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HDD & RAM Failure after Power Surge (Infinite Boot Sequence)

Tags:
  • Hard Drives
  • RAM
  • Boot
  • Motherboards
  • Memory
  • Windows 7
Last response: in Memory
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September 22, 2013 7:12:13 PM

Good evening all. Long time lurker here.

Last weekend, big storm passed by my area and the power went out 3-4 times. Mistakenly, I did not disconnect my computer from the wall and it seems to have turned off/on several times (interrupting OS load) before the power went out for about 15 minutes. From then on out, computer does an infinite boot sequence where the WIn7 OS does not load past a certain point. The surge protector didn't trip (the safety light is on) but something seems to have gone through, or maybe there was a brown out.

At first, I thought AVG was to blame in the faulty boot sequence, as when I saw the last .sys to load in the safe mode load, it was an AVG file. However, after looking through with the boot dirve AVG Rescue CD's clones of my HDD, I could not find any data on the mounted drives. Also the "repair my drive" option hangs on the blue screen until the monitor shuts off with "no signal" but fans and all other processes on and running.

TLDR; After running extensive tests, I came to the conclusion that my HDD has completely failed and my RAM might have as well.

After reseating all 4 RAM sticks (4 x 2GB Dell stock no-name brand), I tried out each stick in RAM slot 1 and ran the "Memory Test" in the Utility Partition. Before the last test, my monitor would shut off and say "no signal" (for each stick, one stick passed the test and I performed it again and then failed).

Anyone know a definitive test I can perform to determine whether my MOBO's RAM slots are bad/fried?

The computer does a successful POST btw and this is a Dell PC with crummy hardware.

I'm thinking of going to a local tigerdirect/ bestbuy to buy a 10$ stick to try in the slot to see if that is the nail in the coffin that the MOBO slot is bad.

Already got an SSD to replace the fried HDD, but I need to see if this machine is salvageable without having to replace the MOBO.

Appreciate any and all insight/info/leads.

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