Major Computer malfunction - Please Help

[Motorboat Cruiser]

My PC is refusing to boot. It worked fine this morning although before I shut it down, I had been playing the Sims 2 and the program froze the computer. I didn't think much of it and went to the office all day. When I got back, I turned it on and noticed that I got no beep.

It went through the little bios screen, then started windows. A few seconds later, I got an error message that said something to the effect of "We apologize for the inconvenience but windows failed to load". It then gives me the option to safe boot, normal boot, or boot from last known configuration that worked. I've tried all of them and no matter which I choose, it goes back to the Bios splash screen, then starts windows, then goes back to the apology screen.

My first thought was the ungodly heat and humidity has caused a problem with the CPU. Yet, it seems the problem is windows related. If the CPU was bad, it doesn't seem I would have been able to go into BIOS (which I can, nothing looked abnormal)

So now I'm thinking virus. I downloaded some custom content last night for the Sims and I'm wondering if there is something suspect with one of the files. However, I installed the files last night and the system booted fine this morning. I've been keeping the computer off when I'm not using it due to the heat.

So while I try to find my windows disk and see if I can do a repair of the OS, does anyone else have any ideas as to what this might be? Hard drive failure? virus? gnomes? I'm open to suggestions.

:mad:

[DreadPirateRoberts]

Open the case. Is there a cpu fan? is it running?

[Motorboat Cruiser]

Yes, the CPU fan is running.

However, under one of the BIOS settings, it says that the CPU is 160 degrees farenheit. Is it me or is that very hot considering I just turned the machine on about 20 minutes ago?

[BarTopDancer]

That sounds hot. If you can get it to boot start backing stuff up before you do anything else.

Do you have any of the boot disks that came with your computer?

[DreadPirateRoberts]

Yes, the CPU fan is running.

However, under one of the BIOS settings, it says that the CPU is 160 degrees farenheit. Is it me or is that very hot considering I just turned the machine on about 20 minutes ago?

160 degrees F = 71 C

According to this article (http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/143) says:

"An easy way to find out the maximum temperature your processor can support without burning out is referring to the table given at http://users.erols.com/chare/elec.htm. This table shows that Pentium 4 processors can operate up to 75º C (167º F) or slightly less, depending on the model, Athlon 64 can run up to 65º C or 70º C (149º F or 158º F), depending on the model, Athlon XP processors can run up to 85º C or 90º C (185º F or 194º F), also depending on their clock, and Sempron processors can run up to 90º C (194º F).
"

What cpu do you have? It could be slightly hot, but it's hard to tell without a baseline number.

I think we need CoasterMatt

[Cadaverous Pallor]

GD is out for the count at the moment. I'm sure he'll have a suggestion or two whenever he wakes up. Best of luck!

[Motorboat Cruiser]

It's a pentium 4, 3.2 Gig

I'm thinking though: If it is running that hot right now, how hot was it running when I was playing Sims2 for an hour and a half this morning. I wonder if I fried it.

[Motorboat Cruiser]

Hmm, it just beeped upon reboot, something it hadn't been doing. ???

However, it is running at 77 degrees C. at the moment. That can't be good.

[DreadPirateRoberts]

It's a pentium 4, 3.2 Gig

I'm thinking though: If it is running that hot right now, how hot was it running when I was playing Sims2 for an hour and a half this morning. I wonder if I fried it.


You don't have a spare hard drive do you? If you put a vanilla windows on it, then you could determine whether the problem is hardware or software.

[Motorboat Cruiser]

Nope, sure don't. What else might I try? Should I try the windows disks and see if there is anything to repair software-wise?

[DreadPirateRoberts]

Nope, sure don't. What else might I try? Should I try the windows disks and see if there is anything to repair software-wise?

Maybe until one of the computer wizards answers, let it cool off, see if it works better at a cooler temp.

[Motorboat Cruiser]

Thanks for the info, I appreciate it. DPR

And thanks BTD and CP. All input appreciated! :)

[Alex]

Can you give us the exact error at failure? Including any codes or apparent gobbledygook?

And what kind of computer are you posting from?

[DisneyFan25863]

Download a copy of Knoppix Linux (http://www.knoppix.org/) and burn it onto a CD. Its like a operating system contained on a single CD rather than your hard drive. Then, pop this into the computer and boot it up (you may need to press F8 or F12 as you boot up to select the CD drive). If it loads, then you know its not a hardware problem.

If it boots up, then you probably have a problem with your windows installation. Try putting in your Windows installation disk and run the recovery option. If that doesn't work, you will have to reinstall windows.

[Motorboat Cruiser]

Can you give us the exact error at failure? Including any codes or apparent gobbledygook?

And what kind of computer are you posting from?

We apologize for the inconvenience but Windows did not start successfully. A recent software or hardware change may have caused this.

If you your computer stopped responding, restarted unexpectedly or was automatically shut down to protect your files;choose "last known good configuration" to revert to the most recent settings that worked.

If a previous startup attempt was interrupted, due to a power failure or because the power or reset button was pressed, or if you aren't sure what caused the problem; choose "start windows normally".


SAFE MODE
SAFE MODE WITH NETWORKING
SAFE MODE WITH COMMAND PROMPT

START WITH LAST KNOWN GOOD CONFIGURATION

START WINDOWS NORMALLY

No Gobbldegook was present.

One thing I'm seeing that I didn't notice before (but maybe because it just flew by) is that after the RAM test, it says

"Operating in single channel dynamic paging mode"

Is there anything unusual or incorrect about that?

I'm posting from a 1.2 Gig Athelon w/ Windows 2k.

Disneyfan,

I'll download it but unfortunately I don't have a CD burner in the computer I'm posting from. If it will fit on my USB drive, can I boot from there? I think I saw that option under the BIOS.

[Motorboat Cruiser]

Eh, too big a file (700MB) for my 512MB drive.

[Alex]

If it is a hardware failure and I had to guess, you might have fried your video card. It is right at the start-up for windows that this really kicks in. Your video card would have been running very hot from Sims (especially if it is older and underpowered) and it can produce this error. Just for clarification, you never see a blue screen of death, even for the briefest of moments before it crashes?

Do you have a separate video card or it it an onboard motherboard card?

[Alex]

Does your computer beep when it first starts up and during the BIOS check? If so, can you describe the beeps you get and what BIOS your computer has?

[Motorboat Cruiser]

Just for clarification, you never see a blue screen of death, even for the briefest of moments before it crashes?

Nope, no blue screen at all.

Do you have a separate video card or it it an onboard motherboard card?
Seperate ATI Radion 9000 series w/ 128MB

[Motorboat Cruiser]

Does your computer beep when it first starts up and during the BIOS check? If so, can you describe the beeps you get and what BIOS your computer has?

I get one beep after the RAM check and before it starts windows.

BIOS Ver. RL86510A.86A.0085.P19

[Motorboat Cruiser]

Sorry it took so long to reply, Alex. I was tearing apart the house for my Windows XP CD (which I still haven't found:rolleyes: ). I'm pretty much up the creek without a paddle if I don't find it.

This is turning into a wonderful evening.

Thanks for your help though, Alex. I really appreciate it!

[Alex]

Well, on most systems one beep means all is well with the stuff BIOS checks.

Short of troubleshooting with known-good software and hardware that you don't have I haven't many suggestions. If you do have another video card I'd throw that in and see if it makes a difference.

It shouldn't make any difference but have you tried manually booting into Safe Mode rather than relying on the automated reboot? Press F8 right before Windows starts.

[CoasterMatt]

My first thing to do would be to use a canned air duster and clean out the inside of the computer - dust bunnies love to multiply in the heatsinks and fans of processors - cpus and gpus. If anything hardware fried here, I'd be more apt to believe it's the gpu - especially given that you said you were playing Sims 2 for a while (a pretty gpu intense app).

Even a very clean looking system can be hiding damaging dust in the heatsink fins, which prevents the heatsink from efficiently moving heat away from the cpu/gpu.

[Moonliner]

Based on your description, It does not sound like a heat problem.

With a stuck fan or dusted up cooler you would still be able to boot but the PC would hang/crash after some random amount of time. A problem serious enough to kick in during boot (ie no heat-sink at all on the CPU) would quickly fry that component resulting in a very solid error.

It sounds like you have (excuse the technical term) fuddied up one of the core Windows drivers. When/if you find the XP install cd you should be able to run a repair. I don't suppose you have an Rdisk handy by any chance? Nope. I thought not. No one ever does.

Note: This does NOT imply you should not follow Matts advice. It's possible you fuddied your PC with a heat related issue as he described although I would guess it was the software you installed.

Also be sure to re-run the windows update program after you run the repair (assuming it works).

[Motorboat Cruiser]

Thanks CoasterMatt and Moonliner!

I will do both of these just as soon as I find the disk. It just has to be here somewhere.

Just out of curiousity, what are your thoughts as to whether this could be a virus?

[Motorboat Cruiser]

Ok, I found the disk. It loaded up the files, then gave me the option of clean install or repair. I chose repair. It proceeded to load the recovery console, then gave me a DOS prompt. And there it sits...

Any thoughts?

Edited to add, I was able to run chkdsk. It found one or more errors on the drive. Thoughts?

I'm obviously trying desperately to avoid reformatting at all costs.

[Moonliner]

Ok, I found the disk. It loaded up the files, then gave me the option of clean install or repair. I chose repair. It proceeded to load the recovery console, then gave me a DOS prompt. And there it sits...

Any thoughts?

How do you feel about a clean install?

From the dos prompt can you see the data on your drive(s)? If so you can copy off any files you need such as "My documents" and the like before the rebuild.

If you can't see your files from the dos prompt, then you can skip that first step :D

Make sure you have copies off all the software you need, especially the base drivers (network, display, etc...)

Good luck. Oh and during the rebuild be sure you DO NOT use the quick format option just in case your hard drive has a bad sector that is causing this issue.

As for your earlier question, could this be a virus? Yes, but I doubt it.

[Motorboat Cruiser]

How do you feel about a clean install?

From the dos prompt can you see the data on your drive(s)? If so you can copy off any files you need such as "My documents" and the like before the rebuild.



Can't check to see if I can see the files just yet. I am running chkdsk /r and seeing if it can repair the problems it found. It is taking quite a while but slowly making progress.

Suppose, for laughs, that I can see the contents of the C drive. I don't suppose it is possible to burn a dvd from the command line prompt, is it? Or, as a last resort*, how would I go about transferring files to the USB port via command line.

* I would hate to have to go this route, as I only have a 512MB USB drive and about 10 gigs of files to backup, but I suppose it isn't insurmountable, if it is possible.

[Betty]

Or you could spend $100 or so - go buy a new hard drive - put it in - load windows - install your old hard drive as a slave and pull the files off that way.

[Tramspotter]

Good god you already have him ready to reformat... there will probably be all kinds of HD file errors from all the thrashing around. Rebooting in safemode and shutting down from it two or three times even is the safest first course then try last known good config... then go out and get or download a HD repair utillity and boot off it from CD and let it do a sector by sector repair checkout your HD's S.M.A.R.T. reporting or just a filesystem rebuild and repair and after all that barring any other hardware failures you should consider going more medeval on it's ass and do a clean install.

Make any sense?

Oh and coaster matt made very good point infact I am going to do a canned air blast on all my machines too I did have the windows open most of this weekend.

disneyfan makes another good point a linux boot CD would be a great way to isolate the problem to hardware or Windoze and get more detailed errors as it loads or fails to load

Another problem that might cause this kind of chaos depending on your motherboard is the 3V BIOS & Clock backup battery crapping out worth checking if you have one and after replacing various componants still have intermitant problems if your machine is over 2 years old you should replace anyhow

[Moonliner]

Good god you already have him ready to reformat... there will probably be all kinds of HD file errors from all the thrashing around. Rebooting in safemode and shutting down from it two or three times even is the safest first course then try last known good config... then go out and get or download a HD repair utillity and boot off it from CD and let it do a sector by sector repair checkout your HD's S.M.A.R.T. reporting or just a filesystem rebuild and repair and after all that barring any other hardware failures you should consider going more medeval on it's ass and do a clean install.

Make any sense?

Oh and coaster matt made very good point infact I am going to do a canned air blast on all my machines too I did have the windows open most of this weekend.

disneyfan makes another good point a linux boot CD would be a great way to isolate the problem to hardware or Windoze and get more detailed errors as it loads or fails to load

Another problem that might cause this kind of chaos depending on your motherboard is the 3V BIOS & Clock backup battery crapping out worth checking if you have one and after replacing various componants still have intermitant problems if your machine is over 2 years old you should replace anyhow

Good god, did you even read this thread or just jump in the middle of it?


MBC:

Yes, as several posters have mentioned, there are more advanced, time consuming and costly options you can try prior to a reformat. My read on this was that you did not want to spend extra money, and you are not all that comfortable with Linux boot disks and various low level utilities.

However that can be mitigated by the importance of what's on the disk or I could be making bad assumptions about you.

It's your call.

[BarTopDancer]

Can't check to see if I can see the files just yet. I am running chkdsk /r and seeing if it can repair the problems it found. It is taking quite a while but slowly making progress.

Suppose, for laughs, that I can see the contents of the C drive. I don't suppose it is possible to burn a dvd from the command line prompt, is it? Or, as a last resort*, how would I go about transferring files to the USB port via command line.

* I would hate to have to go this route, as I only have a 512MB USB drive and about 10 gigs of files to backup, but I suppose it isn't insurmountable, if it is possible.

If you need it, I have a 150 gig external drive with about 110 gigs of empty space that you are welcome to use while fixing the drive. Let me know.

[DisneyFan25863]

You could also try partitioning your drive and then installing windows on the open partition, dragging your files off the old partition into the new one, deleting the old partition, then resizing the new one to use the entire drive.

You would need access to a CD burner however (there is a program you can run off a CD to help you partition your drive). If you can boot off of a USB drive then you could use that too (its only 40 MB).

I would only use that as a last resort though, as it can be fairly complex.

[CoasterMatt]

I've got linux boot cds, and a spare graphics card or two if you need them :)

[Motorboat Cruiser]

It's fixed!!!!!!! :)

Thanks everyone SO MUCH for all of your help and suggestions. It took chkdsk forever to go through the repair process and mentioned that it had to fix a registry error. I'm not sure what caused this but I'm going to be backing everything up tonight, running all of my spyware programs, etc... and be just a little better prepared next time. Lesson learned.

Again, thanks for ALL of your help. You all rock! :)

A very happy MBC...

[DisneyFan25863]

It's fixed!!!!!!! :)

Thanks everyone SO MUCH for all of your help and suggestions. It took chkdsk forever to go through the repair process and mentioned that it had to fix a registry error. I'm not sure what caused this but I'm going to be backing everything up tonight, running all of my spyware programs, etc... and be just a little better prepared next time. Lesson learned.

Again, thanks for ALL of your help. You all rock! :)

A very happy MBC...

Awesome! Luckilly it was nothing too serious!

[Kevy Baby]

My advise? Get a Mac.
My PC is refusing to boot...Am I the only one who is wondering how he is posting if his 'puter won't boot?

[scaeagles]

I was wondering hat as well.

My last major computer malfunction was when I spilled an entire Diet Snapple Peach Ice Tea in my wife's laptop while it was on.

Easy fix. My wife got a new laptop.

[Motorboat Cruiser]

My advise? Get a Mac.

I would but I prefer to have more than 5 games to choose from. ;)

Am I the only one who is wondering how he is posting if his 'puter won't boot?

Luckily, we're a multi computer household. :)

[DisneyFan25863]

I would but I prefer to have more than 5 games to choose from. ;)



Luckily, we're a multi computer household. :)


You can run Windows on a Mac now ;)

Piece for piece, Macs are actually cheeper than comparable PC systems. I heard somewhere that people are getting 40-60 FPS on BF2 with MacBooks (with have intergrated graphics!)