- Feb 3, 2014
- 3
- 0
- 10,510
I have a relatively new HTPC that I'm using to watch TV via an HD HomeRun Prime and Windows Media Center. I've been using it for two months now without any issues. Last night it suddenly froze while watching Media Center. It was totally unresponsive, so I had to do a hard reset.
It booted up to windows and the desktop, but when I started Media Center, it froze again, except this time, the screen went black except for the cursor, which was still visible and I could move it around the screen. I waited a while, but nothing happened. Ctl+Alt+del didn't work, neither did pressing the Windows key. Basically, only the cursor for the mouse was working.
I hard resetted again, and I got the "reboot and select proper boot device" message.
I hard resetted from there, and I was able to get back into Windows, but before pressing anything, I got the busy circle icon that just spun and spun and even though I could move the cursor around the screen, nothing else worked.
I hard resetted two more times and got the same results.
I then started in safe mode and it was working fine for a few minutes. I figured I would try to update the graphics drivers, and I was able to navigate to AMD's website and find the right driver, but a minute later, it froze in safe mode, and reset itself.
I started it this morning and it worked for about 10 minutes. I had just unistalled Norton and installed Microsoft's antivirus program. I thought maybe that was the problem, so I uninstall the Microsoft program and reinstalled Norton. I had reboot during the process and everything worked fine. After running live update, the computer froze and reset itself. When it restarted, I got the error message about rebooting and selecting the proper boot device.
I'm thinking this is a hardware issue because it happened in safe mode.
Any ideas on where to start? I was thinking about swapping out my Ram from another computer and see if that helps, since that would probably be the easiest.
The computer specs:
MotherBoard:
BIOSTAR AM1MHP AM1 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
RAM: (4gb)
G.SKILL NS 2GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL9S-2GBNS
PSU:
EVGA - Power Supply Unit 400 Watts - Internal, ATX Form Factor, Fan 120mm, AC 100-240 V, 4 Ft Power Cable, MTBF 100,000 Hours - 100-N1-0400-L1
SSD:
ADATA Premier Pro SP600 128GB Solid State Drive - 2.5", 7MM, SATA III 6 Gbs - ASP600S3-128GM-C
Processor:
AMD Athlon 5350 APU, 2.05Ghz, AD5350JAHMBOX
Windows 7 32-bit.
It booted up to windows and the desktop, but when I started Media Center, it froze again, except this time, the screen went black except for the cursor, which was still visible and I could move it around the screen. I waited a while, but nothing happened. Ctl+Alt+del didn't work, neither did pressing the Windows key. Basically, only the cursor for the mouse was working.
I hard resetted again, and I got the "reboot and select proper boot device" message.
I hard resetted from there, and I was able to get back into Windows, but before pressing anything, I got the busy circle icon that just spun and spun and even though I could move the cursor around the screen, nothing else worked.
I hard resetted two more times and got the same results.
I then started in safe mode and it was working fine for a few minutes. I figured I would try to update the graphics drivers, and I was able to navigate to AMD's website and find the right driver, but a minute later, it froze in safe mode, and reset itself.
I started it this morning and it worked for about 10 minutes. I had just unistalled Norton and installed Microsoft's antivirus program. I thought maybe that was the problem, so I uninstall the Microsoft program and reinstalled Norton. I had reboot during the process and everything worked fine. After running live update, the computer froze and reset itself. When it restarted, I got the error message about rebooting and selecting the proper boot device.
I'm thinking this is a hardware issue because it happened in safe mode.
Any ideas on where to start? I was thinking about swapping out my Ram from another computer and see if that helps, since that would probably be the easiest.
The computer specs:
MotherBoard:
BIOSTAR AM1MHP AM1 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
RAM: (4gb)
G.SKILL NS 2GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL9S-2GBNS
PSU:
EVGA - Power Supply Unit 400 Watts - Internal, ATX Form Factor, Fan 120mm, AC 100-240 V, 4 Ft Power Cable, MTBF 100,000 Hours - 100-N1-0400-L1
SSD:
ADATA Premier Pro SP600 128GB Solid State Drive - 2.5", 7MM, SATA III 6 Gbs - ASP600S3-128GM-C
Processor:
AMD Athlon 5350 APU, 2.05Ghz, AD5350JAHMBOX
Windows 7 32-bit.
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