Moved PC - New Problem...

[RastaManBob]

Apologies in advanced regarding the little information I can provide here. I've recently moved home (hence the moving of the PC) and I've had little time to look into this problem... It's still a cause of a headache, though - This was the last problem I expected I'd be spending time on when moving!

I do not know details about the spec at this time (it is not the - old - spec in sig) however I'm more interested in what cause it's likely this could be.

Anyway, the PC has been moved carefully at all times. Upon turning the PC on I got a beep pattern and the machine did not POST. I do not know how many beeps or what they mean. I took the side off of the case to see if anything was obvious (there was not), and then plugged it back in again and it booted. I got a BIOS message saying something along the lines of the PC had failed to boot multiple times and that 'optimal defaults' would be used.

Windows then booted and complained about the Ethernet controller, which has always worked fine. It said it could not install the hardware successfully and no trying to get it to find a fix online helped.

No worries, I thought, this PC uses Wi-Fi so I disabled the on-board LAN in the BIOS. Booted the PC the error message went away (of course). I then tried to use the PC and found it would automatically reboot. This happened at random time intervals - Sometimes it'd be okay for only a few minutes others for twenty.

Any idea what this could be? It's always been fine until our move and I can only imagine that the two things (ethernet controlled malfunctioning and rebooting) are related but I do not know the cause and whether it is a hardware or software issue. I know I've not been able to supply any specifics but I'm hoping this may be possible to diagnose, in part, with the symptoms alone.

Thanks.

 

[Matterez]

I don't wanna say the obvious but, was it dropped or possibly static charge?
And the only other help I could suggest is that I think it's a hardware fault with the mobo.

 

[King Damager]

How many beeps do you get when it reboots? - If you can find out the number, chances are it's telling you what's wrong....

Next. Even though you moved it incredibly carefully did you remove the GPU and the CPU cooler from the case during transit?

kd

 

[RastaManBob]

Thanks for the replies.

No the PC was not dropped and, whilst I obviously cannot be 100%, I did not treat the PC in such a way that I'd have exposed it to a higher chance of static charge than normal use.

I did not remove the GPU or CPU cooler from the case during transit. I simply moved the entire PC and carefully placed it in the rear passengers foot well (behind the driver) for the short (< 1 mile) drive.

Since the original post the beeping has stopped (and so I have no way to find the number of beeps). I have also fixed the complaint about the Ethernet controller by reinstalling the driver using the disk that came with the motherboard. I have no idea why moving it caused this issue and required a driver to be reinstalled but it did stop that.

However, the problem with reboots has continued. My Googling has lead me to believe these reboots are essentially BSODs which are followed by a reboot automatically (I had not disabled this). Looking in the minidumps produced, the driver likely to be at fault is ntfs.sys and the error code is NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM (0x24). Both my own diagnosis and that from Googling would suggest that the problem was either ntfs.sys corrupted or bad RAM/hard disk (I had already checked everything, including RAM and IDE cables, were correctly seated when the problem was first noticed in case they had been moved in transit; they were fine).

I have tried running chkdsk on all drives (two partitions on one physical disk, one of which being the system drive). This said it had found and fixed errors. Following this the PC seemed to be better for longer (a few days without a reboot, with light use - 20 mins a day, ish, just to check if it'd helped). Soon after the problem reappeared. Retested chkdsk and the same again. And similarly, an improvement for a few short days.

At this point I considered the RAM further and used memtest86. This passed, I have tried this several times usually to about 5 passes (the manual states any problems are likely to be shown in the first pass so I figured 5 was more than enough). Everything seems okay there.

I am now at the stage where I might have to try the RAM individually (I have two sticks of 1GB). Any further advice on what the problem might be, before I do this?

I am certain, at this stage, that the problem relates to file access in some way. The quickest way to reproduce the error is to run a virus scan which, due to its nature, accesses all/most files. The virus scan causes the PC to reboot almost consistently (the exception being straight after having completed a chkdsk).

Any ideas?

Thanks.