pc, what else

[Allura Prime]

My son's pc has been blue screening for the past few days. Today when he attempted to start it, it wouldn't boot. I'm thinking its the hd but could it be something else and how could I check?

[jim]

As a first step I would reseat the cards and reconnect all the connections to make sure its not a simple mechanical problem. Check the power supply fan to make sure it's spinning like it should.

If it's a western digital hard drive they have a bootable diagnostic file that you burn to cd to test their drives. Other companies may have something similar.

Blue screening isn't a lot to go on though. Try safe mode and booting off the windows cd. It may just be a driver issue if you don't have problems doing the above. That's not say that it couldn't be a bunch of other things though.

[Allura Prime]

reseated the cards after I kicked it a few times. It's a gateway did the gateway recovery and it blue screened while it was doing that. It blue screens in safe mode as well. I did a reformat and was attempting to reinstall but got fatal exception error messages.

[jim]

Not software so must be hardware heh.

Assuming the power supply isn't acting up then I would go to www.memtest.org/ and test the ram. It makes a bootable cd/dvd so the harddrive isn't involved. Run the test until errors come up or a few hours, whichever comes first. For sure run it more than 2 passes. If the test doesn't show any errors then you can look for other problems.

When you reformatted did you do the full format instead of the quick format? If not you should do the full.

[Allura Prime]

He has an external hd connected to the pc as well, how can I install the os on that and see it will boot off there?

[Shadowjack]

I would do what Jim suggested and test the memory first. If the memory is bad, then nothing else you try to do will work properly.

You could also download the Ultimate Boot CD which also contains other tools, such as hard drive diagnostic utilities. You can find it at www.ultimatebootcd.com/. This CD image does include the memory testing utility that Jim pointed you to.

[Allura Prime]

Thanks guys, I downloaded the ultimate boot cd and started the pc with that in drive.

Passed the mem test also passed the windows mem test. Passed a quick scan for hd errors, running the full scan atm. If it passes my next step would be?

[Shadowjack]

The next thing I would do is look at the blue screen information and try to determine what the cause is. Google might be useful here. It may point to one of your drivers (or hardware related to a driver). I would recommend attaching the hard drive to another system and backing up any critical data before you go much further. You may end up having to do a clean reinstall of the system.

Also, running the memory test, if you only ran it through one cycle you may want to let it run overnight and run multiple times. Sometimes memory issues do not appear on just one test cycle.

[Allura Prime]

Ok will do some more mem test and the blue screen messages are all different, at this point Im going to just format it after the mem test

[Allura Prime]

Ok it failed the mem test after it passed 12 times! So now I see what you both meant.

Does this mean the pc is toast then?

[jim]

Ram is relatively cheap at newegg.com if it's the problem. I wouldn't run out and buy any yet. How long was the test running? I mean in hours/minutes not passes.

There are 3 main components to look at when you fail the test. Power supply, system board, or the ram itself. Also overheating can make any of them work erratically. You can probably look in the bios and see if it has a power management section to see if the temps and fans that it monitors are reasonable.

Sometimes the contacts on the ram get dirty and you can use alcohol and cotton balls to clean the contacts. If that doesn't clean it enough then try a pencil eraser. Don't try to clean anything on the system board because you'll most likely break something permanently.

Assuming the problem is the ram, does it have more than one stick of ram? Most boards you can remove all but one stick and test individually. If they all fail in one slot try in a different slot. If you have problems testing you'll have to check the manual for your board for acceptable slot configurations (if there are any restrictions like first slot only or 2 slots at a time).

Even easier is if you have extra good ram that's compatible. Just replace them all and see if the machine works right.

Anyone mess around in the bios settings recently or has the machine been losing the correct time? You might want to write down all the current settings and then select the restore defaults option in bios. You may have to change a few of the defaults to run with your hardware though it should be obvious what you need to change if anything. Do this last if you do it at all.

[Allura Prime]

I am testing the ram individually and will test each slot as well. The test ran for 2 hours because I wanted to see if heat was an issue. Will let you know what happens after I test the ram sticks.

Personally I think the pc has a heat issue, it has gone through 2 sound cards and 3 video cards in the 2 years he has had it.

[jim]

Heat can kill cards quick but so can power supplies not regulating voltages properly or the outlet voltage varying-like if an air conditioner or refrigerator is on same circuit. Also make sure the fan inside the power supply is running.

[Allura Prime]

Ok I checked both sticks in the first slot for over 4 hours each and no errors were given. So I moved on to the second slot and although I get no error the pc does keep rebooting. Does that mean that slot is bad?

[jim]

It may be that the 2nd slot by itself is not a supported configuration for the memory. Most manuals have a table that shows which slots have to have ram in them for it to work properly. If it's supposed to be supported then ya it may be that slot is bad. If you have a can of air you can blow the slot out but that doesn't help very often.

You could always try to load the operating system with one stick of ram in first slot.

[Allura Prime]

there are actually 4 slots on the mb, I've been running the mem test on a stick that is in the 3rd slot for 5hours now and no errors or restarts

[Allura Prime]

Ok so the memory slot is definitely no good. I was able to reinstall windows and played a game with no problems at all with blue screening. However I have noticed it doesn't display the memory correctly.

My next question: If the memory slot is no longer working does that mean the mb may be failing? I've already ordered him a new pc so should I just scap the old one for parts or try and keep it as a spare.

[Allura Prime]

Actually I just noiticed that the pc is detecting usb devices, i.e. keyboard, mouse etc., as removable drives so I'm going to scrap it and take out the pieces that can be reused.

[Marna]

Sounds like the Mobo is going to the dump quick... but the CPU and every peripheral should still be good. Might just be one of the bridge chips that is burning out... but I doubt that anyone repairs them anymore....

[Allura Prime]

Rest In Pieces

[jim]

Heh, nice try though.

[Jaxs]

wow. Sorry for that. Bummer. You guys gave it a good go for sure.

[Lastat]

One thing you can check are the capacitors. They are the vertical eletrical devices on the mobo. If the top is raised slighty on them, they are ruined. They are cheap at mouser com(sp) and fairly simple to replace with little soldering skills. And by cheap like $2 each or something.

Otherwise hope to see ya ingame sometime soon.

[Allura Prime]

Ok new pc is coming, suppose to be here on the 23rd. It will have windows 7 installed on it. So can someone direct me to a site that will tell me which processes don't need to be running in the background?

[Shadowjack]

I haven't really dealt with Windows 7 yet, but I personally wouldn't turn off processes unless I have seen performance issues with the standard processes running. If the computer comes with Norton or McAfee anti-virus software I would immediately uninstall them and download and install another anti-virus solution, such as AVG Free. (That's what I did for my daughter's laptop that I bought her for college.)

[Lastat]

camera, scanner, printer stuff can be shut off. unless you know exactly what your shutting down in msconfig dont do it.

[jim]

Shadowjack and Lastat both had good advice that I recommend you take. However, here is a link to the site I use. I didn't bother to disable any services for Win7 since resources in newer machines aren't as critical as in the older ones. www.blackviper.com/

Make sure you run regedit and save a copy of your complete registry before making any changes to the services. Make sure the export range is set to ALL.

Make sure you read and understand what each service does before making any changes and write down what you changed and what it's setting was before you changed it. You can always put the old registry back but if you don't notice right away that something isn't right, then whatever programs you installed during that time will not have their registry entries in the backup copy and probably won't run right.

If you do make changes be careful and take your time. If you aren't sure then it's best not to change it. I would recommend not making any changes but if you do then only make the changes you are absolutely sure of in a first pass then run it for a while. That way if you do additional changes it will be easier to troubleshoot. You can end up disabling usb devices, home network, certain windows programs, and a lot of other things that you may want. Also don't throw out your list of changes because in the future when you go to add some hardware or a program and it doesn't run correctly it may be that you disabled a service that was needed.

Msconfig will let you turn off programs that you don't want to run at startup but you will usually be better off just uninstalling the program rather than not letting it load as it will generally still start some service(s).

One thing I always do is go to control panel/system/advanced system settings/performance and select adjust for best performance. I do that because I don't like/need any of the features that it turns off to increase performance. Don't do that right away because it turns off some of the eye candy that comes with win7. Your new machine may handle all of the defaults fine and some people do like the effects. I just don't happen to be one of them. My win7 desktop actually looks and acts like XP with just minor differences.

Here are some links that you may find useful:

www.mydigitallife.info/2009/01/14/how-to-enable-or-disable-quick-launch-bar-toolbar-in-windows-7/

www.mydigitallife.info/2009/05/20/disable-aero-snap-auto-maximize-and-arrange-window-in-windows-7/

Also, you can change how often those security confirmation popups happen. With the kids using the machine I wouldn't disable them but you can lower the security setting if you want. Control panel/user accounts/change user account control setting. I usually set on never notify during my initial software installs then turn it back to default if it's for someone else.