Computer screwed?

[GekiritZ]

Hey TH community!


Yesterday I decided to perform a long overdue full clean of my system. I took my machine apart, cleaned and reseated every component and took separate components apart to get to hard to reach areas. Formatted my system drive and reinstalled Windows 7.

Ever since I've done this - the following problems have been occuring at random, most of which I haven't been able to accurately reproduce to determine a cause.

- Green dots/artifacts during POST, boot sequence, in the BIOS, the Windows loading screen, DOS and Windows Setup (during reinstallations I've done over the day's course)
- Bootmgr not found on several occasions, forcing me to boot from DVD and reinstate the bootmgr.
- Random BSOD right after Windows loads and wants to switch to the login screen.
- Skewed or stretched graphics, some elements displayed regularly, some distorted beyond recognition. One reboot even gave me a "Star Wars" like text effect on update progress.
- GPU fan speeding up to maximum speed on reboot/shutdown commands, actual shutdown or reboot not happening either for at least 5 seconds or indefinitely. (longest wait was 18 minutes after which I manually shut my machine down).

THe only problem I can accurately reproduce is the BSOD after loading Windows. To trigger it, all I need to do is run Windows Update or install a device driver. All changes made will be rolled back after the first succesful reboot (which might take my machine 1 to 5 tries, it's really hit and miss).

Actions I've taken so far are;

- Reseating all components
- Cleaning all components
- Checking for shorts
- Measured my PSU's outputs
- chkdsk on system volume
- memtest86
- Reinstalling Windows (lost count on how many times)
- Monitoring component temperatures

I am getting stable runtime in Safemode, and once the machine boots properly it will run smoothly, but I haven't really done anything besides trying to install drivers for components and surf the web for info.

I'm partial to believe my GPU is at fault, since during the cleaning process I found a black cake of singed dust blocking the air intake and my PSU is not outputting it's peak value, which was just enough to power the card using both it's GPU's (I can force it to run on a single GPU by either playing games windowed or telling Catalyst to not use CrossFireX). Thing is, besides the obvious signs, it worked well before and the nature of some of the errors encountered don't point directly to the GPU as opposed to some which obviously do.

The components in my machine which I suspect being related to my troubles;

Core2Duo E8500
Sapphire ATI Radeon 4870X2
4GB GEiL Black Dragon DDR2 RAM, kit of 2 x 2GB
MSI P45-Neo3 mainboard
Tagan Piperock TG-500Z (500w modular PSU)

If anybody has any idea as to what the hell is causing my computer to plummet from stable mid-class gaming PC to an unstable bucket of silicon of twirly fans, enlighten me. My 12 years of being an IT pro have got me stumped on this one.

 

[Guest]

Definitely sounds like the GPU! have you got a spare GPU to test rest of PC with!

 

[Snipergod87]

I know you already did this buy try reseating the GPU in the PCI-Express slot, that can cause issues, other than that it tends to be a bad GPU.

Do the dots appear in safe mode?
It could also be related to static electricity which could damage components. Did you work on a rug or use a vaccum to clean stuff?

I agree you should test with an extra GPU if you have one, or you could even try testing with another PSU too.

Have you reset the CMOS yet? If you try that too.

unstable bucket of silicon of twirly fans

I like that.

 

[GekiritZ]

Thanks so far;

A friend of mine is coming over with a handful of spare parts. I've safely deduced that the CPU can be removed from the equation (temperatures far below nominal due to aftermarket cooling and stress test revealed no persistent errors) and am now setting my sights on systematically replacing parts with the spares I"ll be getting later tonight.

He'll be bringing in a spare GPU, memory and PSU to see if we can eliminate the cause. From there it'll be a trip to replacementville. I'm also keeping an eye out to see if the mainboard can be swapped out (I have like, 3 AMD spares but only two Intel boards of different sockets and both in use ) I'll keep you updated about the progress, don't hesitate to keep posting leads or requesting for more info in this thread.