My Computer won't restart...

donkey42

a few more details about your specs would be helpful (e.g. mobo, RAM, CPU, PSU, OS & stuff like that)

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blade

Click on "My Computer", all the info. is there

izzy007

i reckon it is a software related issue. it use to happen to me sometimes when i messed around with the registry and after a windows xp installation, it went fine

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AMD Athlon 64 3800+ AM2
DFI INFINITY ultra m2 MOBO
1024 ddr2 800mhz Ram
WD 250GB sata 2 16mb Cache HD
Antec Neo He 500watt Sli Ready

blade

I never messed around with my registry though; (don't have the winXP cd to re-install)

donkey42

sorry, i can be thick at times, will look at your specs

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max12590

I seriously doubt it is hardware related. That said I don't have a clue what would fix it. It may just be one of those Windows things that pops up from time to time.

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In the words of a certain Battlefield 2 commander, "They're spawnin' like crazy at the Gas Station and then tryin' to Forrest Gump it down the Interstate."

vol7ron

Is it a RAID? How are your partitions set up - please dont tell me you only have one.

blade

sata II hd, dont know what partitions are, but i think it is software-related, i think its my stardock object desktop thats causing the won't restart capability

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vol7ron

Partitions is how you split your hard drive. Are you saying that your "C:" drive is 320GB?!!?

With storage that large you should definitely split it up into at least a C:, D:, and E: drive. I would probably go as far to make a F and G as well (about 70GB per drive - even that is pretty large). Put the OS on its own partition, game programs on another, office programs on another, then other stored files on another for best performance.

I would recommend you running defrag as many times as necessary until the drive is not fragmented (or only has a few files remaining) and make sure you've downloaded SP2 and any other Windows related updates. You should goto www.diskeeper.com to find a nice defrag utility.

blade

yes, c drive is 320gb; what are the advantages of having multiple drives run from one hd?
And how would I do that?

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vol7ron

If this doesn't help then it is a hardware issue. This can happen when installing a new piece of hardware (usually a bios or power supply issue). See this site as this user found out that having a PCI and AGP device at the same time caused the same problem.

He did list many things you should try if you read all of his posts. For instance the PnP in the BIOS, that's a big one. They didn't work for him, but it may work for you. I have a feeling it has something to do with your HD being so darn big. -- Make sure you have up to date drivers.

vol7ron

Do a search on google for Partitioning your hard drive. There are sites that will go into much more detail than I (I could describe them all, but I'm lazy and there are many reasons). For summay purposes, breaking your big large drive into smaller (virtual) ones:
- decreases file seek time (speeding up your machine)
- decreases file storage space
- increases file management
- decreases defragmentation time
- improve system reliability

You really want your operating system to be on it's own drive, as it will help reduce corruption and other errors. Just read up on it, but having a 320 GB drive is just, yeah.. it's WAY too big.


To do this you will need to repartition using the Windows utility that is found on the installation CD (or one of the old Win98 floppies - which is what I use). If you use this method it will require you to reformat your drive and reinstall Windows XP. You could also use the innovative software PartitionMagic (search for it on google). This will split your drive into different sectors without having to reinstall windows.

I prefer the first method, but if you haven't the time nor the need to do things "right", do Partition Magic is a very nice alternative.

blade

hmm, ic; i upgraded to the 320 from a 60 because I thought it would improve performance and improve seek times, and to obviously have more storage.
when I started using the 320 hd, the performance didn't seem to improve a whole lot, and your probably right, its prolly because its too big

I bought the hd stand alone, didn't come with any software etc.; just the drive
I used Acronis True Image to clone my hd from my old one, and I don't have the win. xp install disk, so I guess I'll use partition magic to do the partitioning; I don't think Acronis can do that

what do you mean by having your operating system to be on it's own drive, wouldn't I need it for each drive to save files etc.?

also, how many partitions do you recommend?

oh man, I really hope I wouldn't have to re-install all my software and games when re-partitioning, hope theres an option on partition magic that'll give you the option of transfering the files; re-installing everything would be a bitch

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vol7ron

Look at it this way, let's say you're looking for the file "Minesweeper.exe". If you dont know where it is, you would use the "Search" ability in Windows Explorer to find it. You can give it a starting location and if you really have no clue you would just search the whole C:\ directory. It's going to take your system a lot longer to find the file if you search the C:\ (and all subfolders) than if you had just searched the C:\Windows folder. -- That's what partitioning can help for.

The operating system regularly looks for system files and services that are set aside on your hard drive. If it doesn't have as many files (clusters) to search through, it will help your system perform better. It's like: if you're trying to find a needle in a hay stack, do you want that haystack to fill the whole room, or do you want it to be only a handful?


Partitioning is essentially splitting your one physical drive into many logical drives (it's like making many hard drives out of the one physical one). When you create the partitions, you say how big they can be, etc. Think of partitions as folders. Your operating system is mainly in the C:\Windows folder, but it can manage files on a CD, another hard drive, a floppy disk, etc. You only need to make sure your computer boots up to whatever partition your hard drive is on.


This is a tough question since hardware and software has changed over time. Windows (and other Game and Office programs) used to be very small in comparison today. At one time it was "amazing" to take up 500MB, now they take up 5GB a piece. Every game I have hits about 4.99GB, WindowsXP Pro takes about that much (if not more) and so does Microsoft Office 2003 Pro. Not to mention other programs like Visual Studio 2005 (including MS SQL Server and MS Web Development Studio) take a considerable amount. Then you have your Java Runtime files where it seems each update is over 100MB and so far there are 5 or 6 updates.

You want your operating system to be on it's own drive, so you would probably like to partition that to be the smallest. The good thing about partitioning the OS on its own drive is if there is a data problem, you only need to reformat that partition - this means all those games and applications you previously installed do not need to be reinstalled (saving you time and effort). When all is said and done you want your OS partition to be about the size of your OS + about another 30-50% for room to expand (updates, etc.) 5GB x 1.5 = 10GB -- that's pretty safe and smaller than what you have now (this leaves you with 310GB for everything else). As a hint, I haven't checked how big XP Pro is in a while, but you should not just trust my 5GB estimate, though 10GB should be a good size.

I would say for the other partitions, you would like to keep them at least 60GB and under, though I would really focus on splitting your games into a 40GB and under, your office and other applications should be around 35GB and under, and any miscellaneous files (music, kazaa files, etc.) can have a little more space as they are mainly read and not as resource dependent.
320
-10 (for OS)
-35 (for office and apps)
-40 (for games - depending on how many)
Leaves you with 235, which you should probably split up into about 4 60GB drives -- your 320GB drive does not give you a full 320GB, a small portion of the space is set aside to keep information about your partitions and store the MFT.


Partition Magic was developed because people were fed up with reinstalling when they had to repartition. Though, in my opinion partition magic doesn't provide the best partitioning as comparted to a FDisk (Windows) partition, but it does do a good job.

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I'm curious why you bought a 320GB drive. Most people do not need so large unless they're using it as a RAID setup, or to run a database off of. If you want the best performance out of your machine, put more money into faster/lower timing memory, a faster hard drive (10,000RPM instead of 7200RPM), or a better processor. But this applies to everyone: keep your OS on it's own partition.

When all is said and done, partitioning is very good. It helps set aside a dedicated amount of disk space for your OS, any databases you may be running, or any programs of matter, leaving your less scrupulous files to whatever's left. Not to mention you can choose to encrypt certain partitions, which gives you a little added security.