[xenithon]

Evening all. I need some urgent help please. My PC was (finally) going strong - clean, all apps installed, everything worked smoothly. A lightning storm knocked out the power twice in 5 minutes, and only then did it materialize that my UPS is fubar - such that my PC switched off within 5 seconds. After the second time I disconnected everything until the storm was over.

Now my PC won't boot!! If I leave it to start normally, in the middle of loading windows (while showing the progress bar) it restarts. With all other options, such as "safe mode", it lists the drivers it loads and when it gets to "gagp30kx.sys" it sits for 10-12 seconds and then the PC reboots - in an infinite loop. I tried disconnecting all USB devices - did not help. I tried taking the two memory sticks out and putting them in one at a time - didn't help.

Any idea what it could be? I have an Asus K8V with an A64 3000+, 2x512MB RAM, and a Geforce 6600GT AGP. Is it the graphics card? Is it the graphics card driver? Is there any way to solve this without a re-install or repair (the latter always messes up my system)?

Any assistance appreciated!

Cheers,
X

PS. accessing the site through a laptop

 

[duderuud]

What might be, is that the power-case (don't know if that's the right english word) is damaged. I have had the same problem with the pc auto-rebooting when it started up, changing the power-case helped...

Also, it might be the hard disk that's damaged...

I'm not sure about either, just giving some hints on what it might be.

A pic of a power-case I'm talking about...

 

[xenithon]

Hi guys,

I removed both memory sticks and tried with one only, one at a time - no luck. I changed AGP settings to lowest speed in the BIOS - no luck. I cannot try onboard video - do not have onboard video

Another problem is that I tried booting with the XP SP2 CD for the recovery console - but my HDD is not found as it needs the SATA drivers....and I do not have a floppy drive at all!

I was thinking of getting a spare AGP card tomorrow (simply one, no extra power molex needed) and trying that to see if it is maybe the card??

X

 

[m0nKeY bUsiNeSs]

xenithon,

It is quite possible that a file got corrupted when the power went out. If I recall correctly it is the file AFTER the one being displayed that is the problem(the name appears after the file loads). If you really wanted to just replace the file then I'd suggest doing a web search to figure out what comes after gagp30kx.sys in the boot process.

Otherwise it is fairly simple to do a repair install. It will keep your data and installed programs, however you will need to reinstall the windows updates.

If you want to do a repair install and boot off your SATA hard drive you might need to make a windows answer file. nlite is a good quick tool to do that. Use the integrate driver feature and make a bootable cd.

 

[vagarach]

Firstly, many, many people have the same problem as you. The file in question is a special AGP 'filter' for the VIA KT800 chipset your motherboard uses. Since your pc was involved in an electrical storm it is hard to tell if this is just a manifestation of a hardware problem, or a software one. One person had success using an IDE drive instead of SATA, and you might try this on the off chance it works. I have seen this kind of thing (hanging at a certain file) also happen with a hdd that had failing clusters. Seeing as nothing software based changed, it would indicate a hardware problem, and believe it or not, swapping components is the only way to solve this. I would first replace the graphics card, followed by the mobo. Preferably one with an nForce chipset, VIA has always had some not-so-compatible chipsets in the past. Given your legacy hardware, a basic one should be quite cheap. And a re-install is inevitable, so you may want to start planning for one.

Good luck!

 

[chef8489]

Quote:

Originally Posted by duderuud What might be, is that the power-case (don't know if that's the right english word) is damaged. I have had the same problem with the pc auto-rebooting when it started up, changing the power-case helped... Also, it might be the hard disk that's damaged... I'm not sure about either, just giving some hints on what it might be. A pic of a power-case I'm talking about...

That is called a power supply. The pic looks Like a PC power and cooling. One of the best and the only ones I use for my personal systems.

 

[xenithon]

Hi guys. Two things to mention:

1. the installation was originally done with an nLite-created CD. That had integrated the SATA drivers, the latest updates (at that time), some settings/tweaks etc. If I boot off that CD now, I only get the option to delete the partition and re-install (it finds the HDD, but say "unkown" next to the partition and that it is 76738MB with 76738MB free - which is incorrect). It thus does not have an option of repair install or going to recovery console, which I would have used to replace the file.
2. I suspect it is not hardware, for this reason: the UPS was connected and failed at keeping the PC on long enough to shutdown gracefully. It just powered off after 5 second. That means that there wasn't a surge of electricity that went through the system, as it was, for those 5 seconds, working off the UPS.

Cheers,
X

 

[AuroraProject]

Do you have a bootable floppy, and if so have you tried that? I'd try and repair the master boot record.

 

[ATAT]

Burn a knoppix CD, boot, copy files. Done.

 

[xenithon]

Sorted, finally!!

What an absolute mission. I won't trouble you guys with all the nitty gritty (unless you really want it

) but essentially I had to open the box, attach an FDD drive (as I do not have one in my system), boot off a standard XP CD (my primary slipstreamed nLite CD did not work), load the SATA drivers off the floppy, get into recovery console, did a chkdisk /R and a fixboot, and hey presto....Bob's your uncles

First thing I did was did a defrag, cleaned the system with CCleaner and backed up with another Acronis image - I was slacking so last one I did was about two months ago.

Thanks for the help guys!
X

 

[vagarach]

That's good to know!