Computer Issues

Xexx

Xexx

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Could use some troubleshooting help.

Couple nights ago while surfing net my screen just went black - didnt reboot, didnt turn off just black. Ever since then unless im in safe mode my pc wont fully load into windows. I initially suspected the video card was going bad, but somehow the SSD died at the same time.

Items in question AMD 7970 and OCZ Vortex -

After i noticed both dead(tried in 2 machines) i figured either motherboard on power supply. At this point i tried multiple PCIE slots and they all yielded the same result, so now im kinda just leaning towards the power supply - however curious on anyone else's input. I /may/ have another PSU to try out but quite the pita to take everything apart even if needed.

On board video works fine, tried 2 diff power supplies when using PCIE video and no dice still. At this point i almost think it would be quicker to go buy new mobo and psu.
 
Alkorin

Chancellor Alkorin

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So the only thing you haven't swapped is the motherboard at this point?

I'd turn it on, switch to onboard video with the PCIE card still plugged in and use something like HWiNFO to check the PCIE voltage/status. If everything other than the PCIE works, that's a probable cause.
 
Xexx

Xexx

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Well ASUS is going to RMA my board so it should be here next week - Asus tried to tell me it was my cpu but i told them to just send me a new board anyways.
 
F

Flunklesnarkin_sl

shitlord
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M

Myst

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I could really use some help. I rounded up 4 old hard drives that i wanted to backup to a single storage unit, but i formatted one of them by mistake before transferring the data.

What would be my best bet to recover all my files? I had 500gig worth of family pictures/movies etc.
 
Brando

Asshat Brando

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Getting the following error "Unknown USB Device (Link in Compliance Mode)" and anything I plug into my USB ports on the front of the Mobo won't get recognized. All the ports in the back are working fine. Are the ports in the mobo just fried or is there someway to reset them? Would hate to have to get a new mobo after only 5 months of use.

Edit: The mobo in question is an ASRock Z77 Extreme4, I've reinstalled the ASMedia drivers and Intel Smart Connect drivers based on comments I've found on some of ASRock's associated forums but I'm still getting the errors.
 
Brando

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ASRock is going to RMA my mobo, the only issue is they're saying I won't receive the replacement for at least 5 business days. I don't have an extra mobo lying around and not having a computer for a week sounds pretty lame, should I chance Fry's return policy that the item has to be unused to get my money back within 15 days and pick up a mobo there? Otherwise I don't think I have much of a choice.....
 
Alkorin

Chancellor Alkorin

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That's Fry's return policy? They don't have an "I just bought this and it's broken" policy? Or did you not buy it there?
 
Brando

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Yes, you can say it's broken and then they'll make you take another one or just give you an in-store credit is what I'm reading. I hardly shop at Fry's anymore so getting stuck with an in-store credit would be somewhat lame. I guess I can just be super careful with box and mobo and hope 5 days of use won't show, anybody know the odds of that working?
 
Alkorin

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If you're just buying another motherboard, why would it matter if you get store credit? You could just get the credit and buy a different mobo there, if that's what you want. That's what I'd do, anyway.
 
Brando

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No, you're not getting it. My current mobo was bought from newegg but its been more than 30 days since I bought it so I have to RMA it to ASRock. This will take 5 business days according to them. In the interim I'm thinking of getting a mobo from Fry's so I have a working computer for the week with the risk I can't get my money back from Fry's.
 
Alkorin

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Ah, yep, that's what I didn't get.

I wouldn't risk it, myself. They track stock, so unless you get some pimply faced kid (who will wear the blame later), you will no doubt be found out before you're out of the equation.

I'd take the RMA and wait it out, myself. Just had to do so with ASUS, even.
 
hodj

hodj

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Having an insanely weird problem the likes of which I've never seen before and was wanting to get some ideas/feedback on what could be going wrong.

So background. Three years ago I built my wife and I computers. Minus the occassional, regular maintainence issues, like video card upgrades and the like, they ran pretty well. The past 6 months I've replaced large portions of the machines, new video cards, new power supplies, new hard drives. This past weekend my wife was finishing up a school project on Word, printed out the document, saved Word and tried to close it. The entire machine went....insane. Word refused to close completely, the entire machine nearly locked up, slowed to an absolute dead crawl. We hard powered down the machine, tried to boot it back up, Windows would not boot up, instead asking us to run repair utilities. Tried that, figuring it was a waste of time, it was, so then I went to trying to reinstall windows. Here's where the shit gets really weird.

Reinstallation of windows took HOURS. Like close to 8. When it hung for over two hours on "Completing installation" I just turned the fucking thing off. I figured, well I've never had a ram stick go bad on me before, maybe, since I've never seen anything like this, the problem is bad ram. So I ordered up new ram for both pcs, since its so cheap, figured get a nice upgrade on both systems in the process. My pc, let me just add, which is virtually identical to hers in every single way, working just fine, new ram loaded up fine, system boots in a normal time frame, etc.

Her pc, however, even with the new ram, is still slow as shit. I reinstalled Windows last night. Took about 5 hours. Now this morning I've been sitting here watch the system (hers, not mine) boot for 30 plus minutes waiting for Windows to load...it just doesn't make sense. I bought a new hard drive for this pc last fall. New power supply. New video card. New ram. You see where I'm going with this? I don't think it can be a bad motherboard, its seems to load and run fine, up until Windows is called for. I can get into BIOS, everything looks fine there. I'm just at a loss. I'm about to go buy a new harddrive (again) and just replace the one I just replaced and reinstall Windows for the 3rd time (Windows 7 64 bit I guess I should add).

System specs are Asus P6T i7 motherboard (a little old now but still good) 2.8ghz quad core processor, 12 gigs of 1600 DDR3 ram, 700 watt power supply, 1 tb hard drive, win 7 64 bit.

I'm usually pretty good with pcs. I build my own. This problem is something I've just never seen anything like in my time as an amateur computer builder and I'm at a total loss as to what could be going wrong.

added: actually its been sitting here this morning with the mouse cursor on a black screen, post "Starting Windows" pre "Log In" Screen for over an hour at this point. I mean its clearly trying to load up Windows but its taking what can only be considered an absolutely ridiculous goddamn amount of time to do so. Really its the weirdest PC problem I've ever encountered.

Now the blue windows screen is up but the log in screen hasn't loaded yet. Mouse is on screen and moving around fine. The system isn't locked up. Its just...fucking weird. If its not the hard drive, what else could it possibly be?
 
Gorestabb

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My suspicion is either your SATA controller is set to compatibility rather than AHCI, or your drive needs replacing.

My first suggestion, is reset the BIOS to defaults.

Assuming that doesn't make a difference then try and listen to the drive for things like clicks or the disk spinning down/up.

You could also try sticking her hard drive in your machine as a secondary device and see if you can access the data off her machine in a timely fashion, and perhaps run a disk check on it.
 
hodj

hodj

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Well the SATA controller was set to enhanced rather than compatibility, and IDE instead of AHCI, which I dunno. Its probably been like that for three years, without causing a problem. And if that's how its set factory default, that's how my bios is set up (I can't check because I'm typing this on it now but am about to). But I changed them and its still hanging on boot to windows so I think its gotta be the hard drive. Just not sure why a hard drive barely 6 months old would nuke out like that. Western Digital I always thought was a pretty standard, decent hard drive brand to go with, not too expensive, not too cheap, usually pretty reliable, but now I'm starting to doubt that.

Oh now windows is loading installation repair files or something. Le sigh. Very frustrating past few days with this pc.

Added: okay yeah changing to AHCI instead of IDE makes everything crazy. Computer won't boot, tries to boot from disc drive, times out, blah blah blah.

I'm going to go with, at this moment, bad hard drive. If that doesn't pan out then I'll start looking for what else the problem could be related to I suppose.
 
Gorestabb

Gorestabb

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Very odd. I'd have thought that enhanced and AHCI would be the correct settings for modern drives. Unless I'm very much mistaken IDE is a legacy mode for older drives. Try sticking it on enchanced/AHCI and booting it up, and see what happens. If it works good, if it blue screens you'll need to reinstall Windows, but that may fix your issue.
 
hodj

hodj

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I'll try to explain what happened when I did that. On my bios Main screen I have a section titled "Storage Configuration".
Inside that menu are four headings: SATA configuration, of which I can choose Disabled, Compatible, Enhanced. This was already set to Enhanced. I have never touched this setting in three years of owning the pc so this is how it is set out of the box.
Then there is Configure SATA as: This is where I can choose from IDE, AHCI and maybe another option or two. This has always been set to IDE since I installed these motherboards.

There's two more submenus here: Hard Disc Write Protect and IDE Detect Time Out.

I didn't touch either of these.

When I switched from IDE to AHCI in the Configure SATA submenu, then go back to the Main screen of the Bios, the AHCI Configuration menu is now visible (it wasn't before). It has my DVD drive set to 1, and only gives me the option to declare it "Not Installed" or "Auto". Below that are my two disc drives, with the same choices "Not Installed" or "Auto". They are all set to Auto automatically.

So I f10-ed saved the changes, rebooted, and it came up with detecting no drives after detecting the DVD drive, would not boot. Just asked me to insert a disc to boot from or reboot at that point, so I did and changed everything back to the way it was out of the box, and the pc booted up just fine right off the bat.

added:this is on my pc. Hers is sitting at "attempting repairs" in the windows startup repair utility.
 
Alkorin

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Generally speaking, changing the mode after installing Windows isn't a good idea, especially not if you're running something pre-Vista (I'm looking at you, Windows XP people). In XP and earlier, it will cause a blue screen (0x7B, inaccessible boot device) as the proper storage drivers aren't present.

In any case, the performance issues you're seeing wouldn't have been suddenly caused by this setting as the setting has been this way all along, yes?
 
hodj

hodj

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Alkorin_sl said:
Generally speaking, changing the mode after installing Windows isn't a good idea, especially not if you're running something pre-Vista (I'm looking at you, Windows XP people). In XP and earlier, it will cause a blue screen (0x7B, inaccessible boot device) as the proper storage drivers aren't present.
Click to expand...
I should have thought of that....

In any case, the performance issues you're seeing wouldn't have been suddenly caused by this setting as the setting has been this way all along, yes?
Click to expand...
Now that IS what I was thinking, however, at this point I'm literally willing to throw everything at the wall to resolve these issues. I have a laptop she's using but still. She needs her own PC for school and work and there's really no ifs ands or buts about that. Sigh.
 
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