Uh oh... Computer problems strike again

FragTek

FragTek

New member
Hrmmm... Well... Yeah...

Sittin' on one of my Dells right now ironically as my main rig is down. I went to start it up after sitting for a bit and I can't get the ***** to load in to Windows for the life of it. It POSTs, goes through the RAID setup and what not, does the PCI checks blah blah blah but the second it gets to the Win2k3 loading screen it locks up before the bar even starts to move and then restarts almost instantly and just keeps doing that.

I've tried everything in the BIOS... I've downclocked to stock with all stock settings, then tried with a few extra volts on some of the parts but every combination attempt ends up with the same exact result.

To be honest I think it may actually be a hard drive issue. I don't really have anything conclusive on this theory yet but I have a gut feeling. My gut feeling stems from the fact that my 2 Raptors have been stacked on top of each other for like a year now with no "real" cooling and have gotten pretty damn hot (so hot that when I feel the front which sticks out through the face of my case I have to take my hand off because they're cookin' so much).

I am going to possibly let it sit overnight and give it a shot in the morning and see if it feels like cooperating. Has anyone else ever experience a problem similar to this, if so what was the solution? I've pretty much tried everything in the way of software/BIOS settings to get it to run but nothing would get it to work.

Any suggestions, thanks in advance!!!

-Fraggles
 
name='NoL' said:
Tried safe mode?
Click to expand...

LOL!! Good idea! Can't believe I nor Frag thought of that during the troubleshooting earlier.

I guess it's highly overlooked in times of uber crisis.

Nick
 
Frag you don't have Ballistix do you?

Its the Ballistix mate - exactly what I got with mine

Believe me thats the sign of Ballistix dying! :(
 
Or it could be your harddrives as you say. Pick up/steal/borrow a horribly slow little 40gb IDE drive form somwhere and try it on just that?
 
Sounds like memory or your water pump as NoL said mate. Last time i forgot to turn my pump on, it got as far as the windows screen and froze.
 
Ok I let it sit overnight, still no luck.

Ran a full 100% loop of Memtest with 0 errors so I'm not suspecting the RAM. Didn't even think about safe mode, haven't tried that yet so I will do that in about 30 seconds after I get done punching up this message.

As far as my water pumps, both of those babies flip right on when I press the power button. Plus it would be uber unlikely that both pumps would die at the same time.

Gimme a sec to see if I can even bring up the Windows safe mode start menu...

Edit: I can get in to the advanced startup options menu just fine and when I go to boot in to safe mode it loads about half of the initial startup drivers and then reboots. I need to find a Nix live CD or something and see if I can't narrow this down to a hard drive issue.
 
FragTek said:
Edit: I can get in to the advanced startup options menu just fine and when I go to boot in to safe mode it loads about half of the initial startup drivers and then reboots. I need to find a Nix live CD or something and see if I can't narrow this down to a hard drive issue.
Click to expand...

When it loads safemode what driver does it get stuck on, and is it the same driver each time?
 
name='XMS' said:
When it loads safemode what driver does it get stuck on, and is it the same driver each time?
Click to expand...

Yeah but I don't remember... I'm going to just wipe everything and start afresh.

After disabling my RAID setup and trying to install Windows the Win installer is telling me that it needs a windows compatible partition to install on and it tells me that on both of my Raptors whenever I create a new partition. There is definately something funky up with these drives, sounds like I may have possibly found the culprit. Gonna dig through the closet and see if I can't find my other SATA2 Deskstar and pop that bizzle in to see if it will boot for me.
 
Lets us know how it goes , as for reinstalling i use true image from Acronis for £35 or something , created a reference image of my usual working pc and programs so whenever there is a problem i just reload the image , saves me lots of time installing everything, drivers , configs , games and so on. Just for info :D
 
I thought my problem was my drive - but it turned out to be the RAM

Really mate you should take a look at al the problems people have been having with Balistix Dying - just like that after a period of time :(
 
Nope RAM is not it... Im back up and running, one or both of my Raptors are fecked.

I've reinstalled on my Deskstar and everything is smooth. Unfortunately I have to go through the hassle of reinstalling everything but hell thats better than no computer at all :)
 
Wow, how long have you had those raptors? Good to hear everything's up and running again

Maybe it was because they were ass end out of your case. You scared them Frag!! ;)

Anyway, IDK how WD's RMA is but, contact them, I'm sure they'll take care of you. :D

Nick
 
Good to hear you're sorted and up-n-running again Frag, there's nothing worse than the elusive problem. I believe that Nick is correct with the 5 year replacement warranty on WD HDD's :)
 
I had the same problem on a machine once with XP (although only 1 hard drive on IDE). It would get to the XP loading screen and then restart.

I put in a second hard drive and installed XP onto that then chkdsk'ed the dodgy hard drive. Bad sectors all over the place!
 
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