Progressive Failures

Aturi

Distinguished
May 3, 2011
3
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18,510
Hello all, I've read several articles from this site before but this is my first post! Although, I wish it was under better circumstances...

My system went through a series of failures until I am finally at a DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER

But we'll get there. Here are my PC specs.

CPU: Intel Core i5-760 Lynnfield 2.8GHz
MBR: GIGABYTE GA-P55-USB3
PSU: Corsair CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V / EPS12V
RAM: CORSAIR XMS3 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666)
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

GPU: EVGA 01G-P3-N880-AR GeForce 9800 GTX+ 1GB 256-bit.... just upgraded to...
EVGA 01G-P3-1373-AR GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) Superclocked EE 1GB 256-bit

The platform you see above was completely stable with the 9800 GTX. I never encountered any graphical issues or system failures. This past Saturday, 4/30, evening I installed the new GTX 460 to support my new 24" monitor, and installed 2 new 80mm and 1 120mm fan. Yesterday, 5/02, I began encountering minor graphical issues in games. There were two times playing Gary's Mod that I could see textures being displayed incorrectly. They self-corrected and then I kept playing. Later, I was playing League of Legends and the screen froze and tore another 2 times. I finished the game I was playing without any hitches and exited to look into the problem. While at the desktop the screen went black, then restored and, summarized, said that the pc stopped reading the graphics card. I recalled installing the new W7 service pack on 5/01 along with the drivers for the GTX460 after I installed it. I thought that Windows Update might have missed something, so I manually installed the newest driver from Nvidia's website. After a reboot I opened Google Chrome. Large red pixels began checkering the screen. The desktop, however, still appeared normal. I then received a notification that Windows stopped reading the USB device. A prompt for a USB driver opened, so I proceeded to download, and install. When I rebooted my screen was at the smallest resolution. The largest resolution I could now display was 1280x1024. I checked my devices and the GTX 460 had the exclamation mark next to it. It claimed that the driver was not in use (code 43) because it encountered an error. No other information was given. Several reboots later it posted, then disk boot failure.

To me this says mbr. It seems odd that components would progressively fail. This morning, with renewed vigor, I went back to my machine. There are 4 USB ports located on the back and top of my machine. I attempted to plug my keyboard into all 4 and hammered away at the delete key to no avail. Luckily, my parents have an old keyboard that uses a different plug (about as round as your pinky). I plugged it in and, woohoo, I could get into the BIOS! And this is where I am at right now.

I have the newest bios from Gigabyte dl and ready to unzip to a CD on my laptop. Unfortunately, my laptop wont read the blank DVD RW+ that I found. I tried several discs, and they were only read on the mac. I am quite unsure how to zip and unzip on a mac so that endeavor failed. So, when the stores open this morning I'm off to buy some blank CDs.

My plan of action is to get the CD's, burn the new bios onto 'em, and flash my desktop. I hope that I do not have to reinstall windows. I bought W7 OEM from newegg awhile back and the disc is approximately 1k miles from my current location, awaiting my return from my summer internship. While I wait for stores to open and pray to the PC gods that my plan works I figured I'd post this here in hopes of someone having a similar experience and resolution.

Recap: New GTX 460, mobo stops reading GPU, USB fails, disk boot failure.

Thanks ahead of time for reading my wall of text and responding! :wahoo: