Slowly loosing my mind

pgi947

pgi947

pgi947

Soldato
Joined
25 Jun 2011
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Aberdeen
Afternoon all!

So this bizarre set of events started yesterday morning when I woke to find my pc switched on and the display saying overclock/bios had been reset.

Logged into windows fine, even managed to game for around half an hour, then bsod.

Reboot, bsod while idle, do individual CPU/mem/gpu stress tests, no bsod, another 10 Min later it locks up.

Reboot, bsod.

Figure to start with the ram so did 8 passes of memtest, 0 errors.

Boot back up, now windows is just generally not booting right. Reinstall windows, install updates just start downloading a driver, bsod.

This time the bsod indicates Nvidia drivers, so remove and test each card, one doesn't even post, the other posts but again windows acts up and eventually locks up.

Go back to looking at the ram, remove 3 of 4 sticks, doesn't post, swap stick, doesn't post. Put all four sticks back in, bios sticks at A2 (failure to boot a disc or something).

Remove all but operational SSD's, windows install is now corrupted. Reinstall windows again, bsod.

Update motherboard bios, seems to work, windows install corrupted, tried another SSD, won't install, ends up in a boot loop, windows error is something along the lines of something being missing occasionally mentioning winsys.exe

Pop CMOS battery for 10 mins, try again, one stick of ram, no gpu, one SSD....now it doesn't even post, switches on for a couple of seconds then straight back off, then sits in this power loop constantly.

I'm actually stupidly lost now with what this could be, PSU or motherboard.

Any thoughts on what to try next? I'm not exactly in a position to be splashing out on new parts if I don't need to - thanks Rona.

Specs are: 4700k, 16gb 2400mhz ddr3,, MSI xpower z97, antec 1000w, pair of 1070's.

Cheers!

Edit, reseated the ram, no longer boot looping but no display from either igpu or dedicated card.
 
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It's not PSU. That would cause random hangs and reboots.
Do you remeber any BSOD error names?

Edit: a lot of these errors look to be storage related. Happened on different drives, so has to be the motherboard.
any of cpu/mem/gpu/drives/psu alone wouldn't cause this set of issues.

can't diagnose it further if you can't get into bios anymore.
 
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Welp it's completely dead now, just reset the CMOS jumper (system powered down, PSU disconnected). Plugged it all back in and now literally no signs of life. Will try jump the psu to see if it's dead or not.

Edit:. Got lights back on the motherboard but powering on the board either directly on the board or fp switch yields no signs of life.

E2:. Scratch that it's just popped back to life, no display output from onboard or gpu

Would say mobo is dead then, all the screwed up bsods, corrupted windows now this. Forgot to say in my op I could almost reliably cause a bsod by transferring a large file from one drive to another, though the bsod code would often be different.
 
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This sounds a lot like my x99 system before the motherboard died.

My guess was that's something in the south bridge failed and gave lots of weird faults.
 
Stripped it back but couldn't get an onboard display or anything from the first pcie slot.

Gradually repopulated the ram slots, as soon as stick 4 went in it would go into a boot loop, so that slots dead.

Moved a single gpu into another pcie slot and got it to post and install windows, it's currently getting some benching done, will try move over a large file between drives and see what happens shortly.

Added bonus I managed to snap the little retainer lug off of the first pcie slot too, whoops!
 
It’s the the craze, people sneak into open windows to overclock systems and then reset them too stock.

Monsters! If you see anyone catch them and report them to overclockers HQ.

They been sent to mandatory overclocking detention centers.
 
pgi947 said:
Stripped it back but couldn't get an onboard display or anything from the first pcie slot.
Gradually repopulated the ram slots, as soon as stick 4 went in it would go into a boot loop, so that slots dead.
Click to expand...
I agree with posts above, that the cause is dead motherboard.

But may be worth trying to reseat the CPU in the socket. Those RAM channels essentially go directly to some pins on CPU. Maybe the contact is intermittent.
 
Left it running all night with a single gpu in a different slot and ram slot 4 not populated, woke up to it still running as I left it.

Managed a few hours of destiny 2 this morning and no hiccups there either.

Still having some issues on the sata side of things, moving large files between certain drives it just sits at 0kbs transfer speed and does nothing, while one drive just isn't being recognised.

Will try the second gpu in later today and if I can be bothered I'll reseat the CPU, which might not be such a bad idea as the Tim is due a change anyways.
 
Health check of connected drives all came back healthy.

After two days 'working' while somewhat disassembled, I decided to put the drives back into their respective holders in the case and put both the doors back on the case. Did that, guess what?

Windows is back corrupted, goes direct to automatic repair which in turn says it couldn't repair and to make things more messed up if I remove everything other then the drive with windows on I get a windows boot error saying it needs a connected device.

Edit:. Possible cause after some drives not detected in bios, checked connections and found the modular connector all my drives are powered through slightly disconnected, certainly enough that giving it a push in gave me an audible click, could this have caused all of the errors above? I'd think intermittent power could cause all sorts of issues. Anyway installing windows again so time will tell!
 
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A closer look shows the cable that was loose was actually the CPU 8 pin power cable...may explain a lot, so far so stable though. If it survives the night I'll try ram slot 4 again.
 
pgi947 said:
A closer look shows the cable that was loose was actually the CPU 8 pin power cable...may explain a lot, so far so stable though. If it survives the night I'll try ram slot 4 again.
Click to expand...
Assuming as we've not heard from OP his PC set fire during the night in a final act of defiance.

RIP pgi947.
 
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