Built a new system and Win 7 keeps getting corrupted after shutdowns

[Dawkin]

Hello everyone!
I built a new rig about a month ago with the following parts :

XFX Radeon 5850
AMD Phenom II 965 Black Edition
2x2 G.Skills 12800 clock 9-9-9-24
Gigabyte 890FXA-UD5
Coolermaster GX 750W
Antec 900 mid Tower
OS Windows 7 64 bits

For over a month now I've had this problem where my system gets corrupted after the computer has been shutdown for a couple hours. ( I reinstalled windows over a dozen time during that time )

Everytime I reset the bios, reinstall a fresh copy of windows 7, and if i never shutdown the computer ( rebooting and stand by mode dont corrupt anything )the computer runs perfectly.

I had it on for 3 days in a row playing games, or just idling and everything was fine.
Prime95 ran stable for 10 hours, memtest86 5 hours.

Important side note i did try to OC my cpu from 3.4 to 3.7 ghz ,which was stable , and also tried to get my ram to run at 1600mhz like its advertised insted of the 1333mhz default from the mobo (then the clock went haywire to 11-11-11-29 and wasnt stable so went back to stock)

Also im running 3 single hard drive setup, 1 western digital 250gb, one 320gb and another 750gb. I tried installing the os on the 250gb and then on the 320gb to test if it was the hard drives, It seemed fine on the 320gb for about a week (would shutdown and power on without being corrupted) but it just went chaos on me this morning after i got back home from work...

So here i am now, no clue what to do to fix my problem anymore !
Hopefully running into someone who had this problem before or has a clue cause i don't!

Thanks alot in advance!

 

[Twoboxer]

Sounds like a virus, which should have disappeared when you reinstalled Windows. Unless the virus is coming from the OS itself.

What do you mean by "corrupted"?

 

[jsc]

Sounds like a virus, which should have disappeared when you reinstalled Windows.

Unless it was living on one of the other drives.

Try clearing the BIOS and restoring factory defaults. Don't even think about mucking about the BIOS.

Choose one of your drives. Plug it (and only it) into the system. Reformat and reinstall Windows. Install drivers and current antivirus and firewall software. Go online and download updates for everything.

Now, power down and plug in one of the other drives. Boot, then scan it for viruses without doing anything else. If successful, repeat for the other drive.

 

[Dawkin]

Heya! Thanks alot for the replies.

By corrupted i mean windows doing bunch of errors in every programs.

When i boot and windows gives me errors with catalyst, Netframe 4.0, Msn... basicly every program that loads on start up. Then I try to run a game on the steam platform but it gives me errors, files missing.

Validating the game over again to try and fix the missing files would somehow grind the game file, (little exemple : Crysis game file before validation = 6.8 gb, after validation 4.2 gb) and then i would have to download half the game over again.
Prime95 which would run perfectly on the fresh install but on the corrupted windows 7 would give me a BSOD within seconds.

After that the only solution to get another working system i have is to format the harddrive and do another clean install, i tried backups with xpress recovery and also repairing with the windows cd but those are still corrupted once completed. Most of the time i wouldnt even be able to do a repair from the windows cd since i would get error messages while doing so.

Also if i dont reset my bios before doing a clean install I would get errors during the installation process.

Thanks for your reply! I really need help!

 

[guanyu210379]

1. Rest the BIOS.
2. Try running memcheck! And see the result.And, check also the settings in BIOS, seeif the RAM gets enough juice (needed Voltage as written in the RAMs manual)

 

[Dawkin]

I just remembered i flashed the bios before, maybe something went wrong with that...
I'll try flashing it once again on a clean install , hopefully thats what was wrong, cause it definitly sound linked to the bios.

Thanks again for the help!

 

[BurkeMtn]

I'm having the same problem.

I too have an Athlon Phenom II X4 965 (Black Edition) based system (4 GB RAM) running Windows 7 64-bit. I used to have Windows XP (32-bit) on this computer. Upgrading to Windows 7 64-bit did not help. The problem (disk corrupt on restart after lengthy shutdown) occurred with both OS's .

It seems to be a factor of time. I can soft restart the computer over and over, no problem. I can also hard restart it by pressing the reset button, no problem. I can shutdown the computer for a very short time, turn on and boot up, no problem. But if I leave the computer in shutdown state for too long, when turning it back on and booting up, I get disk corrupt errors and often the 'blue screen of death.' It's a really strange problem. I'm baffled.

I bought a new SATA hard drive thinking the original Western Digital Black caviar HD had a defect. That didn't help either. So it's not the hard disk itself, nor the operating system (Windows XP or 7/64-bit). I seriously doubt it's a virus because I've checked and rechecked the computer with a variety of antivirus/antimalware programs.

I updated the BIOS to see if that would fix the problem. Nope. I have a Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3 motherboard, powered by a 700 watt Cooler Master Silent Pro power supply. Temperatures of CPU and everything else are okay (not too hot).

I'm suspecting now either the DDR3/1333MHz RAM (2 x 2GB simms, manufactured by PQI) or the Gigabyte motherboard itself (unstable chipset, BIOS, etc).

Dawkin, your computer is somewhat similar to mine (same CPU, same motherboard manufacturer). I see the GA-890FXA-UD5 and GA-870A-UD3 share the same Southbridge chipset (SB850). The Southbridge handles all the I/O, so it controls the SATA hard disks (6GB/sec support on both our boards) and the BIOS, so it could be that GigaByte bought a bad batch of AMD SB850 chips or installed them incorrectly. The SB or BIOS being the problem would explain why it's the hard disk that's corrupted on restart.

 

[heydonald]

I actually have the same problem as well with similar computer specs. AMD 965 and a Asrock Extreme3 870. I know this thread is pretty old but have you made any discoveries? I've been keeping the PC in hibernation instead of shutting it down and that seems to help a bit. It's been stable for 4 days now, but I restarted it earlier today and it gave me the "Running Disk Check Prompt" which is usually a bad sign for my computer.

 

[BurkeMtn]

@heydonald - No, unfortunately no new discoveries except that now I have Ubuntu Linux 11.10 64-bit on the first hard disk (Western Digital Caviar black 640GB SATA 6gb/s) and it seems when I boot into that instead of Microsoft Windows 7 or XP (on a 2nd Western Digital Caviar black 1TB SATA 3gb/s), it works okay, even if the computer has been off a long time. Linux doesn't have the dreaded BSOD and is usually more stable than MS OS's, so I'm hoping that if I boot into that first, I can let the computer warm up and then eventually boot into MS Win 7 without getting crashes. I'll do more testing to see if this method works in case of a long shutdown. I boot into Windows 7 Pro 64-bit by going through the Ubuntu Linux Grub2 boot loader first.

Today, I just installed 4 GB more RAM for 8 GB DRAM total and I'm curious to see what effect that has. It's Crucial brand memory (the other 4GB are PQI).

I'll keep you posted if I find anything new.

If you're interested just in saving power, putting the computer in hibernation or sleep mode (hybrid mode?) is a good alternative to shutting down. It works for me as well; no crashing on waking up even after long periods of time. My main concern though is a power outage. Then I have no choice to but to boot up after what can be a very long shutdown (five days last power outage). I have a UPS, but it can't keep the computer on long. I'm thinking of using a car battery and 120V voltage converter to keep the computer on during power outages. Whatever works.

 

[Dawkin]

Hey there! Dawkin here!

Well I somehow managed to fix the problem by doing various little things, so i couldnt pin point for sure what was the problem if i had to do it gain.

What i can say tho is to fix the corrupt wnidows ,if you ever have to shutdown your computer, is to do a Bios reset on the motherboard. That fixed my problem everytime, kinda annoying to do, but it beats reinstalling windows everyday.

As for what i did to fix the problem, i got myself a new PSU, corsair 850 AX, 8 gb of ram Kingston HyperX ( still using my old ram as well for a 12 gb total).

I also did mess a bit with the battery on the motherboard and something not advised to do but i did it by accident is boot the system while the jumper was on the reset bios pins, felt like the computer had a seisure when it booted! but after that the computer been running flawlessly for months now.
I'm positive it had everything to do with the BIOS now, oh also dnot forget to reset the clock everytime you reset the bios!

 

[lordsnake]

I am having this issue as well. I have reinstalled windows many times now, and each time the files become corrupt. I cannot even repair using sfc/scannow as the master files are also corrupt.
even if I restore a backup from whn the system was fine, it is still corrupt.
the PSU, mobo, SSD are all fairly new.
I have done RAM TEST, no errors
I have done various tests on the SSD, no errors
I have used a power supply tester on the psu, no errors.
I have booted using Kaspersky rescue disk and scanned my drives, no malware.

 

[BurkeMtn]

Just to update, I upgraded my memory to AMD Performance Edition DDR3 RAM PC3 10600 (or 10700?) (latency/timings 8-8-8). I have four 4GB modules, 16GB total, bought in two pairs (all identical brand). I can now shutdown my computer indefinitely and no longer have a corrupt hard drive or blue screen on a cold restart. The timings (8-8-8) are very short, so I suspect that the AMD southbridge, northbridge and/or CPU need the DDR3 RAM to have this speed to function properly. There aren't many of these AMD memory modules in stock anymore, but hopefully if you need them, you can find something similar.

 

[lordsnake]

Just to update, I upgraded my memory to AMD Performance Edition DDR3 RAM PC3 10600 (or 10700?) (latency/timings 8-8-8). I have four 4GB modules, 16GB total, bought in two pairs (all identical brand). I can now shutdown my computer indefinitely and no longer have a corrupt hard drive or blue screen on a cold restart. The timings (8-8-8) are very short, so I suspect that the AMD southbridge, northbridge and/or CPU need the DDR3 RAM to have this speed to function properly. There aren't many of these AMD memory modules in stock anymore, but hopefully if you need them, you can find something similar.

but how an earth does bad memory cause disk corruption ?

 

[BurkeMtn]

Just to update, I upgraded my memory to AMD Performance Edition DDR3 RAM PC3 10600 (or 10700?) (latency/timings 8-8-8). I have four 4GB modules, 16GB total, bought in two pairs (all identical brand). I can now shutdown my computer indefinitely and no longer have a corrupt hard drive or blue screen on a cold restart. The timings (8-8-8) are very short, so I suspect that the AMD southbridge, northbridge and/or CPU need the DDR3 RAM to have this speed to function properly. There aren't many of these AMD memory modules in stock anymore, but hopefully if you need them, you can find something similar.

but how an earth does bad memory cause disk corruption ?

I don't really know. I suspect though that it might have been an indirect effect of the operating system not functioning properly during boot. Due to the 'bad' or too slow DRAM, the OS might have been writing incorrectly to and from the hard disk (SATA) due to incorrect loading of the OS in memory. The hard disks themselves in my case were functioning fine. I'm still using these same hard disks.