Author Topic: ongoing issues... (Read 374 times)

humble · « **on:** June 24, 2007, 03:29:56 PM »

I went ahead and bought I new drive (needed anyway) and reloaded a clean install of XP and Vista. I wiped the old drive and loaded linux on it. I've got ongoing problems of various kinds. In Vista if I run AH its fine (although it loads slowly (meaning initial in game images have alot of grey area) then seems to run fine...but if I tab to desk top I get bad video (wavy or straight lines on colored background) which can only be fixed by rebooting. In XP it ran fine for a bit now it will load and play then it freezes after 15 sec or so and crashes and I get the send error report.

As of now i'm guessing I do in fact have a virus in bios but also looking to trouble shoot other possibilities. My bios (AMI) has both dos and windows utilities. I dont have a floppy and cant seem to make a system disk CD (help appreciated). Assuming in fact I do have a boot/bios virus will flashing the bios in windoes actually help?...otherwise either I need to pop on a floppy or create a bootable CD....

I ran passmark on all components earlier and everything passed....other thoughts troubleshooting ideas appreciated.

Fulmar · « **Reply #1 on:** June 24, 2007, 04:02:09 PM »

I believe viruses that attack the BIOS are very rare these day, if virtually non-existant anymore. Correct me if I'm wrong.

humble · « **Reply #2 on:** June 24, 2007, 04:14:49 PM »

No your correct, they are almost nonexistant. Recently though alot of stuff has been done specific to Vista and DRM...if you look at the link i posted below there are now viruses that can completely take over a Vista system. As a side note my system will not allow me to flash the bios via windows. If I try and execute the program via the proscribed root it wont run...if I "sneak attack" it then it denies the flash. At this point I think I'll get a new MB...this one was a frys bundle special anyway. Perplexing problem....would be fun if it wasnt such a pain in the butt.....

Fulmar · « **Reply #3 on:** June 24, 2007, 04:20:20 PM »

Just be careful. Vista will null the registration of your copy if too many hardware changes are detected. Especially with a new MB.

humble · « **Reply #4 on:** June 24, 2007, 06:12:21 PM »

I've never had a problem with the kingdom of gates in that regard. It's also quite possible its simply a failing MB (wasnt a very good one to start with:)). I went ahead and picked up a P5K-E. Whats funny is that the MS "live" found 135 registry errors on a clean load 1 day old?....