[lug] funky system problem

[karl horlen]

I've got a workhorse windows xp system (I know,
oxymoron) that I've used for probably 6 years now.  I
use it to handle all my day to day tasks and in
particular it has two advanced audio recording cards
(hard to believe but actually true) that yamaha
discontinued a few years back.  so no vista drivers or
new updates to the xp drivers exist.  

This system does everything I need it to.  I have no
need to buy a new system if I don't have.  And I have
a vested interest in keeping it up and running purely
for the audio card configuration / capability.

Lately, it's starting to have some intermittent boot
errors that are less than obvious to fix but possible
signs of impending doom.  The odd part is that once
the system DOES boot, 95% of the time it works
perfectly fine for the entire session which is usually
about a 12 - 16 hour day!

Scenario goes like this.

About a week or three ago, I noticed my PS2 optical
mouse would freeze up in the middle of a session.  It
would still be lit so I know it was receiving juice. 
I'd plug in a usb tablet with mouse to get around the
loss of mouse input and my session would be fine.  I'd
shutdown windows (cleanly) and call it a day.

Next day I'd power on the system after an 8 hour
shutdown period and then the boot problems would
begin.  Sometimes the boot would allow me to get as
far as entering my windows password and then
spontaneously reboot.  Sometimes it reboots after I
select my windows hw profile (first pure windows boot
screen) and hit enter.  Sometimes it reboots after
entering the password and starting to load windows. 
And I believe it also sometimes reboots prior to
getting to anything windows period which helps to
eliminate the possibility that it's a windows problem.

The kicker is that after about 4 or 5 of these
combined soft reboots and or my interim hard reboots,
I will eventually log in to windows xp and everything
works fine for the entire day!  I shutdown for the
night and then the sequence of boot errors repeats
immediately at the beginning of the next day's
session.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, my keyboard
started dying as well.

So I replaced the PS2 keyboard and PS2 mouse with
different ones.  My keyboard works fine and I hate the
ps2 ball mouse so I just use the tablet usb mouse.

I've got mouse and keyboard working but every time I
boot in the morning, it still takes me 4 or 5 tries to
get the system up and running.

Anybody in the group have any ideas?  I've never had a
mobo go bad on me but this might be the case here
starting with the ps2 ports.  Any way to confirm a bad
mobo?

I've had weird reboot issues on two systems in my past
that I fixed with new power supplies and will try that
next.  But my experience has shown me that power
supply problems usually prevent the system from
working during the session.   And that's not really
the case here. The odd part is that once the system is
up and running, it appears to work fine until the next
reboot.  Or at least 90% of the time.

FYI:

- I've backed up my data 
- virus scans reveal no problems
- I do notice that touching various electrical items
in my house do produce static shocks on occasion. 
This has been going on for a couple of years since
I've lived in this place so maybe it finally bit me
and fried something on the mobo?

- I haven't tried reinstalling windows but I'm not
sure that's the problem and doing that will take at
least a full day to put everything back including the
dreaded but effective audio cards which were initially
a nightmare to configure back in the day.

- Alternatively, my tablet / table driver might be
causing some kind of issue as well.

SIDENOTES:

- Since my old audio cards have discontinued drivers,
does anybody know if I buy a new replacement system
with windows vista (32 bit), does vista have a
compatability mode to work with older drivers?  if so
does the thing actually work?

- Since most new consumer off the shelf systems come
with limited PCI slots, often in favor of the new PCI
X with maybe 1 or 2 standard PCI slots, if the
standard PCI slots are maxed out, is it possible to
stick a std PCI card in a PCI X slot (backwards
compatability)?

Sorry for the long windows centric post.  Something
tells me it's electrical in nature.  Figured someone
out there can help me zero in on the problem based
upon experience and whether I should just buy a new
system and move on.  


      ____________________________________________________________________________________
Never miss a thing.  Make Yahoo your home page. 
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs