Hi, hoping someone can help! Computer - p4 2 ghz, 256 mg ram, asus motherboard (onboard sound, vid and lan), one hdd, one burner, one dvd player, floppy drive. power supply is only a 250W (Argh) and there is no extra fan - only a power supply fan and a cpu one. The problems: Recently, after my dad installed flight simulator 2002 (yes microsoft game), he started getting errors with it and it would sometimes reboot. This happened over a couple of days and I thought maybe it was getting too hot. Of course Dad, not understanding, would just leave the game running for hours and walk away or "turn it off" (note: not shut down correctly) if he couldn't figure out how to close something. So finally he calls me in and I look in 'my computer' and all the drives wont show up. There is only a little X in the top LH corner and it's blank other than that. Reboot - no probs with that but same blank problem when I check the files. Windows explorer was also "missing" - not even in the start menu. Actually, all the quick launch icons were gone too hehe. So I decided to upgrade to XP, thinking he'd just deleted something - although I felt that was hard to do. Windows XP got a few errors when installing, but went on after the second try - however the service packs wouldnt install properly. Dad kept hounding me for his game so I put it back on as the computer seemed to be running ok, on the proviso he turned it off and didn't play it for long until I had time to try a new install of XP. Unfortunately...yes it died - well it booted bt gave me product catalog list errors and went into a reboot cycle. Still thinking this was an OS prob, I tried to install win2k back on it - no goal - it loaded the setup files but would not load the OS from the cd (I used my startup disks). I then thought maybe it was the RAM, so I replaced that yesterday, loaded XP with NO problems until service pack time - no goal. After rejecting sp1 with a catalog list error, I tried the other updates as advised by microsoft but on reboot it would not load the o/s (it had been running for about 2 hours by that time). Safe mode didn't work either - just a heap of text pointing to C: system32/driver/file.here spam. Now, the CPU fan is working - I did check the temp of the motherboard back when this first started too - on boot it was normal (35C), but I havent checked when it's been running a bit longer. I did a diagnostic check with tufftest last night - only 1 error in the diskette drive A section (d/c that but still no joy - and the drive seems to work fine). Today I tried prime95 and the stress test - it lasted all of 2 seconds before giving me an error but I'm not sure WHAT exactly failed - unless that means total CPU failure? But wouldn't the computer just not work if that was the case? So after this long winded post - my question is - do you think its the power supply or the CPU? Has the game possibly heated her up, overworked the power, heated the cpu and killed something? Apart from the no fan thing - it's winter here (71 F) and the computer is well ventilated but I felt the case was too warm, and the cd's always came out too hot (IMO). Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks for reading this saga :D

It sounds like it could be a couple of things. I have seen more than a few systems act like this after power surges or static discharge. They aren't totally dead, but just oddly out of wack and they produce errors repeatedly. You mentioned the power supply, and this is probably where I would make a change first. It's relatively inexpensive to purchase a good 350Watt power supply these days. While I know systems run with small supplies like this, I just never use less than 300Watt. It's not uncommon for an inadequate power supply or one that is just not up to par to cause a system to throw out random errors. I have seen systems that you would have sworn were infected with viruses, when in actuality it was just the power supply.

Considering that you are running a P4 2GHz, you definitely are underpowered. To be honest, I really don't know why you haven't had probs before now. It also would be good to put in another 256 RAM stick if you are going to be running games. However, my strong suspicion is that your present probs are OS related. I think you have corrupted system files, and an "over the top" reinstall is definitely needed. In extreme cases that won't even do it, and a totally fresh install will be needed. At this point I definitely would back up all your important data off-computer. And tell Dad that it's a well known fact that anyone who doesn't follow proper shut-down procedures on a computer doesn't get dessert at dinner. At least that worked on my son. ;0)

I have done a number of fresh installs as mentioned above so that's why I really doubt it's an OS problem. I have formatted that thing about 4 or 5 times now and tried win2k and XP without success - deleting any and all partitions, doing the longer ntfs format but bleh. Now that I know the problem isn't RAM, once it is fixed I can add the old 256 back to it that I replaced :P. Had I known earlier it was only a 250w psu, I'd have had them replace it months ago. Of course, dad has been in BIG trouble! hehe

Thanks for the help - I went out today and got an Antec smart power 400w psu (:D) and things seem to be fine. The mouse is not sticking or delayed anymore and the SP1 for XP installed with NO errors or probs woo! Hoping for the best with it! :) Gilly