ???
Here's an interesting excercise. Take any thread on this forum that goes off on the Mac vs. PC tangent. Every place you see the word "apple" or "mac" replace it with "Ovation". It's actually really funny.
I'm not going to debate Mac v. PC, Ovation v. Martin, Ford v. Chevy, Vaginal vs. Anal, blah blah blah. They're all just different choices and personal preferences (shut up Cliff).
Dave |
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Location: NJ | ". . Here's an interesting excercise. Take any thread on this forum that goes off on the Mac vs. PC tangent. Every place you see the word "apple" or "mac" replace it with "Ovation". It's actually really funny . ."
Try it in the whole "Bang for the Buck" analogy . . . |
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Location: Phoenix AZ | Yeah, maybe applies there too. I don't know. I'm still an extreme Mac newbie, but I do know that in my PC existence the upfront cost of the windoze machine was almost insignificant compared to how much else I would have to invest over it's short lifetime.
Back to Al. He's got a tender stomach already, what the hell can we do to get his computer woes resolved before he doesn something drastic ...
Dave |
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Location: Boise, Idaho | Vaginal vs. anal? Only you would throw that one in among Ford vs. Chevy. |
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Location: Chehalis, Washington | Buy a new Dell tower for about $350, and forget the issue. It's not like shelling out 3K for a new Mac, and it'll get the job done okay. You could always upgrade a part or two as you have need as well.
I'll cross the Mac bridge some day...when I stop buying guitars. ;) |
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Location: Latitude 39.56819, Longitude -105.080066 | Geeeezzzzz, Mac users are a sensitive lot.
Nothing more we can do for Al until he gives us the latest update.
He is probably out making money while the rest of us are spinning our wheels posting on the forum! |
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Location: Tychy, Poland | no offence, but all this PC-bashing...
i wouldn't switch to mac even if i got payed to do it.
i haven't had a dangerous virus on my pc in my life.
on my old PC XP Professional works just fine for over 5 years without reinstallation. i also have FreeBSD installed on my pc's. |
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Location: SoCal | Sometimes I'm surprised that I don't have a Mac. I do like guitars with roundbacks, and cars with rotary engines, so I'm definitely out of the mainstream....... |
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Location: Phoenix AZ | Paul,
You're a middle aged white guy with 2 kids, a wife, a couple of dogs and a mortage. I'd call that mainstream.
And btw, I think your digital audio recordings using your current PC setup sound just fine.
Dave |
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Location: NJ | update
swapped out the HD and the CD and still get nothing.
I get the microcode error and it asked for a boot disk I have it set for the CD but it won't boot.
looks like this MB is hosed.
or I am open for suggestions. |
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Location: Jet City | Dave,
You crossed over quick.
Ex-PC guys are like ex-smokers, and I happen to be both.
FWIW my 17in Powerbook is starting to have some issues with video and sound. I've had it for 4 years though, and it's time to upgrade to the new Intel Mac anyway.
The Dell I use for work is crapping out too after the same amount of time.
Really when it all comes down to it, it's not a Ford vs. Chevy (or anal vs vaginal... Mark, are you OK?) debate....
Really it's Porsche vs Yugo. |
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Location: Jet City | Al, try swapping out memory before you scrap it. Worked for Dave's PC. That would be the last thing I could suggest before scrapping that main board (AKA "Logic Board" in the Mac world). |
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Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | I'm coming into this late in the game, but..
Al.. did you install all of the MB drivers from the MB disk. Although WinXP Pro may be operating, there should be a motherboard utilities disk that needs to be run (in all machines I have even built) to install all the "real" drivers it needs.
Probably just best to go to the MB manufacturer page and get the latest XP drivers for everything. Bios, USB, PCI, video, audio, network, etc. There is usually an "all-in-one" package you can download and do it one shot. |
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OT computer question