Oh how I hate computers!!

I am in the process of trying to install a carPC. A small low power PC in the boot, connected to a touch screen monitor in place of my car's double din CD/radio.

In theory it is simple:
Buy a 160w PSu transformer and wire it to the battery, ground & 12v ignition from the car. Attach it to your PC, connect the touchscreen, add an AMP and there you have it, a do it all solution to stuff you never realised you needed!

That was before I realised I am hated by all things computer. I am on my 4th computer attempt, with parts nicked from two others. All previous PCs used to work fine, but now just flat out refuse to accept an OS being installed on them. I have tried every possible combination of parts & settings and yet all i find is that CD/DVD drives work in some computers, but not in others, hard drives work in some computers...then refuse to in others. I can install Windows XP...but not Windows 7... literally every simple task is blocked for some reason.

Even with the donation of an entire Dell computer from Kalniel (using RAM & DVD drive) and graphics card, hard drive, windows XP home from barker967 I am still stuffed. I can't even imagine where I would be without their donations!

Having finally butchered XP onto a computer (windows 7 will not install for no apparent reason) I am harshly reminded just how useless Xp is compared to windows 7. Gone are the plug it in & watch it work days, gone are the simple updates downloaded & installed, and gone are the idiot proofing of everything.

I have spent 9 hours working on it today, and 5 hours yesterday and £300...not including the last 2 weeks of planning & experimenting leading up to it! Sorting out the hardware was meant to be the easy step, I still need to wire everything up (PC, AMP, speakers etc) in my bloody car, then test it all! :(

I hate my life! [/rant]

Oops.......buy a cheap laptop & break it down?

I don't want to know how you've sunk £300 into this!

Maybe it's trying to combine so much old and new that's causing hassle - everything tends to be tested only on components from the same era, and even XP is a bit modern for the kinds of components you're talking about (yes.. you have a windows ME license that comes with the Dell ;) )

Is your windows 7 32bit? V. important for older stuff, obviously.

This chap had no problems installing win 7 on a p3 - he used a bit of a procedure though!:
http://www.sevenforums.com/installat...ntium-3-a.html

I wish I had £300 to sink into a project like this ! Think youself lucky !

That said I do think that the mixture of old and new is your issue. You tried Linux ?

Yeh, I sold my old car & sold the CD player etc separately so had the money. I have been wanting to do this for years (pre uni days) and figured now would be a good time. It was the touch screen & mounting that sucked me dry, £220 for that, then the PSU, GPS and software finished me off.

You asked me why didn't use that converter you PM'd me Kal...i needed a PSU that could shut down & start up with the car, handle the jumps in voltage when the car starts & control the AMP. Had to go for quality over quantity for that. Luckerly the PC I have finally shoe horned XP onto is alright with it, had a test run earlier. I just hate XP. :(


I think it is the old hardware vs new. it is a fairly modern PSU & motherboard im using now (E1250(?) 1.2 ghz dual core and onboard VGA & HDMI, 7.1 surround sound etc motherboard...all i can remember) and IDE hard drive & DVD drive.

Tomorrow I will take take one of my Sata HDDs and Sata DVD drive off my main rig (<<specs) and try that. After that i am royally stuffed for ideas!

People forget that building a computer isn't just about slotting parts together, you have to get parts that are made to go together and know how to set them.

Personally I'd have suggested starting with a known working motherboard/CPU/RAM combo and gone from there, as HDD/DVD's and Graphics cards are the most "replaceable" parts. Once you have a working machine, you can then experiment with swapping out the CPU or RAM to see how that works.


EDIT: Then again you may already be part way there :P

If you're struggling with Windows 7 on an IDE drive, have you tried putting the DVD and HDD on different channels? Also worth making sure the jumpers are set correctly for whatever setup you've attached them, either Master on HDD/Slave on DVD or both Master's if they're on different channels. Remember that one always used to catch me out with the systems at work.

The motherboard I have only has the one IDE. I have taken the Sata HDD & DVD drive out of my computer and formatted the HDD it, so im using them now. No IDE at all.


Now when I tried to install Windows 7, the first time it froze half way through installation, then restarted...then an error message came up half way through the 'setup windows' stage saying the computer had unexpectedly restarted, restart it and continue installation. This just loops back on itself!

I took the hard drive out, put it in another computer and formatted it again so as to wipe the broken install off. Now when I try to re-install Windows &, after bios instead of saying 'press any key to..' I just get 'BOOT MGR not found, ctrl alt del to restart'. Again, it gets stuck in a loop.

This is with CD Drive set to boot from first, all bios option set to fail safe defaults and an empty hard drive. I have tried with 2 different Windows & 32bit discs without any change. I have have reset the CMOS as well.

One thing It is doing is detecting the Sata drives as IDE (listing them under the IDE channels), and when i set everything to fail safe I get a message asking me to set the Sata drives to ACHI(sp?) drives, but it counts down so quickly before i get to make a selection I never get a full chance to read it. Either way i have tried both options (yes & no) and it doesnt make much difference.

I dont think its the computer thats broken, Windows XP installed on it fine...I just don't get why Windows 7 wont! :(

(can this be moved to hardware please, this rant might as well be a request for help! ;))

An upate! :D

I managed to hack & slash windows 7 onto the computer (different BIOS setting combinations) and got it up & running...only to get BSOD due to 'Mermory Management'. After a few of those ruining my life, I restarted to run a mem test..which came back clean. I promptly restarted the PC and spent 20mins updating(windows updates), downloading & installing(winrar, chrome, MSN stuff - nothing fancy) everything...almost getting my hopes up that the storm had cleared.....only to restart the computer & it freezes at ''verifying dmi pool data''. :(

I ran the repair programs from the disc, first time it came back clean, but still wouldn't start so i ran it again, only for it to realise that something was amiss. The first repair failed, but realising that this PC is only playing game with me I ran it a second time, 20mins later it is still ''attempting repairs''...the saga continues!

The Matrix or Skynet never had these problems! :(


Edit: ''Root cause found:

Boot status indicates that the OS booted successfully'' ....so there you have it apparently I am making this all up! :(


Edit2: Now to restart it...still stuck there at verifying DMI pool data despite the PC telling me its fine! I hate this so much, I have done this a million times with various computers & I have never had this many problems...I've not even tried putting it into my car yet!


I am running out of ideas fast the specs:
Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2H (built in VGA/DVI)
Intel Dual Core e2180 2.00GHZ
Western Digital 2500AAKS Sata
2GB (tried 1gb) Corsair XMS2 DDR2 6400 (800mhz)
DVD lightscribe Sata

Still stuck at this Verifying DMI pool Data. Windows 7 worked fine (temporarily admittedly), Windows XP worked fine. Windows 7 just keeps tripping up on everything. Any ideas?

Cheers guys

This link suggests nvidia driver issues http://social.technet.microsoft.com/...3-be0b8aca029f
Different error but similar frustration

32bit install as kalneil mentioned?

mine did that verifying DMI pool data thing.. Try booting with the Windows 7 disc in, but let the "press any button to boot from disc" thing time-out.

Yep, its 32bit. And matty - I tried that but the computer obviously saw me coming - it would freeze up on that as well! :p


Re-installed Windows 7 again and got it running, im too scared to do anything to it incase I upset it & put myself back to square one though! Just takings things very slowly & restarting it often to see what causes the problems. Thanks for the link Rob, will have a good read through of it! :)

is all this running the 12v to 240 inverter ?

or have you installed it via mains power ?

redirected to Hardware by moi. with expiring redirect link to see if this weekend brings you any help :)

This is all via the mains power, I tested the computer on the 12v 240v converter to make sure the converter had enough power & it fan it quite happily. Since then its all been hooked up the mains!

Thanks Zak! :)

i have had issues with win 7 and certain mobos where i have had to manually set al the timings and voltages to get it stable

I've found that memtest can find errors if it is obvious. Best is to try prime95 in windows.
If it says memory management error then it is related to memory.

I personally find Win7 more tolerable to bad memory than XP though.

Why are you using a DC to AC convertor? Just aget a pico psu that will work off 12 volts directly!

Think I would of spent the money towards an Ipad, and used that in the car, seems like the easiest option these days

I still think that Linux is worth a go, would be more customiszable for what Andeh wants to do with it too.

Don't forget Linux is less demanding on older hardware than Windows is.

I had a thought. How about visualizing android or some other mobile os? They are specifically designed for small touchscreens so it might work well :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by peterb

Why are you using a DC to AC convertor? Just aget a pico psu that will work off 12 volts directly!

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Yeah deftly, just make sure its capable of stabilizing the voltage as I don't think the output from cars is very consistent.

I need something that will start up & shut down with the car, as well as handle the big fluctuations in the voltage (engine crank etc). The 160w PSu I have is also a much smaller & neater package. :)

The PC itself isn't too shabby(dual core 2.0ghz, 2gb 800mhz ram etc) and runs windows 7 effortlessly. I need to keep it windows based as I am using a bit of software called Centrafuse to run as a front end, big touch friendly display. :)