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Lee Frost
3rd Jan 2006, 15:19
Hello,

Wonder if anyone can help with this? I have a laptop which was running perfectly up until very recently (4 years old). I'll just put the facts down.

It was originally running Win ME, then I upgraded to Win XP.
One day I was playing music on it, and it ran out of battery power. It went to hibernate. The thing wouldn't boot up again. It came up with messages saying it couldn't find boot.init

From this I reckoned that the BIOS had had it. So I got the OEM disks which are meant to restore the whole computer back to the factory settings (clean install).

PROBLEM

Even after it says the laptop has been successfully restored - I have been having problems - Freezes, error messages, etc. It won't even accept an upgrade to XP. Within its new world of windows ME, it is not reliable at all, and programs do tend to freeze when you least expect it.

Its basically not usable.

Does anyone have any ideas? I am getting short on options after about 30+ reinstalls. If I could afford it what I'd really love to do is get a hammer and smash the thing up :}

(Next ones a MAC - that's for sure)
Any help would be very welcome,
Thank you,


LF

Mac the Knife
3rd Jan 2006, 16:19
May sound strange to you, but have you considered installing a Linux distro?

Even the best Linux distributions can struggle with todays laptops, due to the often peculiar hardware, but a 4-year old lappy shouldn't be a problem.

Couldn't be worse than your situation (WinME was truly AWFUL) and potentially you'll have a nice quick machine that will do all the usual things one does with laptops exceedingly well.

All the software is FREE and included in the distribution (OpenOffice 2.0 is an Office suite that rivals MSOffice and is 99% compatible)

Consider Ubuntu (my choice) found at http://www.ubuntulinux.org/download/ or Knoppix at http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html

If my wife's XP lappy gives trouble again then I'll put Ubuntu on it.

Conan the Librarian
3rd Jan 2006, 16:51
Co incidental maybe, but my money says that the battery on the mobo has failed and that is why it is having difficulty knowing day of week/what hard drive is fitted etc.etc. Not a big issue, but it is possible that you might need either a dollop of confidence to check, or local specialist support from maybe a computer supplier that will have a look for you.


Conan

frostbite
3rd Jan 2006, 17:17
Sounds like it now has some horrible kind of XP/ME soup as the OS.

Probably best to format the HD and do a clean install of XP.

effortless
3rd Jan 2006, 17:29
Conan is most likely on the right track. Another pssibility is that there are bad sectors on the HDD. Linux is even less tolerant than M$ of hardware issues so I don't thin k that this will be fruitfull.

shuttlebus
3rd Jan 2006, 19:20
Laptops and desktops both have a watch type battery to maintain the BIOS memory to prevent the sort of problems you are having... sounds like it may have died, not the main juice supply! A trip to Maplin or a review of teh user docs that came with the laptop will probably point you in the right direction!

The boot.ini file issue sounds like the hibernation messed up the boot sector of the drive (boot.ini is one of four files that NT/Win2k/Xp uses to start a boot, the others being io.sys and ntldr.sys and ntloader.com). Boot.ini can be very basic, or very complex depending on which/how many OSes you have installed i.e. multibooting Win98,2k etc, but basically acts as the signpost to the other files for the BIOS (Simple explanation).

Best solution?
1) boot the machine and before all the windows stuff appears, enter the machine BIOS. Then set your default boot device to CD.
2) Insert the Windows XP upgrade CD
3) Let Windows XP start install - as it is an upgrade version (going by your post) it shoudl ask you to place aqualifying media in the drive. Therefore let it "see" you WinMe CD. It will then ask for XP again...
4) During the XP install you can then format you drive.....
5) You should end up with a clean install of XP :-)

Please note you need to back up your stuff before this...

If XP wont let you install, then use WinMe instead (The options at the start should let you get a command prompt)

You can then format the drive "format /s"

Then install WinMe, folowed by XP upgrade.....

If you need more help, please PM

Regards,

Shuttlebus

Lee Frost
3rd Jan 2006, 20:22
Thankyou everybody - particularly Shuttlebus



I have been quite surprised (pleasantly) by the quick and helpful response to this problem - I have formatted the whole lot.

Trying to Reinstall the XP now, it just gave me a blue screen of death, saying

A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

IRQL_Not_Less_Or_Equal

then some notes, then Tech info:

***STOP: 0x0000000A (0xC0007FD8, 0x0000000Z, 0x00000000, 0x807FD309)

:rolleyes:

Lee Frost
3rd Jan 2006, 20:50
Hmmm

I removed some extra memory which had been added - and have started again from scratch.

I am now getting as much progress as I have ever had with the problem. In fact it reminds me of when XP first went on. Its looking promising, but will know more in about 30 minutes.

Thanks again,

BRL
3rd Jan 2006, 22:02
Good luck Lee, how is it going???

Conan the Librarian
3rd Jan 2006, 22:40
Aaaah... recent addition of memory, eh? I had a neighbours laptop that reported similar problems to yours and an early check, was to see if the RAM was seated properly. After taking one out, it all fired up for the first time in a year. (He was about to consign it to the bin)

Hope that progress is being made.

Conan

shuttlebus
3rd Jan 2006, 23:20
Ouch... hope us ever helpful pruners didn't send you the long way round :-(

Like BRL and Conan, hope progress is being made!

(And re-reading my earlier post, sorry for the typo errors, truly appalling!!!)

Shuttlebus

Keef
3rd Jan 2006, 23:57
I had a memory chip fault develop in my desktop machine. Apart from the error message (no idea what gave it), there were no apparent problems. I downloaded the MS memory tester (has to be run from a floppy) and it confirmed that chip 2 was seriously ill.

I replaced the chip, and the error report went away.

But the machine worked just fine, anyway. Does XP Pro have some form of fault-tolerance built in?

Conan the Librarian
4th Jan 2006, 00:56
"Does XP Pro have some form of fault-tolerance built in?"


Yes Keef - it is called the user



Conan

paco
4th Jan 2006, 02:34
Windows XP, more than any other version, gives upper memory a serious workout, and many machines are not up to it.

Aside from reverting to ME (yuk! 98 v2 is MUCH better), you could also check for conflicts between Windows power saving and that from the BIOS. The Hardware Abstraction Layer in XP completely replaces the BIOS and the machine might not be letting it. ME is not clever enough to do that!

I would only look at Macs if I didn't have an investment in software - their operating system is just as buggy in different ways, though I grant you their hardware has always been better designed.

There are some great portables around now for not much money. I wouldn't waste time on a 4 year old one.

Phil
Author
The BIOS Companion

Lee Frost
4th Jan 2006, 12:09
Many thanks all for the continued help,

The machine started out with just 64MB, so I bought 256MB extra from Offtek.co.uk.

It has been fine, and was recognised as working as recently as the older day on one of my countless Win ME re-installs. My feeling is that the chip is still perfectly serviceable since I have been very careful in its handling.

I just removed it for the clean new install of XP which so far has gone perfectly - happy just to have some feeling of confidence coming back....but it would be nice to get some speed back into the machine (which was why I expanded the memory).

At the moment, with the extra 256MB plugged in, the power up screen just doesn't appear. I just hear a whirl of a fan, then nothing. I have to close the power button for 5sec to force it to shut down.....Remove the extra, and it powers up with no problems.

I know I have to update the modem and video drivers anyway (for XP - as I remember doing this before) and all the hotkey functionality....but I think it might be the BIOS....

I have been to the SONY VAIO website, and there are downloads to adjust the BIOS for my particular model to suit Win XP.

I think I shall start with those. I'll let you know how it goes.

:) LF
PS: Paco - does this sound correct? I mean the BIOS causing the upset? Thanks for taking the time.

shuttlebus
4th Jan 2006, 19:11
Lee,

Certainly sounds like a BIOS issue - The BIOS is holding the machine at a point before even the bootsector gets a look in - Windows might as well not exist at this point....

Basically it goes like this (Apologies to all who know this already, just trying to problem solve)

1) User its power switch
2) Juice flows to all major components, allowing processor to start, hard disk spin-up etc
3) BIOS (an EEPROM [electrically erasable programmable read only memory]) loads its instruction into processor and carries out self check, then checks hardware (this is the bit when all the messages scroll up the screen to quickly to read most of the time).
4) If all the hardware is OK, then the BIOS goes looking for something to boot (The whole process is actually called bootstrap, as the computer literally gets itself going by picking itself up by its own bootstraps with no help - sorry useless history lesson :-)
5) BIOS usually detects bootable partition (Either CD or hard-drive) then DOS, followed by Windows takes over (even on XP)....

So, the key is to work out where all this is falling over.... then identifying what is causing the fall over.

Fair to say, memory can be picky, even on generic PC beige boxes, so on a "brand" laptop such as a Sony (And I know, it shouldn't make any difference, but...)? At this point a BIOS flash might work, but that can cause a fully non-bootable, non recoverable (as in send back to Sony) machine.

I bow to any better advice as I admit I am out of ideas at this point.... :-{

Regards,

Shuttlebus