Computer Won't Load

giant00buckets

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Jul 19, 2011
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Hello,
I have windows 7, and everytime I try to boot my computer it will either
-black screen not even bios loads but i hear everything runninh
-load the bios then freeze
-load to the windows 7 "Starting Windows" logo then freeze

Any idea on what is wrong?
 
Start by giving us full system specifications. Maker, model, and approximate age of everything even things you don't think are very important. PSU, Motherboard, CPU, RAM, Video Card, and Hard Drives are a bare minimum.

If the computer has been working in the past, for how long did it work?

Did anything change before the problem started?

Did you install new drivers or something just before this?

Did the computer suffer a trauma event? Did someone kick it or drop it?

With absolutely nothing to go on, I would say you need a new PSU.

I could be way off base, though. Your answers to the above questions will help me confirm this.
 

MajinCry

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Going alongside with Raiddinn, I speculate that it might be a Harddrive/ram problem.

I had (Still do) a drive that wouldn't let me boot past bios with it connected to my MB. Took it out and everything was dandy.
Then two sticks of some mystery ram began to act up. Wouldn't let me boot past bios, took 'em out and replaced them with some good ol' corsair. Works a treat now.

But yeah. More info needed.
 

giant00buckets

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I got all the parts in January so they are almost a year old, maybe 10 or 11 months. I don't recall having installed any new drivers before this happened but if I did it would have been a Microsoft Update or NVIDIA driver. Before this happened my computer would freeze maybe once or twice a week and I didn't really think anything of it, but sometimes when I turned it on it would ask if I wanted to do a system repair and I didnt really think anything of that either. Then last weekend I went o Chicago and when I got back home to turn my computer on everything was running slower than usual, and when I right clicked on my desktop it would take about 10 minutes for the box with "View" and "Personalize" and such to finally appear, besudes that though everything seemed to be running fine, EXCEPT when I would play BF3 I seemed to be getting less FPS than I usually did. So because everything was going so slow, along with the fact that I had little room left on my HDD I decided to re-install Windows 7, and this is where everything went to hell.

After I formatted my HDD and tried to install windows it would either say "missing bootmgr" or something like that, or it would freeze sometime during the installation. When I finally got it to finish the install my PC would freeze about every 10-15 minutes and I'd have to restart and then sometimes it would freeze in the bios and it became a hassle to even get back to the desktop. Then this happened where it will either freeze in the BIOS, never load the BIOS, or freeze where it should say "Welcome" when its loading windows but this always appears black.

I recently re-installed windows to see if that would help and I was able to get back the the desktop but it keeps freezing. Also I ran the MemTest86 and it said everything passed with no errors.

Here is a brief overview of my specs from Speccy, not sure if that's detailed enough though.
Somethings to note are I usually run it with 16 GB of RAM, and my PSU is a Cosiar TX 650 W

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/440/39134056.png/


 

giant00buckets

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Thanks, updated with more info.
 
If my computer froze once or twice a week I would be pretty irritated by it. I was able to live with the fact that my computer took forever and a day to boot up (I later determined it was my CD Drive that was causing this, now I just only connect it when I need it) but there was nothing that actually had any problems once the computer was in windows. The video card was really loud too, but that was just because of how beastly it was (HD 4870), but that also didn't affect operations.

If I had something that actually caused my computer to lock up, though, I would be angry about it and sit there till it didn't do it anymore.

I am surprised you could tolerate locking up a couple times a week for a year.

That being said, I will try to help you fix all these problems.

The "BOOTMGR is missing" error can only be fixed by reinstalling windows, so it was a good idea to try to do that.

Unfortunately, your problem sounds like it is a Byzantine Error, which means that the thing that is problematic works like it is supposed to a lot of the time and doesn't work like it is supposed to some of the time. These sorts of problems tend to be harder to diagnose than other sorts of problems. If the problematic device decides to work properly during the test it can appear good when it isn't.

Kinda like how the Chinese built the Great Wall of China to keep the Mongolian hordes out of China and it did like it was supposed to until the Mongolian warlord paid off the gate guard and the gate guard opened the gates and the whole wall was rendered useless allowing the Mongols to conquer most of China. Inspection of the wall later showed it was in perfect working condition, it was just the one gate guard that caused the whole wall to fail.

Computer parts can work exactly like this.

The first thing I am going to suggest that you do is to try to download the program MemTest86 and create a CD Image out of the ISO. Special software is needed to deconstruct the ISO and make a bootable CD image out of it, you can't just copy the file to the CD. There are many programs that do this and one may already be on your computer if you have Roxio Easy CD Creator or something like that. Others are available on the internet if you just look up "Copy ISO to CD" or something like that.

After you make this CD, I would like you to insert the CD, then shut the computer down and disconnect all of the hard drives, then start the computer with only the following things connected:
Power Supply connected twice to motherboard and once or twice to the video card, if necessary.
Processor, RAM, Video Card, and CD Drive connected to the motherboard. Plug in the keyboard and the monitor as well.

Also, push down firmly on the RAM. If you think you will snap it in half that is too hard, but it needs to be all the way in there and it isn't always apparent when it is indeed all the way in there. If it isn't all the way in, that can cause all sorts of hard to diagnose problems. Push hard on it until you are convinced it is all the way in. The force needs to be perpendicular to the board (straight down) pushing at an angle can damage things.

Then start the computer again and boot off the CD. It will ask you which of 2 options you want to do. Either hit 1 or don't do anything and it will assume you want #1 anyway.

Then you will need to leave the computer doing this for a minimum of 8 hours. Longer if you can spare the time.

The only number you really need to care about is in the bottom right, number of errors. Keep an eye on that figure and see if it goes above 0.

Once you have left it in for a minimum of 8 hours, report back on the status. Feel free to repeat this test while you are sleeping at night for a few days in a row, it can't hurt. As mentioned before, like many parts, RAM can be subject to Byzantine Errors and the more test time you have on it the more confident you can be that it won't work most of the time and fail once in a while.
 

giant00buckets

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I'm typing this from my phone but so far it has frozen twice while in the middle of the test
 
Sometimes the program will take a long time to do a test. Are you sure it ceased all operations or might it have just been in the middle of an operating that takes a really long time?

Its better not to monitor it, just write down all the numbers and go away for an hour and then write down the numbers when you come back and compare them. If they are all the same after an hour then it really isn't the fact that it is taking a long time to do some test that is the problem.

If your computer really cannot perform this test without locking up (same numbers after 1 hour) then I don't think you will be able to avoid buying new parts.
 

giant00buckets

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I'm pretty sure its freezing because where it says time it just stops, but there is a blinking whit line on the left lower half of the page. If I do need to buy parts any idea on which parts to buy?
 
You don't by any chance have access to a computer that you could borrow things from that are close to your current parts, do you?

It would be nice if you could try to switch some parts out before you had to start shelling out. I would hate to tell you to buy things if you didn't need to.
 

giant00buckets

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I might be able to borrow a friends