The Computer Problems thread!

[Dakata]

Oh, okay.

Well... unless you have a -really- strange way of sorting... :-)

What do you mean, box?

[Aridas]

I don't need to go through the list again... This is about something that broke recently, not before. I need to know exactly what it is, and knowing what the hell is always at "location 0x5b86a3c0" would be nice to know...

edit: would this be the proper thread for discussing something programming related or should I start a new one?

[Rowne]

Aridas: It could be, Aridas.  A game, a program, a driver, anything can install a service and anything can be a bad service.  You can have a fine list of services one day, install something and have a smoking pile of digital embers the next, such is the hardship of computer owning and why we must be ever vigilant and trust no program at face value.

So I'd say that checking the services is still worth it but if you're adamant it's not that then it could be anything, it could be a program interfering with a service, it could be a service setup with bad options or anything.  Is it only svchost that ever crashes (GPF, for the original term) on you or are there other programs?  Does that point of memory it specifies ever vary?  All of this is helpful information.

The most important question is: what have you changed on your system recently?  Backtracking what you've done to the point where the error started is usually a good way of solving it if it isn't purposefully malicious.  I end up doing that every now and then and I find it extremely helpful.

Other than that, not sure what else I can suggest.

llearch: So true, heh.  Much like security, Microsoft just can't write a clean file system.  They're incapable of it.

[Aridas]

(depends on if you include winfs with that statement, because i'm sure you haven't used it)

Since I don't know what could be causing this, but it just happened recently when I went to come here with IE I got the error, so it must at least be something IE uses.

and could you answer my question?

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Aridas: there's no way to tell what's at location 0x5b86a3c0, since the memory structure varies by machine, in detail.

ie, what's at that point on -my- machine is different to what's at that point on -your- machine. Without, say, a memory dump, we really can't tell (and even with one, I doubt I could tell) what's at that area, other than generally - ie, it's at 0x5000000, so it's above the usual memory area, and into the service area.

but you knew that anyway, so that's not helpful. :-/

There -is- a possibility of it being a memory issue, but it's more likely to be a code problem. Still, running memtest86 (memtest86.org, I think) over it wouldn't hurt - leave it churning overnight, and see what it comes back with in the morning.

Other than that, well, I think Rowne has covered it all.

[Rowne]

I was thinking that too llearch but wouldn't the possibility exist that something else could cross into that area of memory at some time and he'd get an error in at least one other application?

Oh and no Aridas, I don't use WinFS.  WinFS scares the living hell out of me.

[Aridas]

I don't think anyone does. Last I heard, it's been pulled.

And llearch: I remember trying to look this up, and someone had a similar scvhost problem, but it was in 0x0000a3c0 instead, I believe... Is this just freaky coincidence, or is there possibly something purposely doing this?

[Rowne]

I still say it's a bad service ... ActiveX can install those if you happen to use Microsoft Internet Explorer a lot.  At least, it used to be able to anyway as far as I can recall, possibly through an exploit.

... but nobody ever listens to me.  <.<  Now I know how Tim the Enchanter feels.

----

Oh and yes, this is just in jest and I realize that I'm probably even wrong about the problem.  If it helps, groovy.  Just noting that I'm not actually offended, irked, annoyed, mildly irritated or anything of the sort!  I'm feeling quite peppy, in fact.

[Nikki]

...

Xze's Scanner isn't scanning greens or browns...

[Rowne]

I wish I could help you, Xze ... but I know next to nothing about scanners, since I don't have one, per se.  Well, I do but it's over four years old and it was used twice before being put into storage.  So there's nothing I can really add.

Just noting that I'm not ignoring your plea, I did take a look around the 'net but I didn't turn up anything.

[mini-lion]

What do you think Rowne corrupt driver? maybe look for a updated one on there site or it could actually be a physical fault which would be bad, unless you've screwed with something in the scan settings.

[Nikki]

the only thing i've done is change the DPI from 2400 to 300 and change the quality from photo to illustration. (sized my pics down quite a bit ^^;)

[Aridas]

I don't know why it's choosing now to fail, but I swear I never did anything. It never happened before a couple days ago, and I didn't actually do anything at that time. anyway, I'll ask this again since I didn't get an answer before: Could I post a programming-related question here? it possibly needs someone to do some hands-on work to help me achieve my goal, though...

edit: Messing with some windows services and turning off the ones I didn't need just out of obsession for all these tiny performance boosts, I found that error reporting had been turned off, and in between all the usual messages that i got after my comp crashed, one of the reports sent gave me the solution for one of those crashes that my RAM/board/CPU/PSU might need replacing. I'm already going to replace them anyway, so... if it's that, it's that.

[Rowne]

mini-lion: That's a good call, actually.  I'm surprised drivers didn't occur to me because I've had drivers go collectively tits-up from fiddling around with options and changing things myself and the only way to remedy that was to reinstall the drivers.  Drivers are rarely the most stable or sane piece of software on any machine.

This reminds me of my old Hauppage TV in board, which I eventually had to rip out of my PC and get rid of.  The drivers were depressingly bad for that and frequently caused me to get bluescreens, in XP, when trying to capture video.  I knew I should've gone for a better brand.

But yeah, anything can cause drivers to go off-kilter and it's a good default suggestion to try and reinstall existing or new drivers.

Aridas: I wouldn't see why programming questions wouldn't be welcome here.  If it were my choice I'd say; knock yourself out.

Oh and that error ... heh, it looks like Llearch was right.  I would've suspected that some other application would've occupied that area of memory at sometime (possibly at boot) but it looks like I'm wrong and it really is the RAM.  If you haven't, grab Memtest like he wisely suggested.

Memtest isn't something you can just scan with and be done with though, for an accurate reading you need to leave it going for at least 24 hours.  If you don't get errors after the first hour, you might be okay RAM wise, after the first six hours, you can probably start feeling relieved and after the 24 hour mark, if you still haven't found any, you should be feeling very relieved.  At least, that's my experience with Memtest anyway.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Aridas: svchost is a service wrapper - there's usually three to five of them running, so "svchost died" tells you nothing but that something died.

So picking up two different ones in two different areas is like, well.. yeah. Do I really need to provide an analogy? :-)

Rowne: depends on the speed of your memory. I'd say at least one full complete test through, though, which, IME, has taken 6 hours or so on a 2Gb server. But then, that was a dual-pro, 3Gb, hyperthreading server, so YMMV. :-)

[Rowne]

Longer though if you want to detect CPU cache issues.

At least, if I remember my hardware stuffs correctly ... or is that knowledge outdated?  Might well be.

[Nikki]

*kills her scanner*


PIECE OF &^$%

[Rowne]

If it weren't for shipping costs, Xze, I'd buy you a new scanner.  I'm like that.  'Sides, you give the forums plenty of art, you'd deserve it.

[Nikki]

i'm only worried that when i complete that Drawing for my Onii-chan it won't get the colors right ;; his draggy is Green T~T

[Aridas]

Aridas: svchost is a service wrapper - there's usually three to five of them running, so "svchost died" tells you nothing but that something died.

Yeah, but lots of specific things die when I let it die. That's the important part. And it's always this exact address that's very similar to the error I found on the internet, which was at 0x0000a3c0 instead. Do you think the fact they both happen at 0x----a3c0 means something?

Anyway, my other question... Part of the source for Open Cubic Player is an archive decoder for a VERY specific kind of file. The only one I know of for this filetype. If I might quote the player's source directly, ".BPA-files are from REMEDY's "DeathRally(TM)", and are crypted file-librarys." That's all well and good, but the player doesn't allow me to save the files so I can play them in something ELSE. OCP is DOS-ish and doesn't get along with Windows. The code itself is vague with its comments, and only someone with a good knowledge of.... whatever this is... can make sense of it. Would anyone like to help me figure out how to extract the things from the archive that the player will only... play, using the archive reader's code?

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Aridas: My point was, if "svchost" dies, it's not all five that die, but just one. And "svchost" itself doesn't tell you what it was that actually fell over - although, since it always happens in the same place, chances are it's the same code.

And then you get everything else that depends on whatever it was dies as well. If it's a part of the network structure, as seems likely, that can include all sorts of stuff. :-/

What did you want to extract? Chances are, since it's already encrypted and then compressed (or possibly the other way around) that it's not put in a nice easy way to extract, say, the sound files.

Not that I'm the right person to help you anyway, but I could possibly provide some pointers...

[Aridas]

Well, I haven't had any problems with it recently, after having disabled some services I didn't actually have use for. It was probably one of those but I'll complain again if it comes back.

As for the other thing, the stuff in the archive is a bunch of songs and stuff, s3m format I think. They seem to know that, and be able to play them, and give a file list, but... Since I have 0 programming knowledge, I not only can't understand the code that deals with making sense of the archive, but I wouldn't know what to do to make it into some sort of an extractor... I'm imagining since they have code that deals with "regular" archives like zip and rar, that it would be possible to actually do an extraction if I just knew how to do anything important...

[Dakata]

'Nother problem. Whee. Computers are evil.

My little brother's computer is being stupid. Whenever he starts it up, it'll just say 'Operating system not 'found'. If I unplug all of the cords and plug 'em back in, he'll be able to use it until he shuts it down (then it'll do it again). Any of you dorky people know (or think you know) how to fix it?

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

sounds like the battery on the motherboard might be a bit suspect.

Those are usually, I say, usually, fairly easy to get hold of. If it hasn't been soldered in place, it's usually a CR-2032 button cell. Don't quote me on that. :-)

[Nikki]

'Nother problem. Whee. Computers are evil.

My little brother's computer is being stupid. Whenever he starts it up, it'll just say 'Operating system not 'found'. If I unplug all of the cords and plug 'em back in, he'll be able to use it until he shuts it down (then it'll do it again). Any of you dorky people know (or think you know) how to fix it?

use a mallet.

[Vidar]

'Nother problem. Whee. Computers are evil.

My little brother's computer is being stupid. Whenever he starts it up, it'll just say 'Operating system not 'found'. If I unplug all of the cords and plug 'em back in, he'll be able to use it until he shuts it down (then it'll do it again). Any of you dorky people know (or think you know) how to fix it?

Make sure all cd's and floppy disks are removed.
Check the BIOS to see if the boot-order includes the hard disk with the operating system (windows, linux, dos, amiga-os).
If al that fails, take the computer to a trusted computer geek. The hard disk may be damaged, and you may need to re-install everything it had.
Does the computer get any sudden inpacts (like your little brother kicking it when he loses at quake  )?

[Dakata]

Make sure all cd's and floppy disks are removed.

They are.

Check the BIOS to see if the boot-order includes the hard disk with the operating system (windows, linux, dos, amiga-os).

And how do I do that?

Does the computer get any sudden inpacts (like your little brother kicking it when he loses at quake  )?

Yep. But he doesn't play Quake. He plays his little Pokemon ROMs and stuff.

[Vidar]

Make sure all cd's and floppy disks are removed.

They are.

Good.

Check the BIOS to see if the boot-order includes the hard disk with the operating system (windows, linux, dos, amiga-os).

And how do I do that?

Oh dear. 
Never mind, if you don't know where it is, then you probably haven't changed it.

Does the computer get any sudden inpacts (like your little brother kicking it when he loses at quake  )?

Yep. But he doesn't play Quake. He plays his little Pokemon ROMs and stuff.

That could be your problem. Hard disks don't like getting thumped about. You probably have a bad sector at an important piece on the HD. You might want to a) replace the hard disk, and b) smack your little brother about if he hits / kicks / touches / looks severely at the computer  .

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Of course, you could just take advantage of the situation to beat your little brother up. After all, isn't that what big brothers are for? :-)

[Blazehawk]

Check the BIOS to see if the boot-order includes the hard disk with the operating system (windows, linux, dos, amiga-os).

And how do I do that?

Just in case, here you go. I have had issues where boot orders got changed for appearantly no reason, so it wouldn't hurt to look, methinks:

I was making a detailed explanation, but I think this page covers it much better: http://www.cyberwalker.net/faqs/reinstall-reformat-winxp/enter-BIOS.html

Look through the options on your screen to find something such as Boot Order. You should see hard drives, cd drives, etc., you might have to access it by pressing Enter on it before it will show you.  Look at the capacity, brand, etc of the drives it shows. Is the one with the correct operating system selected either first, or second with the CD drive first?  If not, try using the first option. If the CD drive is first, try switching it to the drive containing the OS. After this, go back to the main BIOS menu and select Save & Exit. Your computer will reboot, and hopefully all will be well.

Does the computer get any sudden inpacts (like your little brother kicking it when he loses at quake  )?

Yep. But he doesn't play Quake. He plays his little Pokemon ROMs and stuff.

That could be your problem. Hard disks don't like getting thumped about. You probably have a bad sector at an important piece on the HD. You might want to a) replace the hard disk, and b) smack your little brother about if he hits / kicks / touches / looks severely at the computer  .

Oh, and about the hard drive possibly having bad sectors...you could try booting your computer with something like this: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/index.html
You'd have to pick the utility that matches your hard drive manufacturer for it to work the best. It could look at your disk for you and see if there is anything it can do to fix it. Be careful though, as some of these might ask to reformat your drive...