Computer wont boot after fresh windows install

A

alex2112

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Joined
Feb 2, 2005
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Ok so heres the story. Recently, I put my friends hard drive in my system as a secondary drive in an attempt to save some files he needed off it. Once I put it in, the computer was refusing to boot reliably into windows. It would get the the desktop and immediately reboot itself. I took out his drive and the problem went away, however it came back yesterday morning after booting it up normally. I haven't changed any hardware nor have I installed any new drivers. The problem just simply showed up all of a sudden. I ran memtest for a while and it came up with no errors.

Today, I reinstalled windows thinking my install which is now about a year old, was messed up. Well, the install went smoothly and it booted into windows for the first time, but as soon as I began to install the latest nvidia chipset drivers (nforce 3), it rebooted itself again. Now it wont boot. It gets past the initial bios screen and then just goes to a black screen (where windows should be loading up) and just locks up there. I dont know what to try next. Should I try reinstalling again? Did the random reboot during driver installation mess up the install?

Here are my systems specs:
MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum Mobo
AMD Athlon64 3200+ winchester core
PQI Turbo PC-4000 DDR (Samsung TCCD)
Nvidia 6800 vid card
1x DVD-RW, 1x samsung 160g IDE HDD, 1x Seagate 160g SATA HDD, 1x 80g Seagate SATA HDD (windows drive)
550w TTGI modular PSU, tested the rails and they showed perfect voltages.

Right now I have the processor running at 2.5ghz at 1.5v and it is 100% prime95 and memtest stable, over 12 hours on both no errors.
 
It's clearly not 100% stable if you are having lock ups. Prime and memtest don't test every aspect of the computer, and even still, 12 hours is not enough to catch all the problems. Sometimes it locks up after multiple days of looping. Downclock to stock (assuming you're not at stock, I have no idea what those fancy new cpus run at), and see what happens.

There is a possibility that the harddrive pwnt your motherboard, but I doubt it.
 
First, downclock the CPU to stock. I'd try reinstalling on a different HD first. If you are still having problems on the new HD, you will know that the HD is ok. (The problem is obviously somewhere else.) It may be your power supply... or possibly your motherbord.. Trial and error trouble shoot it out.
 
UPDATE: I tried booting to the windows CD again but the system would still lock up to a blank screen after the initial bios screen. I unplugged all my drives and tried again, and this time it worked, only there was nothing to boot off of. I plugged just my optical drive and my windows drive but now the system hangs again. Seems like theres something flakey with the IDE channel or something. I did do a full format the first time, not a quick one, and I also double checked the IDE and boot order options in the bios and found them the way I left them. Didn't see anything weird in there. I also went back to stock speeds on everything in the bios, so I'm no longer overclocked, but that didnt change anything. The same stuff happens.

Could the problem be coming from the fact that I have my burner and my samsung 160g storage drive on one channel? I have the CD drive as master and the hard drive as slave, but that doesnt explain the lockup after the initial bios screen, cause I tried booting with the windows CD in the CD drive with just that and the SATA windows drive as the only two drives connected to the system with no luck.
 
^^ exactly
I just had 2 systems do the same thing within a month of each other.
Turned out to be a dying HD in both (one a WesternDigital which JUST passed warranty expire, and a Maxtor which had 2 months left).
So.. run the tools provided by manufactuer.... and if your HD is gone, hope it is still under warranty.

Good luck

D.
 
ok I tried resetting the BIOS to see if it would help the problem, and as a safety measure, I ran memtest on my 2x512 sticks of PQI Turbo pc4000 memory. Memtest showed 1 error on the same address each pass of the tests. The test it fails is test #7 (Random Number Sequence). Now thinking I have a bad stick of RAM, I tested one stick only, it passed multiple passes of the tests without errors. Then I put in the other stick just by itself, and it also passes several passes no errors. Whenever I try the two sticks together, it fails test 7 on the first pass. I tried clearing the CMOS by the jumper and even loaded the optimized settings in the BIOS. The memory still fails that test when I have the two sticks in there together in dual channel. Now mind you, I've been running this computer this way for over a year now, with no issues or crashes, and when I had first put it together I tested the RAM and didnt find any errors for over 24hrs of running memtest non-stop. I also ran memtest for about anhour with no issues BEFORE I reset the BIOS to try and get rid of my boot problem. How could have my memory have gone bad just cause of a CMOS clear? What else could be causing the memory to be failing now in dual channel, but not with just one stick at a time? Bad memory controller on the cpu?
 
Don't put it in Dual Channel. Usually the mobo requires say DIMMS 1 and 3 or 2 and 4. just put the sticks in 1 and 2. Also, just boot up with one stick of RAM, install windows, then start fooling around with it.
 
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