Windows XP - more efficient than any virus?

[Boncuk]

Hi All,

here is what I have experienced during the last two months:

First, my mainboard said "Good bye, cruel world", which caused me to purchase a new one.

After I had installed it Windows claimed "Due to hardware changes windows has to be registered again. This version will be valid for three days."

I did it using the internet and got a big surprise: The boot drive had been moved from HDD 'C' to HDD 'H', killing about 50% of the installed software. (no more entries in the "new" registry).

After reinstalling the software everything worked alright for another 1 1/2 months until the BIOS of the new board decided not to recognize any more SATA-disks. Additionally it recognized the primary IDE master and slave drives pointing to the slave drive as primary boot device - resulting in zero boot abilities.

Once again I replaced the mainboard using exactly the same type.

Another surprise caught me when powering up the system: Windows again claimed "Due to considerable hardware changes windows has to be registered" leaving two options - either using telephone or internet. This time registering had to be done immediately - otherwise the OS won't load.

I chose internet, but got stuck helplessly because windows refused to load the driver for my wireless internet modem. Using telephone registering is a real PITA. One mistype of one of the 42 digits and you'll have to restart the "game".

If you finally have managed to pass all 42 digits via telephone line you receive a respond code constisting of 42 digits as well, spoken at a speed a cashier at a supermarket will be able to follow (if she or he is well trained).

The biggest surprise of all: Windows has decided to make drive 'C' the boot drive again leaving lots of orphants on drive 'H'.

Has anyone of you experienced the same BS?

 

[HiTech]

I gather your troubles are with XP? I have loaded XP Home and XP Pro many times with never an issue. IMHO it's one of the most stable OS out there (except for Linux of which I don't use because of my online gaming software). Just curious as to what brand MOBO you were using during all this? Have you checked for a BIOS update from the MOBO mfgr.? I guess if I was experiencing what you are going through, I'd first assure the BIOS is updated and its settings are proper or at least set to "FAIL SAFE" or FACTORY. Then I'd check for reliable HDD ribbon cable connections, and then MOBO updates from that mfgr. Only after those things are for sure working properly would I then wipe the HDD clean using F-Disk or similar full formatting DOS run software on the HDD. Then a full install of Windows to follow and only install anitvirus and anitspyware pgms. LAST, after all other software has been installed.

Recently, I had a PC acting up on me and it wouldn't boot properly, the drive couldn't be found, etc. Turns out it was a bad IDE ribbon cable.... there was a small kink in the line... enough to cause it to act flaky. Replaced the ribbon cable and Zippity Duda everything returned to normal!

 

[Hero999]

Windows often does these kinds of things.

I recommend bypassing the registration, even if your copy of Windows is genuine, simply because it's often the easiest option. Plenty of tutorials can be found on the Internet, find the easiest one for you, print a couple of copies and put them in a safe place.

The drives can be fixed by going to computer management in the administrative tools section of control panel and selecting disk management,

 

[Reloadron]

Generally speaking if I have a motherboard failure I do a fresh clean install of Windows. The reason being that all the old motherboard drivers are on the system and it isn't the same motherboard. This wreaks havoc with chipset drivers, onboard audio drivers and LAN drivers assuming you are using onboard LAN and Audio. The chipset drivers alone are a pain.

Next when I reinstall I do it with only a single HDD connected or if the system only has a single HDD that was previously partitioned I install to the partition that has the old OS on it. Anyway with two or more HDDs (physical HDDs) I make sure any additional HDDs are not connected. Following the install I connect the remaining HDDs, also if the system has things like card readers I make sure they are disconnectred.

On my own systems I install the OS and all my programs to one drive and use other drives for mass storage. The only thing sharing the OS drive with the OS is my programs I install. I also tend to use RAID arrays for redundancy so if a HDD fails I am still good. Once things are installed I usually create a full drive image and back that image up to mass storage. I also do full backups on a regular basis.

Yes, when you placed the old HDD in the new system Windows woke up and said where the hell am I? Then it freaks and wants to phone home. Not at all unusual and normal.

Ron

 

[Mickster]

IIUC, Windows (whatever flavour) treats the Motherboard as the actual 'computer' that it is installed on. You can swap in and out pretty much any other component without being bugged about registration, but change the motherboard and that is it.

My current machine (ASUS P5-B based) has onboard USB port problems, so rather than fanny about replacing the MOBO and go through the rigmarole of re-reg, I've stuck a card in there to tide me over until the next build.

I do get bugged with taskbar balloon messages about USB port failures, but by the time I've finished surfing ETO, they have ceased.....

 

[smanches]

Yea, I bet it found a bunch of card reads and put them as drives C through G. That happened to me once. Had to disable the card readers in the BIOS, then install, then turn them back on.

Fortunately, I have a corporate copy of XP that requires no registration. You're jealous.

 

[Hero999]

Fortunately, I have a corporate copy of XP that requires no registration.

Of course, that's what I shall look for on Pirate Bay - thanks!

 

[Boncuk]

Hi All,

I can assure you that there was no faulty cable involved in the "game".

The BIOS was the newest version according to ASUS' website.

However, if the BIOS offers you a non-boot drive for primary boot device not enabling to change the HDD it's a big problem.

The system runs stable after I decided to kick out the raid controller (for use with IDE CD-ROM and CD/DVD-writer). With the controller built in and no device connected system speed was drastically reduced.

I'll purchase SATA devices instead and see what happens.

Boncuk

 

[MrAl]

Windows often does these kinds of things.

I recommend bypassing the registration, even if your copy of Windows is genuine, simply because it's often the easiest option. Plenty of tutorials can be found on the Internet, find the easiest one for you, print a couple of copies and put them in a safe place.

The drives can be fixed by going to computer management in the administrative tools section of control panel and selecting disk management,

Hi there Hero,

What did you mean by "bypassing the registration" for XP?
Are you saying that you dont have to activate the product or something else?
What happens sometimes after a reinstall is it wont work until you activate it again.
A friend had the same problem after we installed a new mobo and p/s.

 

[Hero999]

You can bypass the registration for XP and any other versions of Windows so you don't have to phone M$ or connect to their server to gain permission to upgrade your computer.

This enables you to run a pirated copy of Windows or a legitimate version without any problems in future. It's a simple registry hack and once you've done it, you shouldn't have to do it again, unless you need to reinstall from scratch.

Posting warez cracks is porobably against the rules so if you need help Google for bypass WPA.

 

[Boncuk]

Windows often does these kinds of things.

I recommend bypassing the registration, even if your copy of Windows is genuine, simply because it's often the easiest option. Plenty of tutorials can be found on the Internet, find the easiest one for you, print a couple of copies and put them in a safe place.

The drives can be fixed by going to computer management in the administrative tools section of control panel and selecting disk management,

Hi Hero999,

thanks for the suggestion to bypass the registration. However I think Microsoft will deny updates and service packs with an unregistered version.

How could I possibly fix drives if the BIOS fails to select the correct boot-drive and won't give any alternatives - except for CD-ROM and disk drive A?

That BIOS also does not have the known feature to reset to factory default.

Booting from CD won't also work with just a minimized IDE port (one channel), allowing to connect two IDE devices, which are two IDE-HDDs in my case.

IDE (ATAPI) CD-ROMs would connect via a raid controller offering two more IDE channels, but windows xp slows down considerably (about the speed of a 386 processor) and reads "audio-disk" no matter which CD is inserted.

The new generation of mainboards seems to me like being made for more sales on SATA-devices, and force to use on-board video and audio features regardless of their quality.

There are just two PCI-slots and one of them becomes unusable when using a PCI-express graphics accelerator card because it's components produding over the first PCI-slot don't allow to insert a card there.

Even though the technique seems to be new there is no USB3-support.

Regards

Hans

 

[Hero999]

That's a pain.

Can't you get into Windows at all to change the drives?

I've never tired using Windows update on an install I've bypassed activation on but I know it's possible to install service pack 3 and other updates if they're downloaded manually.

It's possible to get into an expired Windows install so you can possibly bypass it, I've never tried though.

**broken link removed**

EDIT:

Interestingly this has just suddenly happened to me today.

I was watching a programme on BBC iPlayer and Windows decided to lock up, no BSOD, nothing so I reset the machine and was greeted with a message telling me that due to recent hardware changed I have to reactivate Windows.

I tried the tutorial I normally use but it didn't work this time, I don't know why, probably because I'd activated it before?

So I looked for another way of doing it. I found a patching program, downloaded it, scanned it for viruses, rebooted the machine in safe mode as per the instructions and installed it. It worked perfectly: no more annoying message!

I then thought I'd try to run Windows update to see if it would still work which it did perfectly, all the updates installed without asking me to activate it.

I strongly recommend using this, even if you do have a genuine copy of Windows XP, simply because it's less hassle than registering Windows.

 

[Reloadron]

Just out of curiosity what is the exact model of the motherboard?

As to SATA, yes, just about all new motherboards are aimed at SATA and some have taken the PATA IDE the way of the 3.5" Floppy drive. All the newer high capacity HDDs are showing up as SATA. When the SATA standard first came out the drives and motherboard controllers were few and as to SATA connectors, boards like my old Intel 875 had but 2 SATA ports.

Where change sucks is like what Hero just experienced with his printer. Hell, just try to find a system with a parallel port anymore and likewise the RS232 port. They are all slowly going away. Not that change is a bad thing but when you are sitting on a pile of perfectly good hardware with nowhere to plug it in it can suck!

Ron

 

[Boncuk]

Hi Hero999 and Ron,

first off, the motherboard is an ASUS P5KPL-AM/PS. It has an external serial port and an additional serial connector on the board (9-pin). It also has a parallel port.

When I powerd up the system I received another message this morning: "New hardware found: USB Video-device".

The webcam had always been connecting during the foregoing processes.

I guess expecting high speed from a system with a duo-core 2.8GHz CPU and 4GB of dual-channel RAM at 667MHz is not abnormal.

From power on to internet connection it takes more than five minutes.

I decided to install a SATA CD-ROM, create back-up CDs of approximately 1.5TB of software and data and install the OS on a SATA-HDD, formatting each drive when the OS is working.

Regards

Hans

 

[Reloadron]

HI Ya Hans

I decided to install a SATA CD-ROM, create back-up CDs of approximately 1.5TB of software and data and install the OS on a SATA-HDD, formatting each drive when the OS is working.

All things considered I think that is a good way to go. I looked at that board and for all purposes not a bad little board at all and yeah, no shortage of serial ports. If you have any problems let us know.

Ron

 

[Boncuk]

HI Ya Hans



All things considered I think that is a good way to go. I looked at that board and for all purposes not a bad little board at all and yeah, no shortage of serial ports. If you have any problems let us know.

Ron

Hi Ron,

I purchased two SATA DVD-writers (US$45/pc) yesterday. (CD-readers not available as SATA-device).

Just have to use a virgin HDD to install windows. Instead of burning CDs I'll add successive HDDs and copy directly from disk to disk.

I'll certainly "report" when the new system is up and works properly.

Regards

Hans

 

[Boncuk]

Hi Ron,

here is the experience with the new (same kind (ASUS P5KPL-AM/PS)) mainboard:

Overall I must say it's frustrating. Engineers at ASUS obviously don't know exactly what they are doing.

With a virgin SATA 250GB HDD and a SATA CD/DVD-writer windows didn't boot from the CD right away, although the primary boot device was set to CD.

The first message I received was if I wan't to load windows as usual (I had tried with IDE devices first). (Windows obviously uses the BIOS ROM to remember what is has done before.)

After several attempts windows xp installation started from CD-ROM.

When the installation process was finished windows started normally.

I used the mainboard support CD to install graphics and sound drivers. The installation quit the graphics driver installation with the error message "Not supported by the OS." (It had done it before without arguing. )

The sound driver installation was successful.

After a system restart I missed the language select indicator in the task bar (I have to use English, German and Thai). It's no fun to guess the type of the selected keyboard when password input is required.

Next I installed my wireless internet modem which seemed to work alright.

After a further system restart I noticed a drastic speed loss in download speed from usually 50KB/s to 3 to 5KB/s.

Windows applications perform at a very low speed at a CPU load of 2 to 5%.

I guess the bottleneck is a wrongly selected chipset for that mainboard.

The overall performance is worse than using a 386 CPU with 512KB of main memory.

CPU is Intel duo-core 2.8GHz, RAM 4GB double channel at 667MHz.

Last not least windows starts with the "Welcome" window and the "Start Windows" sound which suddenly sounds like the beep of a toy, followed by a reboot.

If you are planning to purchase the mainboard you know what awaits you.

Regards

Boncuk

 

[Reloadron]

That motherboard is not in my future.

I generally build using Intel boards but the wife's system does have an Asus board. A few years ago I was very active with helping a Hardware Reviews site do their PSU reviews so I would get plenty of free stuff.

Your system should be performing much better. When you did the initial install Windows should not have had a problem finding a drive. However, I have seen early versions of XP have problems where then seem to need / want the SATA drivers for the board. When the install first begins within a min or two it would prompt to hit F6 if you were going to need 3rd party drivers then after you hit F6 a few min later during the install you would put the drivers (usually on a floppy) in the system and it would use them. Not your case though since it installed to the new SATA drive.

Ron

 

[Boncuk]

Hi Ron,

I have observed the PC's behaviour closely for about one week and had a friend visiting me today taking along his notebook.

I observed that the CPU-load is almost constant at 2 to 5%, no matter what application is running.

Further the internet speed is dramatically low (download rate 1.9KB/s) We tested my wireless modem on his notebook with a data transfer rate of 50 to 60KB/s. During the download the CPU-load was between 60 and 70%.

Another flaw is the fact that the OS sometimes doesn't see the DVD-writer, and if so it won't see the inserted CD. It does after several boot attempts.

My conclusion: The chipset for that board was selected wrongly and is a very narrow bottle neck for the OS to work properly.

Regards

Hans

 

[HiTech]

Just wondering here if you have conflicts occurring from a mix of 32-bit and 64-bit installs of either the OS, support drivers, and or programs as well? I take it you installed the mfgr's. latest drivers/firmware for that particular DVD writer? Have you done any reading up on that model MOBO to see if your issues are common place and if any solutions are given?