Newbuild startup problems

ricsksname · 11 May 2011 at 11:18

Hey guys, just finished building my new PC. All went together very easily and quickly. But now I'm having a bloody annoying problem.

I installed windows, started to install drivers without issue, but after a few restarts the computer started getting stuck on the windows start-up screen, or the welcome screen. Occasionally I might get to the desktop, but probably only about 1 in 5 times.

I can provide hardware details if this will help when I get home from work. Is this a familiar issue?

ricsksname · 11 May 2011 at 13:35

It's getting stuck, nothing actually freezes. I can hear the CPU just stop working and thats how it stays.

No clock speeds have been changed yet. Everything is as purchased.

Hardware specs:

Case: Fractal Design Define R3 Midi Tower Case - Titanium Grey

Power Supply: Corsair Enthusiast Series TX 650W V2 High Performance Power Supply

Motherboard: Asus P67 Sabertooth Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) ** B3 REVISION **

Processor: Intel Core i7-2600 3.40GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor

Graphics Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560Ti SUPER OC 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card

RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit

HDD: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM

Optical Drive: Sony Optiarc AD-7260S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM

CPU Fan: Akasa AK-CCX-4002HP Venom CPU Cooler

ricsksname · 12 May 2011 at 12:40

I briefly had another crack at this last night. The computer booted up fine about 5 or 6 times, then the problems arose again.

Could it be that my CPU cooler is having an impact on this? This is the first time I have used thermal paste, and I managed a pretty messy job of it. The CPU is very quickly running at about 45c, which seems high to me. Hopefully this isn't the issue. It would be a right pain in the arse to remount that thing!

ricsksname · 12 May 2011 at 19:31

Ok, the computer will not boot reliably in safe mode either. It's as if the CPU is just stalling for 10-15 seconds every few minutes. Even on the desktop. This must be interfering with start up, too.

ricsksname · 12 May 2011 at 23:37

Still no luck here. The drivers don't seem be affecting anything. Sometimes the computer will turn itself off/on about 3 times when I restart it. I'm installing the W7 client from a USB stick. Could a corrupt client perhaps be causing these problems?

ricsksname · 13 May 2011 at 14:28

Well, I thought I'd solved the problem just by ignoring the drivers that came on the mobo disk, downloading them instead. The computer no longer stalls at startup.

So I download a game to try out the new rig and what happens? As soon as I try to change any graphics settings, the game crashes entirely. Think I'm starting to remember why I swore never to build my own PC again!

ricsksname · 13 May 2011 at 15:45

I did run a mem test, it showed no errors.

I'll try updating the bios now, but it's looking like I may need another reformat to do it, anything I now try to install crashes before it even begins.

ricsksname · 13 May 2011 at 18:30

Thanks for the continuing help, guys.

I've updated the bios to the latest version with no improvement. I'm now back on my old box downloading a new windows client to try. Failing that I really am stumped. I've re-installed windows numerous times and the same issues keep arising.

Could it be that the SATA port I have connected the HDD to could make a difference? It's connected to one of the grey sata 6g ports (SATA6G_E1/E2). Though I thought this would be correct.

I'm starting to wonder if there is a hardware problem with my HDD, as RiskyRix mentioned.

ricsksname · 15 May 2011 at 01:20

Problem solved! Plugged the HDD into the mobo via a 3gb port with a 3gb cable, rather than the 6gb port. All running fine.

Thanks again, guys.