Windows 7 can't boot.

[sgt bombulous]

Last night I installed a new heatsink (Cooler Master Hyper 212+) on my cousins PC. His hardware is as follows:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68A-D3H-B3
CPU: Intel i5-2500k
RAM: Corsair XMS3 8 GB (4 x 2) 1600 MHz, DDR3
GPU: EVGA GTX-460 01G-P3-1371-AR
Power Supply: Corsair TX650, 650W
DVD Drive: LITE-ON IHAS424-98 R
OS: Windows 7 Pro x64

After I got the heatsink on I booted it, and noticed a checksum error in the bios. It seemed to resolve itself, and booted into Windows easily. Once there I check the temperatures, which were good - around 33C at 60C at max load. So, I decided to do a little overclocking. I got the multiplier up to 36 without issue. The next time I was in the Bios I noticed it was in Fail-safe mode. Once I tried to load optimized defaults, that's when the trouble began. From that moment on, it got about 1 second into the windows welcome screen, and then blue-screened. It's so fast that I can't read what's going on. Between installing the cooler and when the blue screen started, I booted into Windows about 5~6 times. The mysterious checksum error did not return after the first time I saw it.

I DO get a post beep, all of the hardware seems to be functioning. I also took the Hard drive and put it in another PC to back up the files, and it works perfectly, so it's not like the HDD failed. Any ideas? Would a startup repair from the Windows 7 disk fix this?

 

[sgt bombulous]

One more thing... I have tried to launch the repair utility several times, but it can't seem to do anything, and I don't have the Windows 7 disk on hand. One thing I did notice while browsing the logs, was that it refered to "Operating system on D:\". The OS is definitely on C:\. What would cause this to happen? If the system is suddenly looking for the OS on drive D, which isn't the boot drive, I guess that would make sense why it can't fire up.

 

[Combat Wombat]

You said you put on the heatsink and booted it, at any point did you put back on the cpu cooler, lol?

 

[nikorr]

Restore BIOS to default setting(or reset it with getting battery out) and see what happens.



"load optimized defaults" - will not reset

Check boot config. Maybe u have different order of the drives now.

 

[sgt bombulous]

The inability to boot into Windows turned out to be the fact that setting the Motherboard to default settings changes the SATA controller configuration to IDE Emulation, whereas I had the OS installed in AHCI mode. Changing it back to AHCI allowed it to boot.

That was Sunday Morning that it was solved... My cousin was working on the machine last night and he got a beep, and then it crashed. According top him, he tried to get it running again, and he does get a post beep, but then it shuts down immediately.

I did OC it, but only a tiny bit... Multiplier went from 33 to 36, which is less than 10%, and the RAM from 1333 to 1600, which is what the RAM is rated at. I did nothing with voltages at all. In fact, on my i5-750 I was able to reduce the voltage from the standard when I OC'd it from 2.66 to 3.2, so I doubt it could be due to insufficient voltage.

I guess the weird part is that there's a POST beep, which is supposed to indicate that all hardware is ok. I'm going to have him try resetting CMOS (and then put the storage config back AHCI), to see if getting it back at stock setting will work. Any ideas on this? There's no reason this hardware should be so delicate...

 

[nikorr]

That was my idea, as I did not know what everything was done to the ,right. So reset the settings to default would cleaned up any changes u made. Than u go back to AHCI and see if it works.

Sure, I did not know that the OS is installed in AHCI mode.

But, was the win7 installed in IDE or AHCI mode from beginning?

 

[sgt bombulous]

I changed it to AHCI, rebooted, then installed the OS. But as I've said, my new problem is that the computer won't start at all. According to my cousin it fires up long enough to emit a POST beep, then dies. I'll know more tonight.

 

[nikorr]

Is there any cloning(back up) software in use?

Could that be a recovery C drive and OS on D drive?

Check event viewer for errors.