Strange PC crash! Suggestions anybody?

Orionaut · 4 Dec 2013 at 10:03

Basically starts from "Cold" fine

After 10 mins or so it freezes and reboots.

As it reboots the bios is sluggish taking a long time to do its thing

And then all I get is the flashing cursor in the top left of the screen.

Attempting an immediate restart results in the same.

Leave for a couple of hours and rinse and repeat!

Sugestions??

(Cant remember full spec off hand, it is pretty basic but it does have an SSD)

DaleTheWhale · 4 Dec 2013 at 10:11

#1 - Try reseating the RAM or just try 1 stick in each slot.
#2 - Try taking the battery out of the motherboard.
#3 - Could be a voltage issue, any overclocks?

How long has this issue been happening, is the spec old?

Orionaut · 4 Dec 2013 at 16:29

New info.

On one start up I got the "Disk error-repairing disk" page.

And last time I started I got a BSOD with "Bad_System_config_Inf"

Reading between the lines (And given that I am getting slow booting through BIOS even before anything starts to load) I am wondering if it is a dying SSD

I havent managed to have a fiddle with it yet, will try tomorrow!

PiKe · 4 Dec 2013 at 16:29

Try a new Sata cable first.

wazza300 · 4 Dec 2013 at 16:30

would help if you listed all your parts,make/model ect

budwozza · 4 Dec 2013 at 16:46

Orionaut said:
Basically starts from "Cold" fine

After 10 mins or so it freezes and reboots.

As it reboots the bios is sluggish taking a long time to do its thing

And then all I get is the flashing cursor in the top left of the screen.

Attempting an immediate restart results in the same.

Leave for a couple of hours and rinse and repeat!

Sugestions??

(Cant remember full spec off hand, it is pretty basic but it does have an SSD)

Have you tried running it in safe mode? - anything new added (software or hardware) inc items plugged in?

Orionaut · 7 Dec 2013 at 17:24

PiKe said:
Try a new Sata cable first.

We have a winner!

Unfortunately the poor connection had scrambled the OS so I had to restore from a windows disk image.

This was not as straight forward as you might think but it does appear to have finally worked out satisfactory.

When I have a bit more time I will tell the tale. The "Instructions" give the impression that all you have to do is click the relevant button and away you go.

In practice it is not that simple. Particularly as the "Win 8.1 recovery media" that you are encouraged by File history/recovery to create as a precaution against disaster appears to be about as much use as a chocolate teapot since without an 8.1 ISO (which Microsoft has thus far declined to provide unless there have been changes I am unaware of) you cannot actually do anything with it!

Ho Humm!