Computer/Windows won't start

sportwarrior

sportwarrior

Limp Gawd
2FA
Joined
Jun 12, 2007
Messages
311
Alright, so I woke up a few hours ago to one of those extremely unpleasant surprises that none of us ever wishes on anyone. I powered on my computer, watched it hit the mainboard splash screen... And then it dumped to a "Windows did not shut down properly. Restart in Safe Mode?" type screen. That was a slight shock, since I had shut down properly and I haven't had a problem of this type since I first installed my 2nd hard drive 2 years ago. So I hit "Start Windows Normally." The Windows splash screen shows up and I think I'm in the clear... until about 7 seconds later, the computer just resets. I can't start Windows. At all. It just resets every time I get to that splash screen. If I start in Safe Mode, it runs through all the drivers and then resets.

Now, up until this point my hard drives had been running incredibly slow. My processor had been chugging as well trying to do simple tasks like run/start/close Firefox, Adobe Acrobat/Photoshop, etc. I recently ran through a gamut of tests and fixes for the hard drives, defragging them heavily with Diskeeper and assessed the health using a few other diag programs... Everything ran successfully and my two hard drives registered as having 100% and 99% health, yet they still ran agonizingly slow, caching alllll the time and taking a long time to do it.

I had plenty of free space available on both. I have 2 gigs of working memory. I have a slightly OC'd Opty 170 doing the heavy lifting on the mainboard. Anyway, I figure this is probably a software issue at this point and might/hopefully only require a reinstall of windows. But could it be something else? Could my PSU be dead, rebooting everytime Windows tries to access anything but the basic functions of the video card? Could it be something with the Mainboard? For some reason I cannot access the F2 setup.

Last few questions... Is there anything I can do to remedy this if it's a software issue outside of reformatting/reinstalling windows? There are some programs on my computer that I no longer can reinstall and I'd like to preserve them. I'm planning on slaving the drive to another computer to access/backup the files... Is there anything I can do at that point to diagnose/solve the problem?

Thanks for any and all help, fellas. Sorry for the long post. Hopefully someone takes the time to sift through it and give me an answer.
 
Hmm.. seems as though your boot files are messed. My brothers computer was like that to. I had to copy the files from another drive and overwrite the bad ones to make it boot.
 
That's what I was thinking, but how can I identify which files are screwed up? And if I can't, what boot files do I need to recopy to get everything going again? Is it possible to do that straight off the Windows install disc?
 
You could try to run chkdsk from the windows recovery console.

1 - boot from windows XP cd
2 - press r to enter recovery console
3 - pick installation to log in to
4 - type chkdsk /p

This has worked for me many times before on boot errors and reboots.
 
If you can't boot into safe mode and check disk option didn't work than the next best step would be to run a repair of windows.

1 boot from XP cd
2 press enter
3 agree to sell your soul to MS
4 press r to initiate the repair process
5 follow normal windows load instructions
This will not erase your data.

If you do not get the option in step 4 to press r to initiate repair than you have a corrupted registry.
You can get help with this from some one besides me because I recommend plugging your hard drive into separate computer to get data and formatting/reloading your system. I have never restored a registry and not had customer complain about system stability or program corruption after doing so YMMV.

Edit: All of the above post assumes you have corrupted system files and not bad hardware.
 
Thanks for the help so far, but nothing is working. I can't get it to boot off the OS disc, and for whatever I reason I still cannot access the BIOS setup screen. F2 is just not working, even with a wired keyboard. I think I might have to try and reset the CMOS, which is a b*tch because I cannot remember any of my custom overclocking settings and to get them back I'd have to start the whole test process over again.

Why would it not be booting off the Windows CD? And why can I not access the setup screen?
 
Update... I reset the CMOS and was able to get into the BIOS. No idea what was happening there. Changed the boot priorities so it was booting straight off the CD ROM and was able to get into the Windows Setup screen off the OS disc. I ran a chkdsk out of the recovery console, as suggested by the good Dr Sandman, and was able to recover the drive from what appeared to be a few errors. The computer is now up and running, but I'm still not sure what happened. Why would the CMOS/BIOS have been affected by ANYTHING at all regarding the HD? I'm totally mystified as to why I had to reset the CMOS to get anything done.

Thanks for the help, Doc. Now I just have to buy a new pair of hard drives to fix the original problems and I should be all set.
 
Good to see your up and running again.

I used to see this all the time when I worked retail repair. The customer would always say it worked fine, nothing changed and it just all of the sudden happened. Since I wasn't ever using the computer when it happened I figure it was just a free space error or file that needed checked.

I doubt the CMOS issue you described had anything to do with the software errors fixed by chkdsk - probably just a coincidence. If your hard drives are not very old than I do not think they are the slowness issue you describe. Hard drives do not physically slow down over time. OS corruptions and bloat that always seems to happen with windows after some time cause the system to run slow. Your over clock even if it seemed to be running stable can cause hard-drive/software errors like the one you listed and can increase the speed at witch the system would seem to be getting slow. The best fix for this is to copy your data files to the second hard drive and reformat-reload windows. If you haven't reformatted-reloaded windows in a while I would bet that you will be surprised at how much faster your computer runs. Or just use the excuse to pick up one of the newer faster hard drives. BTW data drives do not cause slowdowns either I wouldn't replace both just the one with your OS. And if you plan on loading windows clean on the new hard drive it wouldn't hurt you to try to reload the os on the drive it sits on now. Just move your data to the second drive.
 
sounds like you were victim of malware molestation!..... or

Sounds like a corrupted registry problem along with a bad overclock. Could cause flaky motherboard issues with a high overclock putting to much demand on your power supply which in turn could have casued your board to be unstable enough not to take inputs.also could be from haveing your memory pushed to high. as the memory got older could have gotten a little flaky casusing bad reads and writes at that overclock setting.. Ive seen bad ram screw an entire partition. only to wipe and reinstall and 2 months later same thing. The ram maybe good at stock speeds I would try that before buying a new drive. expecilly sine you said as soon as you cleared your cmos you said the input from your keyboard started working. I would say that something hardware wise isn't up to being overclocked like it uesd to i would save everything off of that computer pdq.

Why jump to reformat/reinstall so quickly just do a restore installation
 
Sathsayin said:
Why jump to reformat/reinstall so quickly just do a restore installation
Click to expand...

Restore installations like I described in the second fix are good for fixing windows only. Since the registry is usually what gets corrupted over time you can expect the registry to be one of the things fixed with a restore installation. HOWEVER its the programs that are going to cause your issues. Programs update the registry when installed and over time. When the registry gets repaired/rebuilt during a restore installation you loose some of the links and the keys in the registry. I have found that most keys get left behind and some programs work fine BUT this is not always true the registry is very complicated and touchy. If you have a corrupted/flaky program and try to reinstall it you might not get the right version since the registry is having issues the uninstall might not clear all of the keys and so on and so on. Also doing a restore installation does not clean the keys in the registry that would make you think your hard drives are slowing down. I still would recommend a fresh load and that you recheck your stability with your overclock.
 
Congrats on getting the system running. Were it mine, I'd want to see it run Memtest86+ overnight without errors, followed by the hard drive(s) passing the manufacturer's diagnostic tests. You could have been the victim of a power surge, or perhaps a supply that's going south.
 
dr.sandman said:
Restore installations like I described in the second fix are good for fixing windows only. Since the registry is usually what gets corrupted over time you can expect the registry to be one of the things fixed with a restore installation. HOWEVER its the programs that are going to cause your issues. Programs update the registry when installed and over time. When the registry gets repaired/rebuilt during a restore installation you loose some of the links and the keys in the registry. I have found that most keys get left behind and some programs work fine BUT this is not always true the registry is very complicated and touchy. If you have a corrupted/flaky program and try to reinstall it you might not get the right version since the registry is having issues the uninstall might not clear all of the keys and so on and so on. Also doing a restore installation does not clean the keys in the registry that would make you think your hard drives are slowing down. I still would recommend a fresh load and that you recheck your stability with your overclock.
Click to expand...

I didn't mean to sound arrogant by asking "why the sudden jump to reformat". I've fixed hundred's of computers. The easiest thing to do for a client would be to restore an installation. Then uninstall reinstall the programs if neccesery to fix the programs if neccesery are restore from a good registry backup. The reason being you don't know what joe and jane has saved where. He swears up and down you've got everything bookmarks/.doc/.jpg/.bmp/.pdf/.pub/.avi/.mpg/.mov/ backups of all mail. interwibble connections and passwords. etc....etc.....etc...... Then you tell them well when if format it it is gone. They reply you've got everything. (they rush me cuz i charge by the hour). Then low and behold. I get done with the format and reinstall put all his programs and stuff back on there along with data saved. BAM where's this at..... I thought....hey why is this.... where is my.... how come you.... why is that there.....wtf my porn.... etc There are registry cleaners(ccleaner) . I agree with you 100% myself though i wipe and restore my computer every 6 months for the reasons you stated. You are correct and i agree with you 100% like i said. I just kinda don't understand why people who fix other peoples computers always jump to reformat/reinstall. It's not the answer to everything.
 
if you have access to the net and aburner, download ubuntu live cd, and run it, run a few hd testing utils, also the live cd has some utils built in =)

I have a feeling it's your HD or Your memory, if not check the capacitors on your board
 
Sathsayin said:
I didn't mean to sound arrogant by asking "why the sudden jump to reformat". I've fixed hundred's of computers. The easiest thing to do for a client would be to restore an installation. Then uninstall reinstall the programs if neccesery to fix the programs if neccesery are restore from a good registry backup. The reason being you don't know what joe and jane has saved where. He swears up and down you've got everything bookmarks/.doc/.jpg/.bmp/.pdf/.pub/.avi/.mpg/.mov/ backups of all mail. interwibble connections and passwords. etc....etc.....etc...... Then you tell them well when if format it it is gone. They reply you've got everything. (they rush me cuz i charge by the hour). Then low and behold. I get done with the format and reinstall put all his programs and stuff back on there along with data saved. BAM where's this at..... I thought....hey why is this.... where is my.... how come you.... why is that there.....wtf my porn.... etc There are registry cleaners(ccleaner) . I agree with you 100% myself though i wipe and restore my computer every 6 months for the reasons you stated. You are correct and i agree with you 100% like i said. I just kinda don't understand why people who fix other peoples computers always jump to reformat/reinstall. It's not the answer to everything.
Click to expand...

While you have a good point about too many repair techs automatically jumping to reformat/reinstall you seem to be missing the point of this thread. Would you not recommend a reformat/reinstall for this situation where a person might have an over clock that is causing stability issues and system file corruption that has been going on for who knows how long. And also thinks that the system has been running slow for some time. Also this is not you reloading windows for someone this is a person capable of reloading windows doing their own backup and reload.

No reason to worry about sounding arrogant I tend to just post the facts and leave out the emotion - sometimes it comes out more harsh than I intend. That only leaves us with the age old question to reformat or to attempt repair? That is not a question that can be answered easily and there are no rules. Most of the time its best to explain to your/my customer the options and let them decide. If I reloaded more computers in my retail repair days it was due to how I explained the options to the customer and their decisions (when I gave them a decision).
 
dr.sandman said:
While you have a good point about too many repair techs automatically jumping to reformat/reinstall you seem to be missing the point of this thread. Would you not recommend a reformat/reinstall for this situation where a person might have an over clock that is causing stability issues and system file corruption that has been going on for who knows how long. And also thinks that the system has been running slow for some time. Also this is not you reloading windows for someone this is a person capable of reloading windows doing their own backup and reload.

No reason to worry about sounding arrogant I tend to just post the facts and leave out the emotion - sometimes it comes out more harsh than I intend. That only leaves us with the age old question to reformat or to attempt repair? That is not a question that can be answered easily and there are no rules. Most of the time its best to explain to your/my customer the options and let them decide. If I reloaded more computers in my retail repair days it was due to how I explained the options to the customer and their decisions (when I gave them a decision).
Click to expand...

Oh of course reformat/reloading windows is something I would reccomend doing! Yah I understand that he is a person capable of reloading windows and doing there own back up
I just stated not to jump to reformat/reinstall becasue he asked of a way to do it without reformat/reinstall in the thread. I think you may have misunderstood the last part of his post! I think both of our answers are sufficent to fix his problem none the less he just wants to keep those programs and can't get another copy.

"

Last few questions... Is there anything I can do to remedy this if it's a software issue outside of reformatting/reinstalling windows? There are some programs on my computer that I no longer can reinstall and I'd like to preserve them. I'm planning on slaving the drive to another computer to access/backup the files... Is there anything I can do at that point to diagnose/solve the problem?

Thanks for any and all help, fellas. Sorry for the long post. Hopefully someone takes the time to sift through it and give me an answer.
Reply With Quote
"
 
Ahh nice catch. I've read through quite a few of these threads lately and don't start from the beginning when replying to the ones I have previously posted on. Sorry if I came off as an ass.:p

sportwarrior if the programs are old you might be able to just copy and past them to get them to work. You can test this by finding the program directory and copying it to your secondary hard drive. Then just open the program from the executable instead of the shortcut.
 
dr.sandman said:
Ahh nice catch. I've read through quite a few of these threads lately and don't start from the beginning when replying to the ones I have previously posted on. Sorry if I came off as an ass.:p

sportwarrior if the programs are old you might be able to just copy and past them to get them to work. You can test this by finding the program directory and copying it to your secondary hard drive. Then just open the program from the executable instead of the shortcut.
Click to expand...

np its all in the game;)
 
So I have the same problem with a customer's computer except I can't get a image on the screen. Everything is powering up; fans, motherboard, video card but no picture. No even the Motherboard's company splash screen. I cleared CMOS and still nada. Should I try to reformat? I can't even access windows, not my BIOS...
 
umm... well first thing i would do is to take out the card/ram completely to see if there is any error beeps. do this and then look in the manual to see what it is. A dead cpu can do this. Also on older machines it would power up all the fans but that didn't mean naything. Make sure there is a motherboard speaker plugged in. you should ignore the format idea for now we need to figure out what the problem is. holler back with some answers so me are someone else can help:)
 
Took out the GFX/ Ram out and got 1 error beep. every like 3 seconds. The onboard POST code on the board showed C1 which apparently to the manual; Memory Presence ; Base Memory Detect. Before that, it was on 01 which meant; Reserved according the the manual.

This is the EVGA 590 SLI AM2 board running AMD x2 6000+. Could it be a dead CPU? I really don't want to order a new one and my RMA period has past with newegg but might still stand with AMD.
 
nah it's beeping cpu is fine. in the first post i read it like there was no beeping sorry.
put the ram in without video card what does it do?
 
Turned out to be bad sticks of memory. I feel so stupid that I didn't do that but I didn't suspect it since it booted up fine for a continuous run of 24 hours but decided to fail all of the sudden today..

The funny thing was that I suspected it was the CPU because one of the pins has a slight bit of thermal compound on it but luckily it was MX-2 so it was conductive and non electrical.

I'm contacting OCZ for a RMA, hopefully it goes well.
 
regarding the memory you said that it worked fine for a min then quit. Did you manually set the timings for the memory? You may want to make sure before sticking new memory of hte same type back in
 
Yeah, I didn't play with the timings. The timings are rated for 5-4-4-15. Unless my customer did something, I don't think I tinkered with it. A bit odd for timings eh?
 
So now a few weeks after the fact I've got things running a little more smoothly. I haven't had a repeat of either the system boot failure or the BIOS/CMOS issue. Capacitors seem fine and the RAM checks out completely. I've been running a series of diagnostics and utilities on my Hard Drives to figure things out there, though. I started another thread on the issue in the O/S Software forum and have gotten some pretty good advice. I was actually going to try Ubuntu on the suggestion of a guy on another forum but haven't gotten around to it yet. But between running a System File Check and re allocating the Page File I've managed to get rid of a lot of the chug.

As for the overclocking issues, I'm thinking that could actually be a possibility. I'm gonna post the same question in another forum, but over the past 6 months I've heard an INSANELY loud pop from inside my computer on 3 separate occasions. It sounds metallic, like a bb hitting my brushed aluminum case siding or something. I can find absolutely no physical damage inside, and there's never any performance issues before or after the pop. My first thought was that it possibly had to do with the PSU but I never ran into any issues with games or applications that weren't there before... But now with the strange boot problem and the chugging, it might make sense. Is there any way of really testing PSU load without taking it apart and checking the rails individually?
 
dC0m said:
Took out the GFX/ Ram out and got 1 error beep. every like 3 seconds. The onboard POST code on the board showed C1 which apparently to the manual; Memory Presence ; Base Memory Detect. Before that, it was on 01 which meant; Reserved according the the manual.

This is the EVGA 590 SLI AM2 board running AMD x2 6000+. Could it be a dead CPU? I really don't want to order a new one and my RMA period has past with newegg but might still stand with AMD.
Click to expand...
delete
 
sportwarrior said:
So now a few weeks after the fact I've got things running a little more smoothly. I haven't had a repeat of either the system boot failure or the BIOS/CMOS issue. Capacitors seem fine and the RAM checks out completely. I've been running a series of diagnostics and utilities on my Hard Drives to figure things out there, though. I started another thread on the issue in the O/S Software forum and have gotten some pretty good advice. I was actually going to try Ubuntu on the suggestion of a guy on another forum but haven't gotten around to it yet. But between running a System File Check and re allocating the Page File I've managed to get rid of a lot of the chug.

As for the overclocking issues, I'm thinking that could actually be a possibility. I'm gonna post the same question in another forum, but over the past 6 months I've heard an INSANELY loud pop from inside my computer on 3 separate occasions. It sounds metallic, like a bb hitting my brushed aluminum case siding or something. I can find absolutely no physical damage inside, and there's never any performance issues before or after the pop. My first thought was that it possibly had to do with the PSU but I never ran into any issues with games or applications that weren't there before... But now with the strange boot problem and the chugging, it might make sense. Is there any way of really testing PSU load without taking it apart and checking the rails individually?
Click to expand...

check the tops of all your capaitors to make sure they haven't sprung a leak. on occasion ive came accross boards that the caps were about to bust and some even busted and the board would boot up fine. but have errors on random things.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top