Computer Meltdown (AKA the anual help Vince's computer thread)

[Vince]

...trying to set up my computer at home has been a nightmare.

My family uses a wireless network that for the most part I set up. When I got here yesterday, I installed a wireless card on my PC, it worked fine, and I was happy. However, when I went to put the case back on the computer, I inadvertently bumped the computer (not very hard...not sure why it did ANYTHING to it), and it shut down immediately. It then would not start up -- it would freeze at some point during startup. Running Windows XP, it then asked how I would like to reboot the computer on the manual restart. I asked it to go to the last known good setup, and it did, without the wireless card installed.

It started up fine, detected the new hardware, and asked me to install it. So I re-inserted the CD, it seemed to go fine...until the end, when it said something along the lines of 'hardware is protected, install failed.' The card was recognized in the control panel as 'network controller,' but I could do nothing with it. I deleted the hardware from the system, restarted and tried to re-install it. The same thing happened. I turned off my computer for the night, until this evening when I tried again.

Now the computer won't even start up. At first, the power switch wouldn't do anything at all. No fans, no CPU, no nothing. After disconnecting and re-connecting every cord and cable in the back of the computer, it still didn't work. On a whim, I turned off the power strip, turned it back on, and miraculously, the fans whirred, and the computer tried to start.

Tried, being the operative word. Now, apparently, my BIOS Checksum is bad. I'm at my wits end, and I have no idea what to do to fix my computer.

Help!

[Peregrine]

Do you have an onboard network controller? If you do, and it's still enabled in the BIOS, it can cause a lot of strange problems once you plug in a new network card. It's also possible that you have power supply issues, having the computer power off unexpectedly can be a sign of that. Do you have a lot of fancy stuff in your computer like high-end graphics cards, multiple hard drives, etc? Adding the extra card could be taking you over your power supply's capability.

[Vince]

Hrm. Well, I do have my old network controller still plugged in, so maybe that was a problem. I'll take it out ASAP since I don't really need it anymore. No big fancy things...one HD, a GeForce 4 Ti 4600 card...and I have a huge power supply (I think it's 400), so I don't know if that is/was the problem.

Now, the computer is starting up with no problems (which, while cool, is frustrating as hell, because I didn't do anything different). However, the computer will not allow me to install the wireless card. Goes to install, recognizes it, accesses the Linksys CD...then says "An error occurred while installing. Access denied."

I guess this is a move to the positive, but it's still frustrating. Tomorrow I guess I'll call Linksys support.