Posts by granitepuma10

Lately, I’ve been running into this incredibly frustrating issue where my custom lists—specifically the ones I set up for family or close friends—just aren't working properly. I actually went through the trouble of creating these lists specifically so I wouldn't have to hunt through my entire newsfeed just to see what they're up to, whether they're posting updates or just liking various pages. But now, none of those activities are showing up. It's as if the feed isn't honoring the very filters I painstakingly established. Even worse, it seems like all the historical data from their previous likes and posts has vanished entirely, almost as if they weren't even on my friend list to begin with. I know I'm not alone here; I've seen several other users complaining about similar glitches, yet nobody seems to have found a fix in any of the settings menus. I've combed through everything, and there isn't a single toggle or setting that would explain why this was suddenly disabled. Everything was functioning perfectly until this sudden breakdown, and the problem persists regardless of whether I'm using my desktop or my phone. I guess I'm just at a loss here.

I can't quite figure out what happened; I tried to get everything sorted, and I'm certain I installed the OS correctly... right now, it’s been running smoothly for about half an hour without any freezing, so I decided to check which drivers I actually need. Then, suddenly, it just froze up on me. I ended up pulling out my high-performance RAM stick and left the weaker one in, though I moved it over to the third slot just to see if that would help. Now I'm sitting here in Safe Mode trying to make sense of it all, but I guess I'm not exactly a genius when it comes to this stuff.

So, how exactly does one go about setting up that Plop Boot Manager? I suppose it’s all a matter of following the right sequence, though I suspect there might be more to it than meets the eye. One can't just wing it, I think.
I suppose I should clarify—how exactly are you planning to check the motherboard using that software suite within Hiren's BootCD? Which specific tool are you looking for?

I currently have Hiren's BootCD running, and I am using one of the diagnostic tools within the suite to run some system checks.
I suppose I might try installing a fresh version of Windows next.

I suppose there is really no point in trying to hunt down the error in this particular case
The trouble is, I simply don't have $167...

I suppose there might be some sort of trick to verify if the motherboard is actually failing? It’s possible the issue lies somewhere within Windows itself. Right now, the system manages to reach the desktop for maybe ten seconds before everything just freezes up entirely. However, when I boot using Hiren's BootCD and run into that mini XP environment, things seem fine—I can download drivers and browse the web without any issues.

I’ve run a scan on my RAM and there were no errors found. I also ran a check using HDTune, and the HDD shows absolutely no issues either. I even booted into Windows via Hiren's BootCD to perform a disk check, and everything loaded onto the desktop without a single hitch. However, just now—literally as I am sitting here typing this—I hit the desktop, it stays stable for about ten seconds, and then suddenly everything freezes, the image hangs, and the screen goes black. I’m at a bit of a loss here. It clearly isn't the graphics card because I can still see an image right up until the freeze. The hard drive is error-free, the RAM passed its tests, and I’ve inspected the motherboard; all the capacitors look perfectly fine. What on earth could be causing this? I suppose it might be a Windows issue, though I doubt it; I installed the latest version of XP from a reliable source, kept it fully updated, and I haven't heard anyone else complaining about stability issues with this build.

I have this nagging feeling that I’ve stepped into a massive mess here, but honestly, it feels like no matter what I attempt on my PC, there’s always some new catastrophe waiting around the corner...
I am somewhat unsure if it would be wise to try running a diagnostic using Hiren's BootCD to see what's actually going on.
I suppose I am dealing with an old hard drive... specifically, it gets to a point where the system prompts me regarding the screen resolution; I click yes, and then it asks if I can read the text clearly on the display. I can see everything just fine, but for some reason, I find myself unable to click "OK." I end up hitting cancel, and then the whole thing just reboots, goes through the loading sequence again, and eventually the screen just goes black.

I went ahead and wiped the partitions, formatted everything, and cleared the slate entirely. I performed a fresh installation, which seemed to go off without a single hitch—though it did prompt me for some domain settings, which I simply bypassed by hitting "skip." Everything proceeded normally until the system rebooted and began loading Windows XP. That’s when things took a turn for the worse; the monitor just cuts out completely. I tried removing the CD to see if that would push the process forward, but just as it reaches the point where the desktop should finally load, the screen goes black again. It just sits there, unresponsive, glowing with that dull orange light as if it’s stuck in standby mode.

I managed to track down a copy of Windows XP that includes all the updates through November 2014, so I’m definitely going to proceed with that installation. I've already given the power supply a thorough inspection, checked the motherboard, and made sure everything is blown out and dust-free 🙂.
Is there anything else I should probably tackle before I start tearing things down? Currently, I have this dual-boot setup—two separate Windows installations on one machine—and I was wondering if I should try some way to merge them into a single OS, since running both seems somewhat redundant, if you ask me?
As for those RAM upgrades, I think I'll pass; looking at the specs, it feels like chasing ghosts to me...

fadedorca66 said:You probably won't even hit 2.8GB of RAM since there's still an open slot on that board. And you aren't actually planning on buying more RAM for this thing, right? I wouldn't spend another dime on it if I were you.

Kernel panics and random errors can definitely come from a crappy Windows install, but they're just as likely caused by a dying hard drive or faulty RAM.
Like, maybe it tries to load steamui.dll from the disk, hits some bad sectors, and just fails.
Or if the RAM is glitching, it might load it but flip a 0 to a 1 somewhere, leaving you with a corrupt file and an error.

The thing is basically a junker at this point, so anything could be going wrong. You should probably:
- crack it open and blow out all the dust
- check the power supply too—clean the dust out and see if any capacitors are bulging
- check the capacitors on the motherboard as well
- grab a Hiren's boot CD, run a memtest, and then check the drive's SMART status to scan for bad sectors

Until you do a bit of actual maintenance like that, trying to reinstall Windows is basically just gambling. There's a huge chance something will just screw you over again.

What would you all recommend I get? $17 I suppose I should ask myself if adding another 2.8GB of RAM is actually worth the effort, or if I should just stay put with my current 768MB. It’s a bit of a dilemma, really. Given the hardware constraints we're dealing with, I wonder if the upgrade would provide a meaningful difference or if it's just more overhead I don't need. Perhaps it's worth it, but then again, maybe not. What do you all think?
So, how am I supposed to figure out which RAM stick is actually decent and which one is garbage? The real issue here is that I’ve never really bothered to inspect the capacitors—not on the power supply and certainly not on the motherboard. Now, I’m feeling a bit hesitant about tearing everything apart because, let’s be honest, I wouldn't exactly call myself an expert in hardware teardowns, which is a concern. If I use Hiren's, will I be able to run those memory tests and check the SMART status properly? Also, I suppose I should wonder if it's necessary to wipe the hard drive before I start messing around with all this... or is that overkill?

George Sanders37 said:Officially, Steam still offers support for Windows XP (http://store.steampowered.com/about/) — and so does Cup anti-cheat.

You mentioned you already tried some things, but one possible fix for that steamui.dll error might be this
If your processor doesn't support SSE2 (you can double-check that with CPU-ID), then I guess none of the methods in this thread will work for you. You should probably look here instead:
http://steamcommunity.com/discussion...5136051112046/
or maybe
http://steamcommunity.com/discussion...8415060731415/

Since you admitted your Windows installation is pretty much a mess, I suppose a real solution would just be reinstalling Windows XP from scratch and then running all the updates.

Do you have every single update installed for Windows XP (Service Pack 3 and everything released after that)? And how clean is the Windows setup on that machine?

Whether it's Cup or Ucp—if we are even talking about the same thing—I've looked into it and I know both still offer XP support, so the issue is likely just a broken setup... for instance, my downloads won't finish; they just hang at a certain percentage before throwing an error saying the download failed. I suspect I'm missing some updates. If I recall correctly, the last time I updated it was two years ago. To make matters worse, I have two different Windows installations running... Windows 0 and Windows 1, and honestly, I don't even know which one I'm actually using anymore. Neither of them will accept updates, so it seems like I might just need to wipe Windows entirely?

Guys, looking at everything you've all pointed out here, I'm starting to realize this might actually be a terrible idea... honestly, it feels nearly impossible. I was considering installing Windows 7 for pretty much two specific reasons: I need it for CS 1.6 (even though playing CS on my current setup is perfectly fine), but the real headache is the tournament scene. I need to run Ucp anti-cheat, but every time I try to install it, I get hit with either a kernel32.dll error or a message saying the file is corrupted. It’s incredibly inconsistent—sometimes it works, then the next time I boot up, it just fails again. On top of that, there's Steam; once it finishes an update, it throws a steamui.dll error and won't even launch. I've been searching like a madman and sent emails to support for both issues, but nobody seems to have a solution...
Right now, I'm sitting at 768 MB of RAM, but in a day or two, like I mentioned before, I should have 2.8 GB. Given those specs, it's probably just impossible to run Windows 7 on this machine. I do have a laptop, but whenever I fire up CS, the FPS drops down to 20 after about three rounds. I suspect it's a thermal issue or something similar, but I haven't figured out how to fix that yet. I don't want to mess anything up, but the FPS on this old desktop is actually brutal—it stays rock solid at 100.
It's highly likely that the Windows installation on this old PC is just completely trashed or messed up from a reset. I'm really hoping someone out there might have a solution or some decent advice. 😁

Larry Ortiz5 said:Hey, could you just grab that log and put it on Pastebin instead of those sketchy sites?

http://pastebin.com/

What do you mean by a "sketchy" site like Speedyshare? Honestly, I don't even know which file format I'm supposed to be using here.

Look, I've gone ahead and uploaded the file because there's simply too much data here to bother copying and pasting manually...
Link:

Everything you need should be right there in the document.

Adam Moore3 said:You aren't going to get Windows 7 running on that setup. 1 GB of RAM. Period. 🙂

Hold on—are you saying it won't work because of some technical incompatibility, or do you genuinely believe the PC is just too weak? I suppose I might be able to upgrade the memory soon; if I can get it up to 2.8 GB by tomorrow or the day after, maybe that would actually be sufficient?

I went ahead and burned a bootable DVD with Windows 7, popped it into my machine, and just got hit with a Code 5 error right at startup. This PC is a dinosaur, easily over a decade old now.
It’s running at 1.8 GHz
with only 1GB of RAM
I can't really stick with Windows XP because I can't find any supported applications anymore and I can't even run necessary updates, so I desperately need to get Windows 7 up and running. From what I've gathered through my reading, this error might not actually be caused by a bad burn on the disc, but rather an outdated motherboard that simply doesn't support the OS. I suppose I'm wondering if there is some sort of workaround or solution available here, or am I just stuck having to buy a new motherboard?