Admin - Check this out

[tymzend]

Well, I had an issue after putting service pack 2 and Hoster 3.0 on where I couldn't get the singers display to work. I also had upgraded to the latest ATI drivers, dated 11/30/04.

I boot back to my other hard drive with Hoster 2.219 and Service Pack 1, and it works fine. So, I put Hoster 3.0 on the backup drive, and it works fine with Service Pack 1.

So, tonight, I decide I'm gonna sit down and fix the problem. I boot back to my main hard drive with SP2 and Hoster 3.0. Someone suggested going back and putting on the drivers that came with the install disk for the video card. So, I did.

I reboot the PC after install, and the display settings were set really high, so I back them down to 1024 x 768, and I get the dreaded blue screen of death. Reboot again, change the settings, blue screen of death.

I reboot yet again, and try to go to the help center for windows, and I get an error that some .dll file is missing.

So, I go back to my backup hard drive, and the same error for the help center.

I'm not saying that I didn't mess this up. I have 4 PC's on a network at my house, and am the back-up IT person at my place of employment, so I'm not totally retarded when it comes to PC's, but I can't seem to figure this one out.

I have a show tomorrow, and the back-up hard drive seems to work fine with Hoster, but if it goes down, I'm hosed.

Where should I start on trying to fix this? Just reinstall everything? I'd feel better just shipping the PC back to MTU so you guys could take a look at it, but I'm sure you'd probably need it long enough where I'd have to skip a show or 2.

Yes, I could have a virus. I'm not ruling anything out. I'm not saying I didn't do something to screw it up. I just want to fix it, but as touchy as these systems seem to be, frankly, I don't trust myself to have to re-set the whole thing back up.

Doug, I think you have my work number. If you want to call me to discuss, please do. 8-5pm CST.

Otherwise, any suggestions are appreciated. If you think I should just dump my music over to my back-up external hard drive and start over, let me know. But someone will need to post a detailed set-up for one of these PC's, so I can make sure I set it back up EXACTLY the way it came in the box to me.

Thanks

[Beavis]

did you try and do a restore to an earlier date ??

[tymzend]

No, I haven't. System Restore is turned off, per MTU instructions with the PC.

"CRITICAL! Make sure these settings are as indicated below:

Disable System Restore - Start > Settings > Control Panel> System > System Restore Tab. Tick the "Turn off System Restore on all Drives". This is a static function that only triggers when a new program is installed or modified. You DO want to be able to restore to a prior state before you install a new program that may "break" Windows."

I had no reason to believe that the video driver disc that came with the PC would break windows, so I did not create a restore point prior to installing.

There are a couple of restore points that go back about 9 months, and I could do that if need be.

[Beavis]

ive never disabled my system restore and have never had any problems.

[MTUSUPPORT]

It probably was something with the Video drivers, since they were installed on top of SP2. This is what I would say the problem is. What you should beable to do is boot to your other drive, then run the Drive Image software, if your system came with this. Most likely it did, since you are stating that you can boot to the 2nd drive.

This is the first thing that I would try, I have about 6 computers I am working on now, so it will be more than a week before I could actually fix this if you sent it back to us, so I don't know how long you would be down.

[tymzend]

Just in case, would it hurt anything if I tried to do a Windows repair using the XP cd that came with the PC?

Both drives are having Windows issues with some .dll file missing. So, I could try a Windows repair on the drive that works, and see if I can get up to speed on the working drive, then do the drive image.

Still, I don't know why I am having trouble getting the dual display to work with SP2, whether I use the drivers from the disc, or the updated drivers from ATI.

Checked all of the video settings, and from what I can tell, there are set identical. SP1 works, SP2 doesn't.

Well, that's an issue for another day.

[dlessnau]

I don't understand that "Turn Off System Restore". That feature has saved my nect several times. I love it. I also had SP 2 installed and I had some problems which I fixed by restoring to the previous version of Hoster, and before I installed SP2.