S.T.A.L.K.E.R.mod

by **MeanderingBeing** on 24 Oct 2009 06:23

I done got proper f***ed. Here is a helpful hint to all of you folks:
Do not ship your computer using federal postal shipping.
I put my computer in a box in Virginia... It was working then.
I go to the post-office to pick it up... Post man on duty picks up the box... and *drops* it on the counter...
Now my computer don't work... Hurray! *sarcasm* Now I am working on a trial and error attempt to find out what exactly is wrong... narrowed it down to Graphics Card or Mother Board... $900 just to replace with equivalent parts... Peachy f***ing keen. I just moved, damnit. I don't have a car, don't have my own place... And this crap happens.
Any ideas?

by **audioave10** on 24 Oct 2009 08:14

Ouch...if your mobo also has onboard video, go into your bios and set default to onboard video chip (or/and remove the VC). Does it fully boot up?

by **Nightwatch** on 24 Oct 2009 14:46

You should be able get compensation from the Post Office. The guys from the US (forum members) can give you more advice on this. If you prove that your PC had been working before mailing it (witness statements should be OK I guess) then they should compensate you. I say search for and defend your rights.

by **MeanderingBeing** on 24 Oct 2009 20:37

audioave10 wrote:Ouch...if your mobo also has onboard video, go into your bios and set default to onboard video chip (or/and remove the VC). Does it fully boot up?

No, my motherboard does not have onboard video. And I cannot tell if it is booting up or not... I cannot get any monitor to work... my graphics card does have power (little lights and fan/heatsink is on) but it doesn't seem to be sending any information (I've tried different monitors). So normally I would just assume it is my graphics card, but I am also not getting any power to my USB ports... So I have started to think it is my motherboard that has shit the bed. Or, the one thing that I do not want to think about, both have shit the bed, and most likely took something else out with it...

@Nightwatch: I have every intention of filing a claim with the post office. But I only have one witness to my computer working before it was shipped, who lives up in virginia, and travels alot... Other than myself, of course. Beyond that, I have no other way of proving that it had worked... Which sucks...
My plan is to take it up to some hardware nerd friends of mine down the street, and if they cannot fix it, then I'll file with the post office... If I can do that without losing my claim of course....
Damndamndamn...

by **Grump642** on 24 Oct 2009 22:38

Check all power connections. Do not just look at connections, unseat and re-seat. Same for the CMOS battery on your MoBo. Try a different PSU if you can.

by **MeanderingBeing** on 24 Oct 2009 23:18

@Grump
Working on that. So far, I have found ALOT of dust jammed into most sockets, including the one for my video card. I don't like the whole dust thing though... I've had computers short out because of it.... Other than that, right now I am just methodically cleaning dust and grime out of sockets... it ain't looking pretty right now. Thanks for the suggestion man!

Although, I never thought of the battery thing. Won't that reset my BIOS? As far as trying the PSU, well... I don't have another one sitting around... But I'll see if I can pick up a cheapy if I can... Although everything else has power... HDs, CD, Fans... just the USBs don't... very strange...

by **Grump642** on 25 Oct 2009 01:44

It might reset your BIOS, but if you just make sure it is seated, you will be OK. USB supplies 5V power and your fans use 12V. So you could have a bad 5V transformer in your PSU. Maybe when it was dropped? Do you have a voltmeter? If so, check any RED wire going to a Molex connector or your 20/24 MoBo connector. It should read 5V.(+/-)

by **MeanderingBeing** on 25 Oct 2009 09:56

Alright thanks!

That could be the issue there. But I also have the problem of a lack of video. My card has power (at least the fan does) but it is not sending any data to the monitor (I've tried a couple already, along with cables, all of which work on other computers). So I cannot tell if something is wrong with my mobo or graphics card... Is there anything I can do on that front to further troubleshoot?

EDIT: Looking at some new video cards for if it is indeed the video card that is the problem. I found one card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product but I was wondering if you guys knew of or could find a better ddr2 graphics card?

by **Grump642** on 25 Oct 2009 21:54

Rough handling normally would take out a HDD long before it broke a MoBo. Have you tried to put your HDD in another rig and then accessing it? It just sounds like a power problem to me, but it could be other things as well. It takes a lot more power to run a Gfx card, then it does to get it's fan going. See any damage to the Pci-e slot? But if you want a Gfx card at that price, I like this--http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102855-- twice the memory for the same price.

by **MeanderingBeing** on 25 Oct 2009 22:50

Looks good, but I do not think my mobo supports dd3... I am taking my computer down to a fix-it computer place tomorrow., to find out exactly whats wrong. I was hoping to get it fixed this weekend, but it is beyond my knowledge at this point.

As far as trying to get my HDDs in another rig, I don't have another rig to try them on. I can hear the disks spinning as usual though... Both my SATA and IDE parallel ports/cords seem fine. I unplugged and checked everything, then plugged it all back in...

Anyways, got a couple of other things to try... thanks for your help so far, grump! :partyman:

Have a drink on me

by **audioave10** on 25 Oct 2009 23:16

DDR3 on a video card is no problem. You are thinking about DDR3 system RAM which is not supported unless you have a motherboard that uses DDR3 system RAM. When its video card RAM, as long as
you are PCI-Express, you're good to go.
I hope you get the point...not explained very well. :-?

by **MeanderingBeing** on 26 Oct 2009 00:19

...wait, so all this time I could have possibly spent my money on a GDDR5 card (hypothetically speaking) instead of thinking all this time that I was stuck with ddr2 because my mobo is a P.O.S.? Well, with that in mind, what would be a good affordable video card that spanks stalker?

by **Grump642** on 26 Oct 2009 21:17

How much are you looking to spend?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102858

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102859

by **MeanderingBeing** on 28 Oct 2009 00:38

Well, as soon as I have my car, I will have an extra 150ish hopefully. So one of those video cards will do nicely.

By the way, I just got back from the computer shop and they say it was the mobo. They'll call me tomorrow to tell me what mobo to get to replace it.... >.> Gots to reinstall my OS and everything now... but its nowhere near as bad as it could have been, so I'm happy. Looking to buy a new drive for my OS.. something like http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 822148262R

EDIT: Also looking to upgrade a bit. I figure I might as well go all out and just do a rebuild. lol. So the plan is to buy a ddr2 mobo with the same cpu socket as my previous, but see if I can find one that supports these new 64bit quad-cores (if at all possible) but will also support my current core-duo 32bit. Looking to buy a newer sound card and video card... so I am pretty much keeping the cpu (temporarily) and hard-drives... but changing everything else and getting yet another hardrive... =))

Will probably upgrade my RAM before all is said and done too...

Anyways, cheers for now folks! And thanks for the help :thumbright:

by **Grump642** on 28 Oct 2009 23:16

Most modern CPU's support 64bit OS. It's the 64bit OS you have to get. Unless your cpu is real old?

by **MeanderingBeing** on 30 Oct 2009 00:16

Hrm, my cpu is about 4 years old at this point. And I honestly couldn't tell you what it is... I just opened my computer and figured out how to take out the fan... And the cpu sticker was melted to the heatsink...

Anyways, I have my motherboard out now, and I am looking at the many reasons it could have been fried. There is retarded amounts of dust and grime caked to the bottom, corrosion on the metal parts near the CPU socket, gray junk in between the connectors of the cpu socket, loose solders and connections... its in pretty bad shape, mate. I'm also seeing some damage to the cpu socket as well... The only model number or whatever I can find on it is DELL copyright 2005.04 e1 Model Connolly cRUus E187242 F2... I cannot tell what kind of cpu socket it is though...

As far as upgrading my cpu goes, what should I get that a 64bit OS would support, have decent price and performance?

EDIT: Just found some specs for my motherboard...
CPU Socket is LGA775 Supporting Pentium 4 5XX/6XX Processors 2.8-3.8 GHz
FSB: 800/1066Mhz System Bus
Expansion Slots: PCI Express x16 x 1 / PCI Express x1 x 1 / PCI x 2
Chipset: Intel 945G
Other Features: Hyper-Threading Technology Support
Connectors: (5 - Back - 2 Front) USB 2.0 Ports, 10/100 Network LAN
Peripheral Interface: (2) Serial ATA (SATA) Interface
Other: One IDE Channel Supporting ATA-66/100/133 and One Floppy Port
Video: Onboard Intel 950 Graphics Accelerator + 1X16 PCI Express Slot and
Audio: 5.1 Surround Sound Audio Ports
Supported Memory: DDR2 400/533Mhz
Maximum Memory: 4 Dual Channel DIMM Support for up to 4 GB of memory

Looking for a mother board that will support my current hardware, so it would hopefully have the same CPU Socket, and some PCI slots for my video card and hopefully a new sound card. One thing though, I do not like the speed of my memory... If I can get a mother board that is DDR2 with better speeds, that would be mmore than awesome... Wait, if I got a, hypothetically speaking, Gddr5 memory motherboard, would it be backwards compatible with my DDR2 ram sticks, or would I have to upgrade those as well?

EDITED EDIT: Wait, what is this FSB? I have never heard of this before! Can I upgrade the FSB, and still have my poo compatible?

Further EDITED EDIT: alright, I think I found an equivalent mobo http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 813131393R with a slight upgrade... is this guy worth it?

by **Grump642** on 30 Oct 2009 00:57

You may not have known it, but you had graphics built into your MoBo. The Intel 945G chipset says so. The G is for graphics. The MoBo you show should work.

by **MeanderingBeing** on 30 Oct 2009 01:49

Um, Sorry grump. I had a stoooooopid moment. I thought you were talking about my previous mobo, not this new one. My previous mobo also had inbuilt graphics... but Dell manufactured it so it never worked... Anyways, yes that new mobo should work, plus it is pretty cheap all things considered. I was thinking that I'd end up spooning out some serious money to get a new mobo (by the way, Dell charges $229 for a replacement of my mobo, which is crappier than this one I am buying for $59.99).

Hey, word to the wise... Don't take your computer to some random computer nerds... bad news. I spooned out 60 bucks so they could spend 5 minutes to put in a different video card, tell me that my mobo was screwed, and offer some bogus bull crap like "only pros can install mobos, and it takes 36 hours to do, and we charge 60 an hour, but trust me, its a steal..." >.> I feel like I was hustled by some new york bookies or something. Good thing that I didn't take that offer, it would have cost me, what? $2160 alone for labor, plus whatever for the some motherboard that I don't know shit about? Grump, I am soooooo glad that you're cool enough to give me free advice online, instead of charging me $60/hr for bullshit! =D>

You the man, grump!

EDIT: Ignore this edit. I cannot think of any other way to write down all the links to the parts I am looking at, so I am just saving them here in my edit, so I won't lose the links

by **ket** on 30 Oct 2009 19:59

If your system is getting power, I would look at your RAM. PCs don't take kindly to being moved, many components can be "bumped" out of place enough to stop a system from booting.

Basic troubleshooting guide;

Disconnect everything, leaving just 1 stick of RAM, the CPU and graphics card. Try booting. If nothing, try other memory stick and different slots, if still nothing, try a different GPU, if that doesnt work try reseating the CPU. Even try a alternative PSU. Those steps will at least lead you to the most likely faulty component.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.mod

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