What is wrong with my computer?

Rainagul

Rainagul

Rainagul

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Joined
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Location
Canterbury
Hi,

Basically, I've run out of ideas for what is causing me the following problems and I'm about to rip out my hair in a minute from frustration.

Over the last few days my computer has been acting funny, before then everything was working no problem.

It all started with my computer having problems playing World of Warcraft. There would be screen tearing and the game would crash all the time. My first thought was that it was a driver issue so I upgraded my Nvidia drivers and it made no difference whatsoever. I then downgraded to older drivers just in case the new ones were acting up, however this still made no difference.

I then ran a complete system check of my computer in case there were any viruses/malware etc...I was clean. At this point I started getting random BSOD's with error codes that were very rarely ever the same, so I was stumped. I reverted my overclock back to stock settings in case my system wasn't running stable, but again this changed nothing.

Last night I decided to re-install Windows (which is sitting on my SSD). The installation went fine, but once installed I started having random errors and I couldn't open anything as explorer.exe kept crashing (keep in mind this is a completely stock version of windows fresh from installing). I reinstalled windows yet again and the problem went away, but this time I couldn't install certain programs (such as Flash) due to errors with authenticating certificates. I searched the web in search of answers but couldn't find anything.

I decided that Windows still wasn't running as it should and yet again reinstalled Windows, this time however every time I was on the installation screen of Windows, at around 80% and above, I would get a BSOD claiming I should check my harddisk for corruption issues (this hdd being my ssd).

So I removed my SSD from the system and installed Windows onto one of my other HDD's. Installation went smoothly, I still got one random BSOD after installation and everything was looking fine until a few minutes ago. I restarted my computer and on login multiple dll files couldn't be found and I had plenty of error messages that came up, now I've found out that I can't download anything through Firefox as the download gets automatically canceled.

I am absolutely lost now, I have no idea really what could be causing these issues.
Could it be that all my HDD's are somewhat corrupted (I doubt this they have been running great until now)?
Could there something be wrong with my windows installation disk that is creating issues?
Is it a piece of hardware causing the issue? Mobo, CPU, etc?


If anybody has any insight/solutions into this problem then I would really appreciate it as I'm at my wit's end here.
 
Before I read all of your post I was suspecting A HDD error. I would download the tools for all of your HDD's and run those. Sounds to me like this could be the cause.

Edit:

If these HDD's turn out to be ok. Try running with 1 stick of RAM at a time. Seems to be a lot of computer issues recently are being mem caused.
 
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Rainagul said:
2600k @ 4.8 GHz - I reverted my overclock back to stock
Click to expand...

Id put some money on this. More detail on that clock?.. what volts were you pushing through it? Also, was RAM clocked?

You say you put it back to stock, do you mean you turnt the clock off or you reset CMOS?

If it wasnt the latter, then make sure you reset the cmos.

Rainagul said:
Hi,

I upgraded my Nvidia drivers and it made no difference whatsoever.

I then ran a complete system check of my computer in case there were any viruses/malware etc...I was clean.
Click to expand...

Not a Driver issue. Not a Virus Issue.

Rainagul said:
Random BSOD's with error codes that were very rarely ever the same.
Click to expand...

What were the codes?

Rainagul said:
Could it be that all my HDD's are somewhat corrupted (I doubt this they have been running great until now)?

Could there something be wrong with my windows installation disk that is creating issues?
Click to expand...

Id say very doubtful both hdd's have packed up.. so, lets rule that one out.

If it was a windows disk issue, it wouldnt bsod. You get errors up such as "insert disc" or "file not found" etc..

Rainagul said:
Is it a piece of hardware causing the issue? Mobo, CPU, etc?
Click to expand...

Yes.

So, lets get started in figuring out what.

Before we start, strip the machine. Unplug everything that is not necessarily to boot. So, Extra DVD Drives, any other storage drives, usb pci cards, usb hubs, that cable you cant remember what it is but you know is plugged in the back somewhere.

All we want for proper testing is just keyboard mouse monitor and power plugged into back. And m/b , cpu , ram , gfx , psu , hdd on the inside.

As already said, lets rule out the HDD's first, seen as you've tried two that you say were ok before, think were safe to say its not them.

Again, Clock. Stock your bios. Reset Cmos and lets go from fresh.

RAM. "8GB Corsair Vengeance" - Is this two or four sticks?.. Take them all out, reseat them and test. As long as its more then 1 stick in there, remove 1 stick at a time and test shuffling them all around between the slots. basically just trying to single out one if its faulty.
If you want to do this properly, then download MEMTEST and get it running for a couple hours.. any big red lines and you've got yourself some faulty ram.

So, try this first, and will need more details on those clocks you were pushing...
 
anjs said:
memtest the memory
Click to expand...

I feel this is the most likely thing - although I am of course just guessing! If you do a memtest, then you can do it from a CD without your hard drives plugged in, meaning you can remove them, Windows, drivers, etc etc out of the equation.
 
Thanks for the replies so far guys.

I am almost 100% sure this issue is not caused by the HDD's as I have tried windows out on each HDD I have and I am still getting errors.

I'm currently downloading memtest to test out and will post my results when I know.

In terms of over clocking, I never pushed passed 1.43v if memory serves me right so I should be in the safe zone. If something was to be obviously damaged from previous over clocking, what would it be? I'm guessing either the mobo or the memory?

Edit: My results from the Memtest, I'm guessing this isn't good?


Second Edit: Can't remember what my voltages were for the RAM, I did it months ago.

Third Edit: One of my 4GB ram sticks still works perfectly fine according to MemTest but the other one is definately screwed, so I will run on 1 stick of ram for the minute. I'm guessing this means I have to buy another set of Ram, or is there another way to fix this?
 
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You'd be better off downloading ultimatebootcd or a similar bootdisk. It has memtest on it along with other diagnostic software for the HDD and CPU etc.
 
You will likely have to send both sticks back for RMA, so either buy more to keep using the PC or just have some "downtime".
 
Definitely RMA the memory, you should get 0 errors on memtest. Edit: just realised that this was the very first thing this forum taught me due to my own experience with memory errors.
 
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