What's wrong?...

[hankmarvin]

Hello all I was playing a game last night when the screen froze and the computer stopped working. I ended up powering it down and now I can't even get into the BIOS, I can get to the post screen I think it's called which tells me that it's initializing usb controllers (doesn't work without them either), 4gb of ram ok, after an age it says auto detecting sata 2 and that's it, it won't go anywhere or do anything after that. I've tried a few things like disconnecting and anything plugged into the usb's removing the battery from the motherboard, checked the graphics card, tried to boot the windows installation dvd, removed a hard drive that I'd had problems with lately but nothing.

I have a AMD Phenom 970 with a H70 cooler
an M4N98TD Evo motherboard
OCZ Agility 3 SSD
650 watt corsair psu
LG Blu ray HD DVD drive
Kingston 4gb Hyperx 1333mhz ram

Sorry if I forgot anything. And I selected memory as my sub category although I have no idea what is actually wrong!.

I just can't understand why it would just stop working. If anyone could help me pinpoint what's wrong I'd really appreciate it.

 

[abekl]

Sounds like you machine is barfing on detecting the HDD. Not sure what the course of action is.

 

[hankmarvin]

I think you're right, I just removed my C drive and rebooted and I was able to run the windows start up disc. But when I tried to reinstall I was told that the disc wasn't compatible with this version of windows!. Then I thought I'd bite the bullet and just reinstall and it's asking for drivers because none were found. I reset it and tried again and now my dvd drive isn't showing up in the boot selection screen! WTF!

 

[hankmarvin]

Does anyone know why my DVD drive just dissapeared off my computer and how to get it back because without it I can't even reinstall windows.

 

[4745454b]

Pull the AC cord. Pull the battery. Pull the ram. Unplug all drives but the optical drive. Put the ram and battery back in. Plug the AC cord back in. Can you boot to the bios? Is the optical drive there?

 

[hankmarvin]

I got it working by using a different sata port?!, I'm now trying to install a fresh install on another ssd after I deleted what was on it now I'm getting another error saying I cannot install to that drive because error no 0x80300024, gotta go and look see what that is now!

 

[hankmarvin]

And now I can't find my activation key! muva fffffffffff

 

[4745454b]

Keep looking, got to be around there somewhere.

 

[TenPc]

Never re-install on a whim, always try to find a solution even if you have to ask in 10 PC forums.

The reason that your PC might have frozen was that you were playing the game for too many hours and the video card and ram and virtual space all got fiulled up with junk. Always better to not play for more than 4 hours and do a shutdown to dissipate the filled ram space.

It is possible that your hard drive is too low on free space..

OCZ Agility 3 SSD is a 2.5 inch hdd and is to be used in external casings or in laptops, they are not an internal desktop hard drive. They range from 60 gb to 240 gb in volume so if your volume was only 60gb, that is barely enough space to run Windows 7 x64 with addons.

You should have set a restore point at some stage and you also should have created a Repair Disk when you had installed all the software and drivers.

You need to get a 3.5 inch hdd for use in a desktop PC.

The 650 watt PSU is barely acceptable, it might be that you were running the PC to extremes and the PSU could not handle the required power output.

 

[4745454b]

Always better to not play for more than 4 hours

WTF? Have you ever seen most of our weekends?

 

[TenPc]

What does that mean "Have you ever seen most of our weekends"

 

[4745454b]

It means most of us game for a lot longer then 4hrs at a time. I wake up and game for longer then that on steam, then play at least 4 on Diablo 3. And thats with all my programs running in the background including Firefox which has around 15+ tabs open. (Many of them have flash running such as Youtube or other such video sites.) And before you ask, I have only 4GBs of ram.

The 650 watt PSU is barely acceptable

Wait, a 650W Corsair PSU can't power a PhenomII x4? Even if he had a 7970 or GTX580 in there it should be fine. We are talking about a 650W Corsair here. I don't mean to be rube but a lot of your post is... wrong?

 

[TenPc]

If you are a gamer and you play for long hours like 4745454b then you should be aware that your PC will get hot and the ram on the gpu and motherboard will also get hot and used excessivel yto the point of not adequately providing the memory properly causing lagging and stuttering.

You should also be aware of the medical problems associated with prolonged PC use -
http://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/-/world/14260940/teen-dies-gaming-binge/

 

[4745454b]

I play for hours, no problems. Perhaps because I take care of my PC and have a half way decent case.