Issues and more Issues

[jisgore]

Hello everyone, after 2 days of dealing with this forsaken problem and not finding an solution i wanted to ask before taking it to a technician...

Here we go...

Couple of days ago everything was working fine, but then the pc started acting strange, freezing now and then, i had to turn it off manually ... after that when booting back it hanged on the windows loading screen after trying several times it finally booted but once again i got the same issue...

Well i thought my windows was damaged so i formated the drive and erased the 2 partitions it had, i had it this way for couple of years. So after formating the drive i made a bootable windows 7 usb from my laptop that runs ubuntu using Unetbootin..

I put the usb on my desktop and it booted fine, i ran the installation with all the default values but on the part where it expands all the files it said that there were some missing installation files, which i was sure they were not but i started everything again to make sure. Made the usb again and tried installing, but no luck i had the same issue. i also tried installing ubuntu but i had no luck either it fails when selecting and installing software.

I'm thinking is the HDD thats dead, but it's fine in the bios, the drive have never being out the machine, neither have fallen or anything like it, there's no clicking sound either. But that's what seems to be the problem.

So i went on and tried some other stuff, i didn't have a dvd rom for a long time so i tried putting one in but is not being detected i tried changing the jumpers to different setting and no luck....

Well finally i wanted to give another try and installed a live ubuntu to the usb
but it wont boot either it stays at the syslinux screen, it seems like is going to but it hangs there...

So i really dont know what the problem is, i tried the usb on my laptop and it works fine...

What do you guys think? is it the HDD? or the mobo? or both or anything else?

Please lend me a hand to see what should i do, maybe i dont have to take it to anyone...

Thank you..

 

[farrengottu]

you can try the HDD in another computer to rule it out but im quite sure its the motherboard. there is also a chance you have bad cables to your drives, really only if its ide, sata would behave differently if it were a bad cable.

 

[geekapproved]

The problems you describe CAN be caused by incorrect memory voltage settings in bios. The correct voltage is listed on the sticker on the dimms.

 

[jisgore]

you can try the HDD in another computer to rule it out but im quite sure its the motherboard. there is also a chance you have bad cables to your drives, really only if its ide, sata would behave differently if it were a bad cable.

The DVD rom is IDE but the HDD is SATA! What would be a good way to determine if it is the motherboard?

 

[jisgore]

The problems you describe CAN be caused by incorrect memory voltage settings in bios. The correct voltage is listed on the sticker on the dimms.

Iv'e never changed the voltage to the dimms....

 

[geekapproved]

Iv'e never changed the voltage to the dimms....

What I'm telling you is you might need to, especially if were talking about DDR2. Undervolted dimms can cause the problems you listed. Most DDR2 boards default to 1.8v, which will cause problems if your memory requires 2v-2.2v.
Even if they were set correctly before, it could have changed. I had it happen to me the other night. Electrical storm, shut off my computer several times and it changed all my bios settings back to default.
Also happened to my friends pc that I built. The settings changed and she had problems until I figured it out.

 

[jisgore]

What I'm telling you is you might need to, especially if were talking about DDR2. Undervolted dimms can cause the problems you listed. Most DDR2 boards default to 1.8v, which will cause problems if your memory requires 2v-2.2v.
Even if they were set correctly before, it could have changed. I had it happen to me the other night. Electrical storm, shut off my computer several times and it changed all my bios settings back to default.
Also happened to my friends pc that I built. The settings changed and she had problems until I figured it out.

I checked the voltage was set to auto so iset it to 2.0 as the the stick says.... Ill get back to you with the results

 

[jisgore]

i tried installing ubuntu now the installation completed successfully but when booting i get some color lines on the screen and nothing comes up only thing i can do is ctrl+alt+del to reboot. well tried also with windows installation and got the same error as before after copying files it stops.

 

[geekapproved]

Are you sure it re-booted with the correct voltage settings or did it default back to 1.8v?

Did you format the hdd before installing windows?

 

[jisgore]

Are you sure it re-booted with the correct voltage settings or did it default back to 1.8v?

Did you format the hdd before installing windows?

I did and it formatted fine.

But the weirdest thing happened, i tried installing windows xp, it installed fine. But when it finished i was getting a blue screen .

After trying different stuff, taking out ran changing it from slot nothing worked, but i put the pc sideways for easy access and i was able to boot fine and everything work great now, i have no idea whats was going on lol.

Any ideas hahaha?

 

[jisgore]

Best answer selected by jisgore.

 

[jisgore]

The Hard drive and the cables were not functioning properly, the HD had bad sectors