doveman

Thanks, I think that's how I installed the printer drivers but I don't think it worked for the scanner drivers (I guess as they're not strictly printers, although built-in to one). I recall selecting the port was confusing as well as there was no option for USB so I just selected LPT but I think that's normal (even though the drivers are for USB printers).

Well, before that, just remove the RAM and any card that you may have on it and try booting. It should beep.... jaclaz OK, I'll try that but I don't have any cards in it anyway and I'll have to cut the ziptied fan off the CPU heatsink to remove the RAM. I still strongly suspect the problem's in the corner where the buttons/header are (or some other part of the power-on circuitry, I'm not sure if that's all located in that corner) so I don't expect it to beep though.

OK, I've tested the PSU on my MSI board and that works fine. I've also tested with another power switch on the motherboard, which I buzzed out to confirm it's joining the two points on the back of the board, so the problem's obviously upstream from that. The onboard buttons don't seem to be connecting the two points, so either both buttons are faulty or there's a fault in that area of the board. Not looking forward to the next step, which is to strip my Gigabyte board out the case, remove the CPU heatsink and CPU and test this CPU and RAM to be sure it's the board that's faulty.

Thanks, I'll see if it made a dump when it crashed and if so, hopefully that tool will show the STOP ERROR.

Well, if you reinstall the stupid driver and it is actually the culprit, you will be again in the same situation.... jaclaz Yeah, I'd rather not mess up ANOTHER ControlSet, as at least I can use this one (2) in the meantime whilst I try and find out what went wrong with the other one (1).

All very well but then I can't boot into the faulty ControlSet and check the STOP ERROR message.

OK, I'll note the STOP ERROR next time I try it. Am I right about needing to edit the registry to change Default back to 1 and deleting the Failed line to boot into the faulty ControlSet again or is there a better/more correct way?

It's my Gigabyte http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3004# I've already got the onboard GPU disabled and have a 6850 card in there.

I've never seen Windows start after a BSOD error when booting! I'm using Win7 x64. I don't think I'll be using that (untested) tool. As I can boot in LKG I can probably just disable the dodgy driver from loading in ControlSet001 once I'm sure what to disable.

I think NET is only needed to open CCC and the lack of it wouldn't cause a BSOD on booting. As I mentioned, I can't boot in Safe Mode as that BSOD on booting as well. I think the problem (atipcie.sys) might be with the SB drivers rather than the video driver

I installed the latest ATI Catalyst 12.6 and SB drivers and now it BSOD on booting. In Safe Mode it shows the last thing to load before BSOD is atipcie.sys. I've managed to boot in Last Known Good configuration now but I guess I should try and fix the problems and boot into the previously working config. How do I even get back to that, as it seems if a Last Known Good boot is successful that becomes the default (now the registry shows Current=2, Default=2, Failed=1, LastKnownGood=3) so do I have to edit the registry to change Default back to 1 (and do I have to delete the Failed line or just the 1 part?) Anyway, before that I need to fix whatever is causing atipcie.sys to cause it to BSOD on boot if anyone knows why or how to fix it?

I was actually testing without any drives connected. I've just tested the PSU and that powers on fine. EDIT: Should mention that I did try powering it up by WOL yesterday (which I confirmed was working from standby a week or two ago) and that didn't work either, so it might not just be the on-board power button and header that's faulty. That just seems like the obvious candidate considering that the button stopped working a while ago.

Unlikely I think and I did test it that way just a few days ago but yeah I should double-check that, thanks.

I've had my Biostar TA790GXBE on the bench for a while but got round to ziptie-ing the fan to it yesterday and put it in the case but now it doesn't power up. When I switch the PSU on I see the board LEDs flicker on briefly, which is what they've always done so obviously power is getting to the board, in part at least. I've taken it back out of the case now and it still won't power on. The thing is, the board has power/reset buttons built onto it and the power one stopped working some time ago but as I could still power it with the switch attached to the front panel header block I wasn't too bothered. So perhaps there's a problem in that area that's spread to the header block as well now? Could it be a dry joint? I guess I could try and fix it myself if so, but if I'm lilkely to send it back for repair I can't mess with it myself. I bought it on 3 June 2010 though so I doubt it's still in warranty. It's a real pain because I was planning to send this PC to my brother for his birthday in 3-4 weeks. He's got the box for the motherboard, so if I have to send it for repair I'll have to get him to post that to me before I can send it off and then who knows how long it will be before I get it back. I thought I could buy another motherboard if it's possible to get one that's more or less the same (i.e. 790GX chipset) so that I won't have to reinstall Windows 7 x86 from scratch and then sell the repaired Biostar board when I get it back. If I'm going to do that I need to make sure that it has much the same features/connectors, etc although I guess I could switch to a DDR3 board and sell the DDR2 RAM. So if I can't fix it myself, any suggestions for a cheap (i.e <£50) replacement board that will be compatible enough not to require re-installing Win7?

Thanks, there's nothing wrong with a bit of spoon feeding from time to time. I'm far less likely to injure myself with a spoon than a fork anyway Now that you've given an example of how to use it, it makes a lot more sense to me. I still get confused about when the heads and sects should be 0 or 1 but with a bit of trial and error I managed to get the numbers to all add up So for the second parttition for the remaining space I ended up with: Type Boot bCyl bHead bSect eCyl eHead eSect Start Sector Num Sectors Size in bytes 0C 00 1,024 0 1 16,382 15 63 1,032,192 15,481,872 7,926,718,464 and if I've understood correctly, I can paste the data from the PT to MBR tab to the CF, starting at offset 000001B0h? Actually I see I shouldn't paste the first 11 bytes and I'm not changing the first partition, so just the data for the 2nd Partition Table entry.

I did have a look at your spreadsheet and it looks very clever but just makes my head spin I'm afraid I'm sure it's easy to create partitions with Tiny Hexer once you know what you're doing but I don't so I'm probably better off sticking with mkimg

I don't think that there is any particular issue with VDK under Windows 7 (excapt usaul UAC and stoopid driver signing) , but MKIMG/MBRBATCH (the "standard version I wrote) won't work anyway because they use a little .COM executable (and support for .COM files have been removed, if I get that right). You coud see if the "updated" version by Lancelot works (it should): http://reboot.pro/5000/ http://reboot.pro/5000/#entry45422 jaclaz Thanks, I was actually trying Lancelot's version but ran into that problem with VDK, even though UAC was disabled as well as Driver Signing (and I tried signing it with DSEO which shouldn't have been necessary but was worth a try!). I didn't get to go over today as the household is in quarantine with heavy colds but I was going to ask what I could try next, assuming that works. I'm fairly sure it will as it booted fine before, so the main thing I'll be checking for is whether the 16/63 geometry avoids windows locking up when copying files to the CF. What would probably be good to try first is to leave the small CHS partition as is and format the remainder with a 16/63 geometry as well and then I can check that writing to that is OK too, so if you could advise what commands to use with mkimg/dfsi to do this, that'd be great. I imagine I can just create the secondary partition with mkimg and write that to the latter part of the CF with dsfi \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE0 x x test.img if I use the right numbers for x but I don't have a clue what they should be My thinstation build is about 100MB so that will fit in the small partition but my Portable-XP is 800-1000MB so I'll need to put that on the larger partition. It might also be good to create an img for the entire CF in a 16/63 geometry and see if that works, so perhaps you could advise the right parameters to do that as well. That will give me a few things to test when I get over there in the week, which will be more efficient than having to wait until I report back to ask how to do those things and then wait until I get over there again to test them and I'll be able to tell you if they all work or if only some of them do.

Thanks, got that done so I'll let you know how it goes Stupid Win7 wouldn't let me run VDK though, even though I disabled Driver Signing AND signed vdk.sys with Driver Signature Enforcement Overrider (well I could install it but it wouldn't allow it to start) so I had to boot to my backup XP (even my Virtualbox XP wouldn't work for mkimg today!) which was a nuisance.

Don't want to nag you jaclaz but I'll be over there again tomorrow so if you have the time to advise before then that would be great.

I'm currently using the MSI 990FXA-GD80 system whilst I fit the other system in a case. I left LatencyMon running whilst MP was playing LiveTV for about 45minutes and the highest latency was 265us and the highest drivers netbt.sys 0.288, ntoskrnl.exe 0.122, tcpip.sys 0.09, ndis.sys 0.08 and ataport.sys shows 0. Since returning and using the browser this has changed a bit to netbt.sys 0.288, CLASSPNP.SYS 0.22, ndis.sys 0.20, ntoskrnl 0.122 tcpip.sys 0.112. RACtask isn't disabled on this system, so whilst that was definitely causing the freezes/continuity errors every hour, perhaps that was more a symptom of something more fundamental being wrong. Once I've got the other system in the case, I'll do the tests Kessu suggested (Safe Mode, TV card removed) and check the latency again. EDIT: Hmm, I left LatencyMon running (although the timer has reset and currently shows 02:43) and just had a look and it shows a warning and Highest reported DPC routine execution time as 23379296410126.7500 (netbt.sys). The drivers tabs only shows netbt.sys as 6196 DPC count, 0.288ms though so perhaps LatencyMon is a bit buggy. Actually, I've just checked and I'm using v3 and there's a v4.02 so I'd better upgrade!

Thanks for the tip, I'll take a look at that.

OK, I think I've got them all installed, even the Epson ones Two of the printers (Canon MP460 and MP470) have scanners so I want to install the drivers for those as well. They have an .inf for the scanner (MP470SC.INF) but I'm not sure where I should go to install this. I did try Control Panel - Add New Hardware but couldn't find a Have Disk button and after drilling down through a few levels it locked up anyway (either due to the funky XP Portable install or the dodgy old hardware no doubt) but if that's the right way I'll have another go.

The HTPC I've been doing the xperf traces on uses a Biostar TA790GXBE with AMD Sata Controller v1.2.1.331 (11/04/2012) and my other PC uses a MSI 990FXA-GD80 with the Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller v6.1.7601.17514 (21/06/2006)

OK, selecting the "Windows XP" entry just makes the PC reboot, no messages, whether just the CF was connected or the CF and HDD. EDIT: Sorry, forgot to provide the MBRfix output. I actually checked it after testing with MobaLive (Qemu) and that changed it from 0000 to something non-zero (can't remember exactly but it was something like D013049584). As we're not having much luck with it, woud you mind if we put the 4GB CF to one side for now and see if we can fix the problem with the 16GB CF, which at least boots but was causing XP (booted from the HDD) to lock up when copying files to the CF, which perhaps might be fixed by formatiing it with a 16/63 geometry? I'd like to be able to send it to my brother in about a month (to use in his VL400 which will be used as a RDP station to connect to the new PC I'm building him) and we can have another look at the 4GB CF after that if you've got some other ideas. To remind you of how the VL400 sees the 16GB CF: In the BIOS it shows as Secondary Master 15989MB (not IDE Removable as the 4GB CF does) Cylinders 16383 Heads 16 Sectors 63 CHS Format 8455MB LBA Format 15989MB Multi-Sector Transfers Disabled LBA Mode Enabled 32 Bit I/O Enabled Transfer Mode FPIO 4 / DMA 2 Ultra DMA Mode Mode 2 This booted directly to grub4dos 0.4.5b (27-03-2011) and geometry (hd0) showed: drive 0x80 (LBA): C/H/S=1024/255/63, sector count/size=31227840/512. Partion num:0, active, FAT, partition type 0x0C So if you could advise what parameters to use with mkimg to create a 16/63 img for it, I'll try that and see if it fixes the problem.

Well unfortunately that didn't work any better Machine used: the VL400 CF card used: the 4Gb one Partitioning scheme used: the one made with mkimg 264273408-16/63-06 Files in the device: NTLDR; BOOT.INI,, glrldr from grub4dos 0.4.4 - 2009-10-16 [boot loader] Timeout=5 Default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Image" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect c:\grldr="Grub4DOS" Description of what happens when booting when choosing the "Windows XP" entry (if it gets to the BOOT.INI choices): Forgot to try that, will go and do it now. Description of what happens when booting when choosing the "grub4dos" entry (if it gets to the BOOT.INI choices): Much the same as before I'm afraid hd0,0: FAT16 disk error hd0,1 - hd0,3: Invalid or null (fd0): invalid or null Cannot find grldr in all drives With the HDD connected, choosing the grub4dos entry it loads grldr (0.4.5c) and menu.lst from the HDD. I didn't do the root and geometry commands from here as I don't think you want the results from 0.4.5c (I could put 0.4.4 on the HDD, I'm just a bit nervous in case that screws up booting from the HDD as this machine isn't USB bootable, so then I'd have no way to fix it, other than moving the HDD to another PC!).