System has failled... help with cause.

marl

marl

marl

Soldato
Joined
16 Jun 2004
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Hi guys. I was happily surfing the internet, believe it or not I was on Ocuk's homepage, went for a coffee came back and the screen was shimmering. I had no control over K/B and neither ALT+F4 or CTR+ALT+DEL worked. So, I pressed the reset button.

Immediately went to screen with options to restart window normally or in safe mode. I had no control over KB so it tried to restart normally but failled to boot up.

It then went into some sort of repair mode and after about 10 minutes I got a message sayng that windows could not repair itself and that the problem could be down to a recent hardware installation.

I had recently installed a new SSD and had installed windows on it. However, I retained the old HDD with windows on it and when I disconnected the new SSD and reconnected the old HDD the PC still failled to boot up.

I then tried to reinsatll windows on the SSD. Things seemed to be going well until about 30% through the installation it just stopped. I had to restart the PC and then got a message saying BOOTMGR is missing.

I then tried reinstalling windows on a new HDD I was using for storage only
but screen keeps going to BOOTMGR is missing.

I can get into the BIOS and in it the hard drives and RAM are recogised.

At various times I had a pattern of pairs of dots arranged vertically and horizontally across the screen, I also had a display that was a mass of colour like a distorted rainbow.

The PC's MB/RAM/CPU/GPU are about 6 years old - Q6600, Abit IP35pro, corsair RAM and 8800GT GPU.

Any thoughts regarding the fault would be appreciated!!!!
 
Oh no! PSU, memory and MB are the usual flaky bits.

A pc pro will be along shortly, in the mean time you have me. Here is a great link that may help you carry out a system check:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18281472

Turn off your PC reseat all your components, try one memory module, then another, check the voltage on your vintage CMOS battery it may be flat.

Hope that helps
 
Well, this happened to me. That motherboard may not support AHCI, and if it does not, then the SSD will basically wipe itself every few days. I had the old Q6600 with a P5N-E SLI motherboard, no AHCI, so it wiped itself every 2/3 days. Really frustrating, so I ended up buying a SATA PCI-E controller card with 2 ports, and running the SSD off that - came with it's own Marvell controller, and from that point onwards the SSD worked just fine.
 
Hmm, that's strange - I thought it may be something to do with that... I had exactly the same bootmgr is missing problems as well!
 
Remove both the ssd and hdd, then only insert the one drive you want to install onto. Make sure the PC boots to the windows disc first, this can be changed by going into the BIOS and changing the boot order. The message you are getting is because it is trying to boot from a half finished install of windows.

Make sure you boot from your install disc and have only 1 drive inserted.

*Reason is that windows may dump files on another drive if its inserted, causing issues later down the line.
 
ThaReaperGuy said:
Remove both the ssd and hdd, then only insert the one drive you want to install onto. Make sure the PC boots to the windows disc first, this can be changed by going into the BIOS and changing the boot order. The message you are getting is because it is trying to boot from a half finished install of windows.

Make sure you boot from your install disc and have only 1 drive inserted.

*Reason is that windows may dump files on another drive if its inserted, causing issues later down the line.
Click to expand...

Thanks... but I tried this without success!
 
ThaReaperGuy said:
What happened? - Is the disc loading the setup?
Click to expand...

I tried again with only the HDD connected.

PC starts and asks to 'press any key to boot from CD.'

When I do this with installation disc in CD drive it goes to screen with 'start windows normally option highlighted.' At this stage I don't seem over have any control over keyboard.

The PC then counts down and restarts and screen says

'The computer restarted unexpectedly or encountered an unexpected error. Windows installation cannot proceed. To install windows 'clicl OK to restart the computer and then restart the installation.'

When I click ok it then says 'setup will continue after restarting.'

It then fails to install and goes back to the 'press any key to boot from CD' option.

I can get into the bios and the HDD is recognised. I have 'SATA ROM' set as first boot disc.

Sledgehammer time perhaps!!!!!!!
 
marl said:
I tried again with only the HDD connected.

PC starts and asks to 'press any key to boot from CD.'

When I do this with installation disc in CD drive it goes to screen with 'start windows normally option highlighted.' At this stage I don't seem over have any control over keyboard.

The PC then counts down and restarts and screen says

'The computer restarted unexpectedly or encountered an unexpected error. Windows installation cannot proceed. To install windows 'clicl OK to restart the computer and then restart the installation.'

When I click ok it then says 'setup will continue after restarting.'



It then fails to install and goes back to the 'press any key to boot from CD' option.

I can get into the bios and the HDD is recognised. I have 'SATA ROM' set as first boot disc.

Sledgehammer time perhaps!!!!!!!
Click to expand...

A few things spring to mind here. I assume you are installing from a cd or dvd - this may be corrupt - try a new windows disc as above with only the one drive you want to install to connected. Also the DVD rom drive could be malfunctioning - try another dvd drive. It may also be worth running memtest to check the ram is ok before doing an install again - co incidentally if you run memtest off of a cd/dvd and if this fails to run - it may prove problems with the drive.

May be worth trying a bios re set as well - set to defaults and then set ram timings etc before trying a new install of windows as above.

Hope some of this helps

Mark
 
Shivy011 said:
Well, this happened to me. That motherboard may not support AHCI, and if it does not, then the SSD will basically wipe itself every few days. I had the old Q6600 with a P5N-E SLI motherboard, no AHCI, so it wiped itself every 2/3 days. Really frustrating, so I ended up buying a SATA PCI-E controller card with 2 ports, and running the SSD off that - came with it's own Marvell controller, and from that point onwards the SSD worked just fine.
Click to expand...

Eh?

Must have been an odd setup with your system. Not had this issue with any machine I have come across.

@ OP: Have you tried running a memtest? http://www.memtest.org/

Also try a different Video card.
 
+1 for running memtest too. Worth running it through with just one stick in at a time. If the first stick runs through fine, then test all the other sticks in that same slot. If they all test ok, then you could try testing them in different slots (rules out problems with sticks of ram first, then problems with slots on Mobo) If you've got another Graphics card, test that next, if you've got another PC it may be worth testing your graphics card in that. Same with PSU. All just a process of elimination. If you do have an issue with your DVD drive, as previously mentioned by tipes, you could make a Bootable usb window install and reinstall from there. But my first guess would be RAM. I had a weird issue when i first built my Q6600 PC with an asus P5Q, that i couldn't install windows with more than 2 GB of ram i.e. 2x2GB sticks in (Even though it was win 7 Pro 64bit), removed 1 x 2GB stick, installed windows and then put the second stick in and everything worked fine passed memtest with both sticks in, just wouldn't install windows with both. Good Luck
 
Are you using a usb attached keyboard or a wireless one?

usb plugin ones are best when installing stuff because they work if they are plugged in before drivers and so are installed.
 
Guys... many thanks for all the suggestions but no luck as yet. I tried memtest but couldn't get CD to run.

I did go into abit MB's bios and came across a failsafe setting. When I choose this option the PC booted into a test mode and memory tested as OK.

I have a usb mouse and Keyboard.

Unfotunately I don't have any other components to swap with. I did take out and inspect the RAM 2x1 GB sticks and 2x2 GB sticks and it looks fine. I did try restarting with only the 2x1 GB sticks fitted without luck.

The only other thing I can think of doing is trying the RAM in all the slots....
 
Bugger - could try order a new optical drive - you get free postage now - have you tried a bare bones set up and the Admirals system check link?

You really need a pal with spare PC bits so you can swap in some known working parts.

My money is on the memory or the mb. It is frustrating when they don't work, been there.
 
jpod said:
Bugger - could try order a new optical drive - you get free postage now - have you tried a bare bones set up and the Admirals system check link?

You really need a pal with spare PC bits so you can swap in some known working parts.

My money is on the memory or the mb. It is frustrating when they don't work, been there.
Click to expand...

Yeah... I was thinking of getting a prebuilt bundle...
 
Good idea, it would be a chore finding replacement boards and ddr2 memory I guess. The good news is any new stuff you get is going to be more powerful and run cooler too.

You could recycle your case and bits and replace the innards if you fancied building yourself :p
 
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