What's wrong with your PC?

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U K Narayan said:
Upon starting Windows XP, my computer immediately boots to a blue screen with a readout of "UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME". I tried running the Recovery Console so that I could have chkdisk fix the issue, but for some godforsaken reason, the hard drives won't detect because there aren't any drivers for SATA connected drives!

So -- now I have to go to my friends house with some floppy disks, and somehow locate the drivers just so I can run chkdisk.

This is retarded!
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It might be more than that, though. This isn't a laptop, is it? You didn't drop it at any time, did you?

If you have a linux liveCD, I would check to make sure that the liveCD can actually mount the HDD.
 
Stupid CPU cooler sounds like a truck! I had to unplugged it
 
On the BIOS screen, it gives me an error message to the effect that the CPU is unworkable...

After that, it won't boot into XP. It asks you for the XP disc and claims that the boot volume was not found. However, if you put the XP disc into the DVD drive, you wait a few seconds after it asks you to reinstall XP and hey presto! XP boots.

After it boots into XP, it appears to work just fine except that widescreen support, higher colour settings or high resolutions are no longer available.

I think my motherboard is dying.
 
Bump, with my own problem.

Yesterday I played my first 3D game on my old PC in maybe few months. And I'm not talking about the new "3D", but the good, old wow-I-can-rotate-the-camera-around-my-character 3D. After about 20 minutes my monitor decided to show me this:

wdJwz.jpg


When I stay 2D, it's working ok. So, I want confirmation: Is my graphic card dying?
 
McBacon said:
5. Firefox won't let me log into GMail without clearing cookies - same with GamesPress forums. Please help me fix this shit
Click to expand...

By "won't let you log in" do you mean it gets stuck in an infinite progress bar? If you have ABP installed, disable it for google.com. That did the trick for me.
 
2. My monitor will turn off, come back on and windows tells me my graphics card died.
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I have this same problem but it seems to be flash related while playing videos on Chrome. I'm able to play current games (Fallout NV, BFBC2, NFS Hot Pursuit, Dead Space 2 etc) for hours on end without temperatures getting too high or ever crashing (besides New Vegas which will crash if you sneeze wrong), but somehow I'm to believe that my 5870 cannot handle running multiple videos at once? Seems odd to me. But still concerning. Any advice anyone? Probably going to reformat my computer (its due anyway) and see how that helps. Maybe its driver related.
 
My graphics card was showing artifacts a few months ago. I sent it back to the manufacturer, then when I received the replacement, I quickly noticed the artifacts again. After a few weeks, I received another replacement. This one seemed fine initially, but now I've noticed that whenever I play games, they crash. I must have seen "The Witcher has stopped working" about 10 times by now. I've already tried resetting my CPU to its default clock speed and rolling back my graphics card driver, but games still seem to crash all the time.
 
@Alastor

Have you tried several games or just one? If the problem is in all of them...


Personally I have one really annoying thing. Switched from Nvidia to ATI on my computer and the nvidia drivers seem to come back all the time and cause conflicts which causes my screen to switch on and off whenever I do something in windows. I can fix it temporally by running driver sweeper and cleaning the registry but it keeps coming back. Anyone have a clue as to why???
 
the google news tab will not load in firefox or ie8, (every other tab works..video, books, image,etc) but it works fine in google chrome. What's up with that?
 
Alastor said:
Bump, with my own problem.

Yesterday I played my first 3D game on my old PC in maybe few months. And I'm not talking about the new "3D", but the good, old wow-I-can-rotate-the-camera-around-my-character 3D. After about 20 minutes my monitor decided to show me this:

wdJwz.jpg


When I stay 2D, it's working ok. So, I want confirmation: Is my graphic card dying?
Click to expand...

It could also be the monitor acting up. I remember back when Age of Empires was popular, I played it on my fathers PC and suddenly everything turned into a weird mess like on your monitor. When I rebooted the computer it was fine again. Then it did this a couple of times after that, and the last time the monitor made a loud popping sound and then there was smoke coming out of the monitor and it didn't turn on anymore.

But yeah it's most likely the GPU.
 
1) It's nearly 4 years old.
2) My 8800GT is kinda loud when I play games.

... the kind of problems that aren't really problematic :D Take good care of this PC I do. 7 Pro x64, E6600, 4gb PC6400, 8800GT, 1tb WDC, .05gb SB.
 
-Sometimes when I boot up my PC all the attached drives (thumb, external, SD card) will pop up in a window asking me if I want to run, view files, etc.

-Also, my multimedia keyboard commands (play/pause, skip etc) do not work unless the app is in the foreground. Using the Razer Marauder, but it didn't work for my Dell multimedia keyboard either.

Win7 64-bit.
 
Leshita said:
1) Never boots up on first try; have to do initial boot and then press reset button after the first bios screen pops up.

2) Time/date always reset.

3) Loud.


I must endure like Batman, before switching over to a Mac next fall! :p
Click to expand...


Replace motherboard battery for 1, 2. CR2032 for most motherboards.

Edit: ITT, old computers are old.

On mine, screen saver/monitor power off sometimes doesn't work.
 
I think the longest I've used a computer was 4 years and by the end of it I was wanting to take it out back and shoot it like Old Yeller.

Every 2-3 years I get the itch to build a new PC. Certain things like the case, power supply (if I don't need more power), and the DVD/RW thing get reused indefinitely though.

My current PC really needs more hard drive space as 500GB just isn't cutting it thanks to Steam sales and pcsx2 emulation.
 
My firefox keeps crashing, and I've literally tried everything to stop it from happening. It just randomly happens. I've tried reintalling it completely, removing all firefox related files and I've even reinstalled windows. I've tried loads of versions, from 3.6 to the latest beta version. I'm on windows 64 bit.
I don't know what's going on, please help!
 
One of my PCs, my stationary computer, is 8 years old this summer. Haven't had any issues with it whatsoever. I'm quite amazed that it still works. It's a Compaq with an Intel P4 Northwood @ 2.6Ghz and a Geforce 4 Ti 4200 GPU. It has 4 completely different RAM modules because one time I took 256mb from one computer that died, and another time from another computer etc. The memory isn't even of the same speed and it still works fine.

It doesn't actually do much these days though other than being my file server. So there's barely any load on it. Maybe that's why, but still you'd think the HDD would die or something. But nope. It hasn't even started clicking yet.
 
No problems with it, almost 2 years old. The latest issue I had was one that was my own doing, I accidentally switched off the wireless switch on the side (that I didn't know even existed). Tried many things software wise to fix it, did a Google search and someone said to make sure the switch on the side is turned on. Was turned off, immediately started working when I flipped it.
 
andycapps said:
No problems with it, almost 2 years old. The latest issue I had was one that was my own doing, I accidentally switched off the wireless switch on the side (that I didn't know even existed). Tried many things software wise to fix it, did a Google search and someone said to make sure the switch on the side is turned on. Was turned off, immediately started working when I flipped it.
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Is it one of those HP laptops, if so LOL.
 
Every time I reboot my PC, my monitor is always in standby mode until it loads Windows. Before I was able to see and enter my bios when I enter my delete key. Now, if I spam my delete key, my monitor remains in standby mode and I don't see anything. I tried switching DVI ports and I still get the same problem. Any ideas on what's wrong?
 
Here's a weird one.

So I have an old desktop rig set up like this:
- Athlon X2 4200, cooled with a Scythe Ninja 2 cooler
- Radeon 4850 512MB
- 2 GB RAM
- 500 GB SATA HDD
- 2X DVD-RW drives connected via PATA/IDE
- MSI K8N Neo 4 Platinum

Worked perfectly, no issues, no random shutdowns, no nothing. Turned it off one night. Turned it back on, and black screen - wouldn't even POST. Tried clearing CMOS, nothing. Tried unplugging the power and replugging it, nothing. I didn't smell any burning, didn't see any damage on the motherboard itself or any blown/distended capacitors, so I've no idea what the deal is. Could the CPU be fried? What should I try to get this thing to work again?
 
My machine is a finely tuned obelisk of pure power.

Although strangely my Windows Media Player has been acting a little funny. Gonna have to investigate that.
 
I own three computers:

My desktop is super ugly, but it's running Arch Linux and I haven't had any problems. I have an Asus laptop that I used to make fun of for being a piece of junk, but it seems to get better with age. When it had XP it would overheat all the time, but with Win7 it runs great; it has even survived a massive beer spill, although, it was closed at the time. It's my Age of Empires computer. Finally, I have a 2010 MBP that runs like a dream, except Age of Empires crashes every time I start a game.
 
The network access tray icon has permanently changed to the "Ethernet unplugged" symbol even though it's a notebook and always connected wirelessly.

It happened after I installed some shitty drivers and I don't know how to get it back. Everything else is fantastic.
 
captmcblack said:
Here's a weird one.

So I have an old desktop rig set up like this:
- Athlon X2 4200, cooled with a Scythe Ninja 2 cooler
- Radeon 4850 512MB
- 2 GB RAM
- 500 GB SATA HDD
- 2X DVD-RW drives connected via PATA/IDE
- MSI K8N Neo 4 Platinum

Worked perfectly, no issues, no random shutdowns, no nothing. Turned it off one night. Turned it back on, and black screen - wouldn't even POST. Tried clearing CMOS, nothing. Tried unplugging the power and replugging it, nothing. I didn't smell any burning, didn't see any damage on the motherboard itself or any blown/distended capacitors, so I've no idea what the deal is. Could the CPU be fried? What should I try to get this thing to work again?
Click to expand...
What wattage is your power supply? Is it high enough to support your rig? Even before the CPU becomes fried, it would restart or shutdown to prevent permanent damage.
 
My computer will randomly lock up (i.e. if i'm playing Starcraft 2, that will crash first but i can still tab out and talk on steam/irc for the next 30 seconds to a minute, before they stop responding too), the HDD light will constantly stay on but nothing will happen. After this occurs, I reset and the same problem occurs during the "loading windows" screen. Leaving the PC turned off for 5 minutes removes the problem but it re-appears.

Re-seated everything, three reformats, no bad HDD sectors, happens regardless of Overclock, ramtest pass, all possible HDD tests pass, temps perfect.

Shrug.
 
zerokoolpsx said:
What wattage is your power supply? Is it high enough to support your rig? Even before the CPU becomes fried, it would restart or shutdown to prevent permanent damage.
Click to expand...


It's a 600 (or 650, I forget) watt PSU - it should've been able to power all that stuff comfortably, and it did so. It literally just decided out of the blue that it wasn't going to power on anymore...weird.
 
My desktop is in perfect working order.

My dm1z arrived in the mail yesterday and the first thing I did was nuke that bloatware of a windows install that comes with all HP systems. Installed OEM W7 64 bit and reinstalled all the drivers for it. For some reason the volume up and down keys don't work but the volume mute key does.

I think it has something to do with that program HP gives you that lets you mess with function keys so I'll have to look into that.
 
I dropped mine a year ago and broke the latch, so it won't lock into Tablet mode if you push on the hinge. Minor inconvenience I suppose. You just have to be careful so you don't have the screen changing orientation on your while you are drawing on it.

Software wise it's tippy top. I have Win 7 Ultimate on it and with SSD drive that came with it, cold boot up is less than 30 seconds and shut down is literally like 6 seconds. This thing still cooks after all this time. SSD fo life!

I will be replacing it sometime this year though. It'll be 3 years old by then and I envy the new model with capacitive touch and Wacom. Found some great refurb prices for less than a grand for the new version of my model. Mine was also refurb. Got it 2 years ago for $1200 (80GB Intel SSD, 1.86GHz LV Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM, Wacom Penabled digitizer, 12" LCD, 3.6 lbs). The new one with 2.4GHz Core i5, 4GB of RAM, Wacom Penabled digitizer with Capacitive multitouch is going for like $900 on eBay. LOVE HP refurbs. They come with full 1 year warranty too.
 
I occasionally get graphical artifacts when coming out of sleep mode - restarting fixes it. It's a problem with the graphics card but so minor I haven't bothered to do anything about it, and drivers haven't solved my problem either.
 
When playing Dragon Age or Dragon Age 2, alt tabbing out to the desktop causes my graphics card to make this whiny ringing noise. This happens with or without the overclock and only happens when Im playing the dragon age games.

Last night, I noticed my PC didnt enter sleep mode after 30 mins. I went into Power Saving and saw that it somehow changed from my custom profile to "High Performance" where sleep mode was disabled.
 
My front inward-facing case fan randomly starts vibrating like mad for a while, then it will just stop vibrating and function normally. I can't seem to figure out what makes it stop.
 
captmcblack said:
Here's a weird one.

So I have an old desktop rig set up like this:
- Athlon X2 4200, cooled with a Scythe Ninja 2 cooler
- Radeon 4850 512MB
- 2 GB RAM
- 500 GB SATA HDD
- 2X DVD-RW drives connected via PATA/IDE
- MSI K8N Neo 4 Platinum

Worked perfectly, no issues, no random shutdowns, no nothing. Turned it off one night. Turned it back on, and black screen - wouldn't even POST. Tried clearing CMOS, nothing. Tried unplugging the power and replugging it, nothing. I didn't smell any burning, didn't see any damage on the motherboard itself or any blown/distended capacitors, so I've no idea what the deal is. Could the CPU be fried? What should I try to get this thing to work again?
Click to expand...
Do your fans or HDD start to spin up or do your lights come on or is just completely dead when you try to turn it on? I would guess it is the PSU first, mobo second (or both as a PSU going out may take some other components out with it). I've never seen a CPU get fried. Most modern PCs automatically shut down when the CPU temp reaches a certain threshold. I have seen plenty of blown PSUs and leaky/bulging mobo capacitors though.
 
Nothing is wrong per-say BUT

I have an old 1st gen low clock speed c2d which is fine for most things, but sucks if I ever have to reencode or play a more modern game. Luckly my favorite PC games are TF2, WoW, NeoTokyo (source mod), PSO:BB , and other smallerish titles like Torchlight or Trine as well as indie games. So I'm good.

That being said my current mobo/cpu/ram combo is reaching the 5 year mark so I plan on upgrading this year when I get some cash.

Beyond that I just need to get some more space, but I was trying to wait it out till SSDs got bigger and cheaper.
 
J-Rod said:
Do your fans or HDD start to spin up or do your lights come on or is just completely dead when you try to turn it on? I would guess it is the PSU first, mobo second (or both as a PSU going out may take some other components out with it). I've never seen a CPU get fried. Most modern PCs automatically shut down when the CPU temp reaches a certain threshold. I have seen plenty of blown PSUs and leaky/bulging mobo capacitors though.
Click to expand...

The fans and disk drives all spin up, and my case lights/system lights come on.
Nothing is displayed on the monitor, though - and the monitor never comes out of standby.
 
nothing at all going wrong. two years running.

i5 750 @3.7 ghz
ASUS P7P55D-PRO motherboard
ASUS Xonar D2
EVGA GTX 580 SLI
Western Digital Caviar black 640 Gb HDD
Samsung 1TB HDD
Antec 1200 case
 
captmcblack said:
It's a 600 (or 650, I forget) watt PSU - it should've been able to power all that stuff comfortably, and it did so. It literally just decided out of the blue that it wasn't going to power on anymore...weird.
Click to expand...
Mine did that last summer. Worked fine, shutdown before I went off to work, came home, boom wouldn't do shit.

Had similar ideas as you, but listened to GAF and my vent friends who said PSU. Ordered one from newegg and put it in. Bam fired right up.
 
Brettison said:
Mine did that last summer. Worked fine, shutdown before I went off to work, came home, boom wouldn't do shit.

Had similar ideas as you, but listened to GAF and my vent friends who said PSU. Ordered one from newegg and put it in. Bam fired right up.
Click to expand...

Okay...I'm gonna try a PSU tonight, and see if that brings it back to life. If it does, GAF is welcome to come to my apartment for a beer or three on me.

Seriously.
 
Every time I use VLC player to play dvds, it flickers randomly. Its annoying, theres no problem if I use it to play avi, wmv, mp4, and etc.
 
tm08k.jpg


Had this happen out of the blue to my laptop this past summer. Three days before my warranty ran out, so I was extremely lucky in that regard.

The worker could never figure out what was wrong with it and eventually just began replacing parts in an attempt to fix it. To the best he could figure, my cpu had overheated.
I somewhat agree, but it had barely been on at the time, and I was only on youtube. Still, my little laptop doesn't do a fantastic job venting air, and my dorm room windows have a tendency to let all that texas dirt come blowing in.


Other than this one incident, I've never had a single issue with it.
 
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