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Wow, Having this PC trouble for like a year now

Discussion in 'PC hardware help' started by Eugene482, Jul 20, 2008.

  1. Eugene482

    Eugene482 Regular member

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    Hey, so like ok lemme explain.

    -Bought a new PC, everything works
    -6 months later, the PC sometimes gets stuck on the WinXp logo on boot, so I have to restart
    -Upon a restart it says "Start Normally or Use Working settings ..... blah blah blah"
    -so ok, it started well no biggie, prolly just an error, then sometimes in games, it causes graphical glitches --> lines, invisible floors, even wireframes etc --> Started with crysis, then went to CoD4, then went to Virtua tennis 3.
    -Random freeze...in a game, I kept pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete but it wouldn't respond, I restart, then in XP it says "Send Error Report" then I click yes and then it sends me to a page which says "Upgrade your VGA Driver" but that doesn't make sense since I already did that 4 times.
    -Cool, now what... I play a game, and it freezes, no biggie, restart... monitor shows no signal, try again and get the same result.
    -I ask my retailer they're like, u shouldn't send it to us, just send it to the actual company, but I ignore them and shove it to them be ause I have 1 year warranty.
    -They replace the faulty RAM and say that I made changes in BIOS...I didn't. (RAM was OCZ 2GB DDR2)
    -k PC works fine, but sometimes freezes at windows logo.

    My warranty expires in a couple of weeks, so I wanna know what to do. I think it's the motherboard, because it never beeps when I trun on my PC.

    Help?

    Thanks a lot, please ask for clarifications I just wrote that in point form. Thanks!



    E6750
    8800gts 320 EV
    2gb ddr2 OC
    500gb sata II WD
    P5K Vanilla
     
  2. jony218

    jony218 Guest

    you might want to do a chkdsk x:/f (x= drive letter of each partition) on all you partitions/hard drives. If there is any file corruption it might cause the problem you are having (you can also do the scandisk with the box to fix errors checked instead of chkdsk). The chkdsk you can run from the command prompt on the run box in the start menu, scandisk you can run by right clicking on the partition and choosing properties/tools/error checking.

    Also check your control panel/system/hardware/device manager/ide atapi conrollers and make sure all your hard drives/dvd-roms are set to DMA and not PIO.
     
  3. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    More likely to be a faulty graphics card, especially if it's EVGA.
     
  4. Eugene482

    Eugene482 Regular member

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    Why faulty gfx?

    I gave them my entire PC to screw around with, and they did not change the gfx, but the RAM...

    if I call them, what should I say? Thanx

    I still remember you as the one who helped me build this rig 1 year ago :D
     
  5. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    Hmm well the original problem could have been faulty graphics or RAM, though I now read it was the latter. If all you get is freezes at the windows logo, you may have some corruption on your hard disk from when you had the faulty RAM. Checkdisk it, defragment it, and see what happens...
     
  6. Eugene482

    Eugene482 Regular member

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    unfortunately the sticking in the windows logo only shows up rarely, so I won't really know if chkdsk helped, but I am doing that right now (run > cmd > chkdsk). It says it's on stage 2/3 and is deleting indexes, taking a while...

    I have a 500GB harddrive, I wonder how long it will take to defragment it...lol

    Thanks I will reply in a while.
     
  7. Eugene482

    Eugene482 Regular member

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    Ok, it's done, it says "Errors found, CHKDSK cannot continue in read-only mode"

    Yeah what do I do from there? And Scandisk asks for windows cd which is just bs-ing me -_-
     
    Last edited: Jul 22, 2008
  8. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    run it again but add /f at the end of chkdsk with a space. That should tell it to fix the problems.
     
  9. Eugene482

    Eugene482 Regular member

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    ok I used
    chkdsk f: /f /x for my big F drive, but that doesn't work for my system C drive, it says if you want to reschedulle blah blha etc...what do I do? Thanks.

    EDIT: yeah I am gonna restart now :)
     
    Last edited: Jul 22, 2008
  10. kingy1213

    kingy1213 Regular member

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    Im not the best computer guy but this is wot i did 2 fix a prob i had once

    Take the hdd out of ur computer and put in some 1 Else's computer....c wot happens??

    try there RAM, G card...ect in ur computer then try ur stuff in there computer?

    doin this u will c wot is the prob?

    hint burn a copy of all the drivers u need b4 hand
     
    Last edited: Jul 23, 2008
  11. Eugene482

    Eugene482 Regular member

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    great idea, thanks but just as I mentioned:

    the problem comes up only once in a while, and may cause lots of crap in a long run and my warranty expires soon.

    In any case, HELP me with this one thing, it's actually urgent at the moment

    --> Alright here's the thing, the guy at the store told me to bring my system to him and he's gonna fix everything. Sounds good, but do I bring my HD to him too? Last time I didn't, but what if it's the thing that causes probs? That's why I did chkdsk thing, I even deleted AVG 8 and replaced it with Avast...

    the main reason that I don't want him to have my HD is *ehm* games *ehm* and other very importent stuff that originates on the interwebs... so he could basically say "bleh, I am suing you, and bleh, your warranty is wank" although he did say he wasn't gonna look into anything unlike those retailers like Future Shop.

    Thanks in advance. :D

    P.S. he also said there's no way to extend the warranty :(
     
    Last edited: Jul 24, 2008
  12. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    Well, I took my PC into a repair shop with all sorts of crap on the hard disks, nothing came of it, but all shops operate differently.
     
  13. kingy1213

    kingy1213 Regular member

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    download winRAR and make a RAR file with a password,

    than move all your files in that folder?

    and old mate at the computer shop cant get them!
     
  14. Estuansis

    Estuansis Active member

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    You took it to a repair shop??? I sure hope you mean your socket A rig with the faulty PSU, wary parents and all... because otherwise, I'm very confused as to why you would ever do something so noobish, lol.
     
  15. Eugene482

    Eugene482 Regular member

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    WEll thanks for ur all replies. Unfortunately, I've already sent my PC without a HD. I am not sure if these problems are software based or hardware based, but since no HD, they will just check my HD. There's something about the mobo --> Bios, wrong readings etc. but teh retailer said that's usual, then why TF did they create those useless programs in the first place?

    THat RAR idea is great...would take a while though, and I didn't have much space. Besides, you can't really... compress your operating system into .rar ;) not that I am hinting something or so... but I've bought several Dell laptops with Windows on them, so I actually paid for it .. ok?

    Yeah so, they will just do a hardware check, do you think it will be tolerant?
     
  16. Estuansis

    Estuansis Active member

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    I know what you mean. It's not that I don't trust the guys at my local shop. I just don't want them having open access to my private info, emails, and yes my many, many, *ahem*games.

    The advantage for me though is that my PC wasn't pre-built. This means I can just get the individual warranties on the parts and use some old extra stuff while I wait for a replacement.

    And I know what you mean about the Dell copies of Windows. They are rightfully yours to use and can actually work on most PCs. I've got a Dell copy of XP Home with 10+ uses on it and it still passes the genuine advantage tests and everything. So tell me if I am doing something wrong :) Though, I went and bought XP Professional when I got my 2 320GB HDDs. It was in a combo deal, so I couldn't resist :p

    Like will the PC work normally without the hard drive? More than likely if it had problems, though I wouldn't depend on it. Sometimes other stuff can be happening to cause the same symptoms. I had a Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 motherboard with a blown capacitor and it gave me bad voltages, messed up benchmarks, and finally bluescreens. When the GeForce 7600GT in my parents' PC went out, it had the same exact symptoms.
     
  17. Eugene482

    Eugene482 Regular member

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    Thanks.

    I will be calling them tomorrow, although I left them a full page, hand-written list of problems, I also wrote all the procedures I did as well as the therefore statements as if I was writing the test... so I would sound right and not like a dumbass and so like I would sound that I know what I am doing and they shouldn't mess with me just by replacing RAM which only temporarily sort of helps.

    But, I am gonna do a complete clean-up of HD, 500GB, because I've used it for 1 year, time to do so, I hope that Genuine Windows Trick still works, but just in case I defragmented the HD, did the chkdsk, did antivirus scan and that's it.
     
  18. Eugene482

    Eugene482 Regular member

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    k, got my PC back. Here are the problems.

    BIOS:
    -Wrong voltage for my RAM
    -Wrong frequency on the RAM
    -Wrong Timing on the RAM

    CPU:
    The heatsink was seated improperly, wasn't clicked in, might have been shaken during transportation resulted in 50C+ CPU temperature

    GPU:
    He didn't take a look at it, but my default fan cycle was at 59%, I set it to 100% and it's more noisy, but cool.

    That's pretty much it.... sadly no parts were replaced, oh well, back Cod4 :D
     
  19. kingy1213

    kingy1213 Regular member

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    - i like learning new things?
    - wot would cause that? i got no idea?
     
  20. jeice28

    jeice28 Member

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    if he was getting these issues before boot up even with check disk, it could actually mean a bad HDD. Did you try a new one yet just to ask? Or for that matter doing a full re-format?

    Even more to the point who did you give your system over to do the repair work? If best buy start getting prepared to play taps I've heard too many horror stories from my friends about them and compUSA. IF circuit city or micro center then you ought to be okay; every once in while I hear an odd complaint, and or compliment. If a local guy... just make sure whatever was in your system is still there! I'd go so far as to have them do a test fire up for you before leaving.That's how some repair people could operate even in high-end retail stores. Finally, and this is why I also mention doing the fire up; once it leaves the place that it's worked on there no guarantee of a repeat issue. On the plus side; if it is something hardware wise it ought to get fixed, hopefully correctly. If its software and they can't get the same issue occur at a repair depot... be prepared for a possible 150 to 350 dollar repair bill my friend. No current replacement plan, nor manufacturer's warranty will cover software, and stopped doing so after the release of windows ME (i.e millennium edition a.k.a mistake edition.)

    Its also why everyone's been slightly upset with vista... still scratching head over some issues I've heard when all I did was two things and the operating system runs smooth as glass.
     

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