So I have this really weird problem that I am unwilling to give up on. I'm hoping someone here can help me.
I recieved an Acer Aspire 5050 laptop from a client loaded with virus' and malware. I was tasked to clean it up no matter what it took, even a format and reinstall. The machine is an AMD Turion 64 with Windows XP Media Center Edition 32bit. 1gig of ram, a 120gig harddrive, and an ATI Xtreem video card.
There are no recovery discs and the recovery partition is gone. I contacted Acer and was informed that they do not keep recovery discs for machines older then three years. The tech told me that I could purchase a retail version of XP, install it, and get the drivers from Acer's site. Fair enough.
After about three hours of trying to remove the virus' I gave up an opted for a reinstall. I have just about every OEM version of XP there is, so I pulled out an unbranded copy of XP MCE SP3 OEM and began to install. The MS Licensing sticker on the bottom of the laptop is for XP MCE.
Keep in mind, all of these problems remain consistent with two different XP Media Center Edition OEM CDs (one burned, one stamped), one XP Pro MVLS CD (stamped), and about 8 attempts to reinstall.
The text part of the install goes just fine. I did a non-quick reformat on the entire partition and began the reinstall. The format and file copy continued without issue. After the 1st reboot is where the first problem always pops up. When the install gets to "Installing Network" it hangs up. I left the machine sit there for at least 2 hours thinking it might restart after a timeout, no dice. The dots and text continue to cycle but the green bar never goes any farther.
I force rebooted (pulled the battery and power plug) the machine to continue the install. It displayed the setup failed message and continued where it left off. This time through there was no problem during Installing Network. It then continues until the language and time dialog boxes appeared. Here's where the second issue occurs. The touchpad and keyboard on the laptop stop working. I had to attach a USB keyboard and mouse to continue.
The install continued until I got to the "network setup" wizard. There it hung after I told it to "obtain IP and DNS." For a second time I had to reboot during the install. If I chose Skip the machine would start windows but hang up on installing IE 6 preferences which required an 8 sec power button hold to turn the computer off.
At the login, during most of the installs I was able to use the mouse and keyboard on the laptop but only for a few seconds before they stopped working. Then I had to go back to my USB keyboard and mouse.
When I looked at Services the "System Event Notification Service" showed a status of "Starting" and that's pretty much where it stayed. Event viewer showed "Event ID 10010 - Source DCOM: {D3938AD0-5B9D-11D1-8DD2-00AA004ABD5E}" in System and "Event ID 4353 and 4356 source EventSystem: (the same string)" in applications.
The machine seems to work fine, if I install the network drivers I can get on the Internet, etc... There are some little nuances, like I can’t start the System Control panel item from CP or right-click My Computer. Installs and uninstalls are iffy. They start, but sometimes they’ll hang up part way through the process. And, when I try to restart or shutdown, nothing happens. I have to either pull power and battery or hold down the power button for 8 seconds.
I figured it might have been a driver so I decided to reinstall again and just install the CPU driver. Same thing happens. Same Installing Network hang up and reboots, same mouse and keyboard problems, same hung up SENS and same Events in the Event Viewer. No matter which drivers I install I get the same SENS status of starting and events.
On another install I figured it might be a problem with XP SP3 and the AMD processor so I found a different XP MCE OEM CD, this one with SP2 instead of SP3 (I also tried an install with XP Pro SP2 from my volume licensing account). No difference, SAME EXACT problems. It didn't matter how many times I reinstalled (getting the same hangups each time), once in the OS the same errors in event viewer came back with the same service sitting at Starting.
I am at a loss. You'd think that if it were a memory hardware problem or motherboard problem you'd get random lockups during the install, not the same exact hang ups in the same exact place every time. I’m tempted to update the BIOS, but I am afraid that the problems would foul up the BIOS update and leave me with a brick. I did try to update the BIOS in Safe Mode (where everything seems to work fine) but walls were tossed up every step of the way. WinPhlash would not run in safe mode, Phlash16.exe failed with error.
I was also going to try to disable the on board network adapter because some of the problems seemed to center around networking. Unfortunately the BIOS was very simple and didn't allow me disable any of the on board devices.
If anyone has any ideas, I would be very grateful to hear them.
thanks
I recieved an Acer Aspire 5050 laptop from a client loaded with virus' and malware. I was tasked to clean it up no matter what it took, even a format and reinstall. The machine is an AMD Turion 64 with Windows XP Media Center Edition 32bit. 1gig of ram, a 120gig harddrive, and an ATI Xtreem video card.
There are no recovery discs and the recovery partition is gone. I contacted Acer and was informed that they do not keep recovery discs for machines older then three years. The tech told me that I could purchase a retail version of XP, install it, and get the drivers from Acer's site. Fair enough.
After about three hours of trying to remove the virus' I gave up an opted for a reinstall. I have just about every OEM version of XP there is, so I pulled out an unbranded copy of XP MCE SP3 OEM and began to install. The MS Licensing sticker on the bottom of the laptop is for XP MCE.
Keep in mind, all of these problems remain consistent with two different XP Media Center Edition OEM CDs (one burned, one stamped), one XP Pro MVLS CD (stamped), and about 8 attempts to reinstall.
The text part of the install goes just fine. I did a non-quick reformat on the entire partition and began the reinstall. The format and file copy continued without issue. After the 1st reboot is where the first problem always pops up. When the install gets to "Installing Network" it hangs up. I left the machine sit there for at least 2 hours thinking it might restart after a timeout, no dice. The dots and text continue to cycle but the green bar never goes any farther.
I force rebooted (pulled the battery and power plug) the machine to continue the install. It displayed the setup failed message and continued where it left off. This time through there was no problem during Installing Network. It then continues until the language and time dialog boxes appeared. Here's where the second issue occurs. The touchpad and keyboard on the laptop stop working. I had to attach a USB keyboard and mouse to continue.
The install continued until I got to the "network setup" wizard. There it hung after I told it to "obtain IP and DNS." For a second time I had to reboot during the install. If I chose Skip the machine would start windows but hang up on installing IE 6 preferences which required an 8 sec power button hold to turn the computer off.
At the login, during most of the installs I was able to use the mouse and keyboard on the laptop but only for a few seconds before they stopped working. Then I had to go back to my USB keyboard and mouse.
When I looked at Services the "System Event Notification Service" showed a status of "Starting" and that's pretty much where it stayed. Event viewer showed "Event ID 10010 - Source DCOM: {D3938AD0-5B9D-11D1-8DD2-00AA004ABD5E}" in System and "Event ID 4353 and 4356 source EventSystem: (the same string)" in applications.
The machine seems to work fine, if I install the network drivers I can get on the Internet, etc... There are some little nuances, like I can’t start the System Control panel item from CP or right-click My Computer. Installs and uninstalls are iffy. They start, but sometimes they’ll hang up part way through the process. And, when I try to restart or shutdown, nothing happens. I have to either pull power and battery or hold down the power button for 8 seconds.
I figured it might have been a driver so I decided to reinstall again and just install the CPU driver. Same thing happens. Same Installing Network hang up and reboots, same mouse and keyboard problems, same hung up SENS and same Events in the Event Viewer. No matter which drivers I install I get the same SENS status of starting and events.
On another install I figured it might be a problem with XP SP3 and the AMD processor so I found a different XP MCE OEM CD, this one with SP2 instead of SP3 (I also tried an install with XP Pro SP2 from my volume licensing account). No difference, SAME EXACT problems. It didn't matter how many times I reinstalled (getting the same hangups each time), once in the OS the same errors in event viewer came back with the same service sitting at Starting.
I am at a loss. You'd think that if it were a memory hardware problem or motherboard problem you'd get random lockups during the install, not the same exact hang ups in the same exact place every time. I’m tempted to update the BIOS, but I am afraid that the problems would foul up the BIOS update and leave me with a brick. I did try to update the BIOS in Safe Mode (where everything seems to work fine) but walls were tossed up every step of the way. WinPhlash would not run in safe mode, Phlash16.exe failed with error.
I was also going to try to disable the on board network adapter because some of the problems seemed to center around networking. Unfortunately the BIOS was very simple and didn't allow me disable any of the on board devices.
If anyone has any ideas, I would be very grateful to hear them.
thanks