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A laptop that hates windows???

Entil'ZhaEntil'Zha I see famous people
in Zocalo v2.0
Ok... please no "oh well run linux" replies... cause thats prolly what i'll end up doing in the end, HOWEVER...

I've got this laptop see.... it was a customer of ours, and it stopped working, and he didnt want to bother fixing it, so he sold it to me for $50, HP Pavilion xt512, P4, 1.8ghz, 512 megs of ram. dead 30 gig harddrive..

So i get a new harddrive for it.

Go to install Windows on the new drive.. windows starts to install, gets about 3 minutes into the install, and the laptop "shorts out" it shuts down, the power light on the power supply goes dark, i have to unplug it and wait a minute before plugging it back in, this happens with Xp Home, and XP Pro...

so i figured bad power supply, maybe something in the DVD drive shorting out when its spinning the CD to install, so i stick my copy of Mandriva One in there (a cd based Mandriva linux) assuming that if its a bad dvd drive, the live CD will casue it to short...... but it doesnt, Mandriva runs fine... so i think, oh, maybe its the harddrive controler, and its shorting when i install windows onto the harddrive, so i get out my Fedora Core 5 DVD.. and it installs to the hardrive, and has been running, without a problem, for the past 4 hours...

so WTF?!?! besides the fact that aparently this laptop just does not like windows.... any ideas? thoughts? comments?

Comments

  • PSI-KILLERPSI-KILLER Needs help
    The only time i had laptops shut down like that is a thermal issue where the fan was slowing down and failing which caused the lkaptop to shut down. Fedora may not have access to mb temp or something,, my guess in the dark
  • Entil'ZhaEntil'Zha I see famous people
    [QUOTE][i]Originally posted by PSI-KILLER [/i]
    [B]The only time i had laptops shut down like that is a thermal issue where the fan was slowing down and failing which caused the lkaptop to shut down. Fedora may not have access to mb temp or something,, my guess in the dark [/B][/QUOTE]

    and thats one of the things i thought at first, but its pretty consistant about shutting down 3 minutes into the windows install, so it can't even be monitoring temperature yet. and there is the fact that it "shorts" the power supply as well (not the one in the laptop, the external AC power adapter)

    Good call though, i though heat was an issue at first.

    really, i dont MIND running Fedora on it, i was hopign to be able to use it for some of my games when i'm not at home, but i suppose i could try crossoveroffice & wine.
  • Vorlons in my HeadVorlons in my Head The Vorlons told me to.
    I've seen similar problems but on PC's and several times over the years. Its almost always without fail caused by defective memory but it could be a defective mainboard too. Windows can get pretty hardware intensive even in the installation stage as it starts up drivers and services. Its very likely that what you installed is simply not accessing or at least not pushing the defective zone in the momory board/whatever as hard or even using it at all. If you have access to another compatible memory module you might want to replace it and retry if you have some time to kill.
  • Entil'ZhaEntil'Zha I see famous people
    [QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Vorlons in my Head [/i]
    [B]I've seen similar problems but on PC's and several times over the years. Its almost always without fail caused by defective memory but it could be a defective mainboard too. Windows can get pretty hardware intensive even in the installation stage as it starts up drivers and services. Its very likely that what you installed is simply not accessing or at least not pushing the defective zone in the momory board/whatever as hard or even using it at all. If you have access to another compatible memory module you might want to replace it and retry if you have some time to kill. [/B][/QUOTE]

    thanks for the advice, i'd thought of that as well, again though, the windows install wasn't at a point that it should be taxing the hardware at all, IIRC it hand't even started copying install files yet.
  • Entil'ZhaEntil'Zha I see famous people
    How bout this for a new wrinkle, Vista installs fine...

    but XP still causes it to reboot during install. 3 differnet copies of XP (home, pro and MCE)
  • Random ChaosRandom Chaos Actually Carefully-selected Order in disguise
    Could be bad memory. Interestingly we have 1 bad DIMM at work that crashes Windows systems but not Macs. The Dimm has 1 of the 5 standard read/write methods bad on it in one sector (checked using Memtest boot disk). Macs apparently don't use that 1 method that was bad.

    You might be experiencing similar issues where Linux treats memory differently than Windows, and thus you have bad memory that Linux doesn't have a problem with.

    --RC
  • Entil'ZhaEntil'Zha I see famous people
    [QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Random Chaos [/i]
    [B]Could be bad memory.

    You might be experiencing similar issues where Linux treats memory differently than Windows, and thus you have bad memory that Linux doesn't have a problem with.

    --RC [/B][/QUOTE]

    I'm going to try pulling the dimms and see what happens, but if it was bad memory, i'd expect Vista to chocke on it as well, i mean, Microsoft actually FIXING something in a new version of WindowS? unheardof!!!
  • Entil'ZhaEntil'Zha I see famous people
    [QUOTE][i]Originally posted by PSI-KILLER [/i]
    [B]The only time i had laptops shut down like that is a thermal issue where the fan was slowing down and failing which caused the lkaptop to shut down. Fedora may not have access to mb temp or something,, my guess in the dark [/B][/QUOTE]

    i do believe one of the fans (it has 3) has failed, but does windows monitor MB temp in setup? and i'd think if it was too hot for Xp, that Vista would definately choke, but vista loads up fine.
  • PJHPJH The Lovely Thing
    Ditto on defective memory suspicions.

    I had similar problem with my PC once too. It refused to install Windows 2000. It always stopped after a certain point. Everything else worked just fine except Win 2000 install.

    It took me a very long time to find out the cause, but in the end it turned out to be a bad memory module.

    It was quite strange really. No matter how much I stressed the computer, what programs or games I ran, or what software I installed, everything worked perfectly, except Win 2000 install. It just halted when trying to copy certain files.

    Since then I've used only the best quality memory and I haven't got any problems whatsoever anymore. No bluescreens, halts, nothing.

    My advice is, that if you want to have a well working and stable computer use only a high quality memory and never mix different brands, or type's of memory. That's the basic ground for a stable PC.

    - PJH
  • Entil'ZhaEntil'Zha I see famous people
    [QUOTE][i]Originally posted by PJH [/i]
    [B]Ditto on defective memory suspicions.

    I had similar problem with my PC once too. It refused to install Windows 2000. It always stopped after a certain point. Everything else worked just fine except Win 2000 install.

    It took me a very long time to find out the cause, but in the end it turned out to be a bad memory module.

    It was quite strange really. No matter how much I stressed the computer, what programs or games I ran, or what software I installed, everything worked perfectly, except Win 2000 install. It just halted when trying to copy certain files.

    Since then I've used only the best quality memory and I haven't got any problems whatsoever anymore. No bluescreens, halts, nothing.

    My advice is, that if you want to have a well working and stable computer use only a high quality memory and never mix different brands, or type's of memory. That's the basic ground for a stable PC.

    - Tai [/B][/QUOTE]

    For the most part i'd agree, but i've been mixing and matching memory for 20 Years, and as long as the speed is the same, brand seems to matter little.

    As for the laptop, after 2 days of going back and forth with HP tech support ("Keith" was happy to help) they finally decided that i needed to buy the Rescue CD's that came with the computer in the first place, so i ordered them, i figured for $25 bucks it was worth having. (basically, it boils down to getting a legal copy of XP for $25)

    When i got the CD's i went to install them, and even though i told them my model, and they told me which CD i needed, the CD boots up to "wrong version notebook" and drops me back to dos Aaargh.. took me about 4 hours to find out that you can boot to the CD, let it fail the notebook check and do a "set SKPMODELCHK=TRUE" and it will skip the model check... of course, if you skip the model check, their restore program requires a password to install... so i then had to search on how to find that, FINALLY, when i found out that the password shoudl be the model number that the installer expected in the first place.. i got it to install... and its been working like a champ ever since

    oh, and i did replace the memory, went out and picked up a gig of ram for it. now all i need to do is replace the battery, and i'll have a pretty decent laptop for around $200.

    Much better than the $1500 i was going to spend on a new dell, and it lets me delay at least another year before buying a new one.
  • PJHPJH The Lovely Thing
    Nice to hear you got it working. That's pretty good price for a laptop. :)

    About the memory.... sure you can mix them, but I'd make sure the specs are identical and that the modules are of good quality. But still I rather use the same brand and type to have the best possible performance and compatibility. That's the ideal situation afterall.

    - PJH
  • Entil'ZhaEntil'Zha I see famous people
    [QUOTE][i]Originally posted by PJH [/i]
    [B]Nice to hear you got it working. That's pretty good price for a laptop. :)

    About the memory.... sure you can mix them, but I'd make sure the specs are identical and that the modules are of good quality. But still I rather use the same brand and type to have the best possible performance and compatibility. That's the ideal situation afterall.

    - PJH [/B][/QUOTE]

    oh as would I, without a doubt. i've got a matching pair in there now, and with memory being fairly cheap, always upgrade in pairs.
  • Vorlons in my HeadVorlons in my Head The Vorlons told me to.
    [QUOTE][i]Originally posted by PJH [/i]
    [B]It was quite strange really. No matter how much I stressed the computer, what programs or games I ran, or what software I installed, everything worked perfectly, except Win 2000 install. It just halted when trying to copy certain files.


    - PJH [/B][/QUOTE]

    Just remember the very first thing windows does when it starts is to load the installation up basically install a very basic windows OS with drivers so it can access hardware and begin to install+configure. There's no anvanced memory management or error correction. Its concievable that once the installation is complete Windows can effectively recover from memory errors invisibly to the user so you wouldn't percieve it in 99% of the things you'd normally do with your computer.
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