I maintain a half dozen PC workstations at my school for video editing, most
of which I've built. I was off on a field trip Friday and I turned on all
the machines and left things ready for the sub. During video class, some
kids started fooling around and did something to one of the computers,
perhaps in the bios or in Windows (XP) or even physically, because when I
returned at the end of the day the computer was frozen on the desktop screen
but with no taskbar, mouse cursor or any other icon showing.
No key strokes or mouse movements made any difference, so I did a reboot and
then the computer advised me to run a checkdisk before coming up all the way
to Windows, which I did but that process froze at about 20% completion of
step 2.
I tried turning it off then back on and then the computer couldn't find the
primary drive and hung during the bootup process. I went into the bios to
check around and eventually got it to recognize the primary drive so I saved
the changes and it continued to load. It again advised to run checkdisk and
this time it proceeded through the process. It reported literally dozens of
files that had a problem and had been repaired during check disk. Once up
into Windows, everything looked normal again and I was able to start and use
Photoshop and MS Word, but when I tried to start Premiere Pro the computer
turned rebooted and then couldn't find either the master or slave drives on
the primary controller.
I spent over an hour trying to stabilize, it but it either won't recognize
the primary master, and sometimes the primary slave too, or if I'm
successful at that, it tried to load Windows and kept hanging at the Win XP
logo.
I've tried everything I know in the bios (loading bios defaults, manually
selecting the drives) but nothing seems to stick. I tried last known good
configuration also with no luck. I'm stumped.
This could have been done by operational or physical carelessness or done
with malicious intent, I don't know. The sub said that the kids were fooling
around and the room is small, so it could be physical damage, or they could
have gone into the bios or into Windows explorer or even the registry and
made some changes.
No one would admit to anything (but that's another story).
Can anyone please advise me on what might be going on, and what I might try
next?
I can reformat everything and reload if it comes to that, but if it is
damage to the bios or the mobo or the drives then it won't help.
Thanks a lot for any advice on this problem.

In article <3AmNd.734$rG4.216@newsfe3-gui.ntli.net>, Luis ORTEGA
says...
play with my computer to their hearts content safe in the knowledge the
only thing they can hose is the XP install and even then they'll have
to try hard.


--
Conor

An imperfect plan executed violently is far superior to a perfect plan.
-- George Patton

Hi Luis,

Sounds more like a hardware failure than anything else, and it's probably
the motherboard from the symptoms you describe. I doubt that the kids are
responsible unless one of them was physically tearing apart the system.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone
www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone
Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

"Luis ORTEGA" <lortega@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:3AmNd.734$rG4.216@newsfe3-gui.ntli.net...

"Luis ORTEGA" <lortega@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:3AmNd.734$rG4.216@newsfe3-gui.ntli.net...
go to the website of the harddive mfg
and download and run the diagnostic utility...
it could be a bad drive

You can let the "dead" PC rest for few days, or a week or so, power OFF
completely.

Then turn it on. If it comes back to life, you can check.

Better prepare to have anotehr good, or new, hard disk to replace the hard
disk.

But it might be the video card which may die, or RAM, or the heat-sink fan
(HSF),
or any component. You may have to open the case and have a look at it. I do
not
assume the children fooling around with the hardware.

-----------------
"Luis ORTEGA" <lortega@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:3AmNd.734$rG4.216@newsfe3-gui.ntli.net...

you're obviously experienced in these matters.
i came back on monday after letting the pc rest for the weekend and it
appears to be back to normal.
now, please, please, explain to me why this would make any difference!
thanks to all who offered advice.
ps. I have now set up bios passwords and a limited student account that will
hopefully limit some of the things that they can do by accident or design.


"lakesnow" <asleep@night.com> wrote in message
news:cu6n3l$ug$1@newsflood.tokyo.att.ne.jp...

Sorry to come back late, just too busy.

Probably someone may give better explanations to you as to why PCs behave
that way. My uneducated guess is that, in general, in the DOS days,
cold-reboot
often requires a power off for more than 20 seconds for signals to be
considered
as dying off in RAM. When something seems wrong, the power is turned off for
a long time, either BIOS or the CPU itself or both might have some unknown
function which just reset to default values. Then the PC will go back to
normal.

Even when a hard disk seems dying, it is still possible to wait for few days
or week(s)
to try a last time. So there is a probability that it will come back hust
enough to
squeeze data out at the final chance.

But glad to hear you can get it back. Regards.


------------
"Luis ORTEGA" <lortega@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:4kNNd.304$Os3.61@newsfe1-gui.ntli.net...