My desktop was running just fine with Windows XP and the normal crud of software. Nothing changed on it, nothing was replaced, nothing was taken out or added. All I did was reboot the computer after Windows XP did its ritualistic upgrade day before yesterday. Ever since then I have had the computer freeze after a few hours of inactivity. My mistake was to try and fix the damn error. I looked through the event viewer to find some SCSI timeout errors from my Ultra100tx Promise controlled for my 160GB drive. It had started occurring right after the latest set of updates.
Well, I figured that if the updates are the cause of the problem, I will back them out and life will be good again. I was wrong. No backing out of these updates, heck the accounting of these upgrades are shoddy within the OS. “Thank God for the System Restore”, I thought to myself. I had of course, counted my chickens before they hatched! System Restore did exactly nothing to solve the problem.
Hmmm. So, the code problem is not reversible. I will have to do something drastic. I looked through the driver database on my computer and noticed that the driver for the card was over three years old. I decided to look through Promises’ website for updates and Googled the problem. Apparently, a bunch of other people have had the same issue with a Win2ksp3 upgrade. Maybe this is a driver incompatibility with a Windows Upgrade? But Promises’ website is down, for two days!! I find an older (older than the latest, newer than mine) driver and install it on my computer with my fingers crossed. Reboot.
Long story short, I my desktop will not boot now, not even in safe mode, not even in safe mode command prompt. Now I am faced with the dillemma that either the card, or the physical drive, or the card and the drive, or the driver, or the windows update or ALL of these things are bad. Do i spend two hours reinstalling Windows XP and copying hundreds of gigs of data around only to find that the problem was not solvable with the present hardware anyways? Do I go and buy a new motherboard/processor (with an onboard IDE that can handle > 130GB) and get around the driver issue? There goes my freakin weekend!!
My laptop will save the day (again!) for the time being. Is the extra dough for the 1MB cache on the Pentium 4 worth it? Any mobo suggestions?