ok here's one for you tech super-sleuths. I woke up this morning and put my computer on. checked e-mail, got into Aion to do some broker movement, then logged off (computer off) to do some shopping with the Misses. when I get back, computer won't get past the login / p-word screen. I do a restart, and then it won't even recognize my hard drive. I reset the bios and tried it again, nothing. disconnect HD and reconnect with new wire. it recognizes, won't let me past login again. safe mode - won't let me past login. every time past the login it restarts and then thinks I have no HD - and wants to boot from CD. I tried another HD that my brother gave me (clean 160gb) set up windows, virus, spybot - still relatively clean, and I'm still getting crashes. it recognizes this one just a bit more, but still has crashed twice and wants to boot from CD-ROM because it won't recognize the HD. I thought it was my old HD, but now, I'm thinking something else - mobo? processor? any ideas or good diagnostic tools you guys can suggest? oh btw - running 6 gig ram, X58 chipset / Mobo, I7 -920 processor - was using a seagate 750 gig HD, atm it's a 160gig WD. last but not least, the last crash was after loading and trying to log into Aion. everything froze up as soon as the game loaded and crashed to the "boot from CD Rom" routine. thanks again in advance for any ideas.
I would suspect a bad setting in the bios as when you are overclocking certain areas it can cause the hard drives to become unstable and not be read. However since you said you already reset the BIOS then it shouldn't be that. Unless you didnt actually reset the bios. Power off the computer completely, take out the battery on the motherboard, unplug the power cable from the back of the computer. Wait 30 seconds just to be completely sure there isnt any power left anywhere on the motherboard. Then put the battery back in, plug the power cable back in, and start it up. That will make sure the bios is completely reset. Could be the southbridge chip on your motherboard is bad. That chip has the hard drive controller. Try a different port on the motherboard just in case. Could also be the CPU. This is least likely for the behavior you described.
when I reset the BIOS I did it by turning off the computer with the switch on the power supply, moving the jumper, pushing the power button (while the power was still off) , then moving it back, then powering up the computer. you're southbridge suspicion sounds like what I was thinking. tho, I have had many "glitches" through the almost two years I have had this mobo. I went ahead and ordered a new mobo since my x58 is the older version. I look forward to 6Gb/s SATA and 3.0 USB.
You're gonna love USB 3.0, there aren't a lot of options yet as it won't be mainstream for another year or so but the xfer rate is insane. Did you try dropping your HDD in Phae's pc?
Describe what you mean by "wont get past the login screen" please. Do you mean that the computer boots up and gets to the screen where you type in your password, but nothing seems to happen? Like when you hit keys on the keyboard nothing is happening and the mouse wont move? And yet the keyboard works fine in bios still? Or do you mean the windows loading screen comes up, and when it would normally switch to the Windows login screen it just stays black forever, gets a bluescreen or something like that? Or does it get all the way to the desktop but you cant move the mouse around at all? If it is #1 or #3 behavior, it could be something to do with your USB drivers. I have had that happen before and the solution is either to reinstall Windows, or find an old PS/2 keyboard and use that to boot into Windows. After which Windows will hopefully start to recognize and install the drivers again for your USB keyboard and mouse.
by login screen I mean the screen that takes my password to get to desktop. type in password, wait a few, comp reboots. with the "new" old drive in, I have no issues at p-word screen, but I'll still get blue screen of death at times after doing a few things, reboot, goes to wanting the cd rom / not recognizing my HD. yeh I'm pretty sure its mobo / southbridge related. I've already ordered a new mobo as I was having issues with one of the ram slots being dead.
Your right that doesnt sound like it is a driver issue or bad hard drives. It it was a driver issue it wouldnt happen after a few minutes in Windows
It is more so sound like either a Video Card issue or a issue with as he said previously his southbridge. Since he said he has dead RAM slots I am going to have to say that I am more leaning towards the southbridge side. So another question, do you over-clock your RAM or CPU? If so how much and what type of cooling?
no overclocking - I've got my rig housed in a Cooler Master with five fans and a water cooler system.
so.... You have 5 fans AND water cooling and there is no overclocking? Well that could be a serious problem right there! It is just begging to be OCed Ironically, voltage is both the problem and solution to all hardware problems
I think in part I have had problems with the ram slots on the mobo but couldn't get good support directly when I bought the computer. now that I stripped out the old comp, added on, and am comfortable with rebuilding / building, and with the new mobo I'll be adding in this weekend, I will venture into OCing. however, I'm a total newb when it comes to that. rofl, I don't want to burn out anything. I only this summer bought the Cooler Master and moved everything into that case. I thought some of my past problems were about heat - my old case was a friggin sauna - one fan, shitty ventilation overall.
Ahh, for OCing I would open up forums and search for your CPU and then look at the guides so you do it right. Video cards most now a days have the OCing tool built in to the program, so you should be able to safely OC that. Though before you do any OCing of the CPU and if you want to venture into the ram side, learn how to reset your BIOS on your Mobo before you start. Also if you find any problems with your computer after you flip to the other computer it could end up being faulty RAM since you said it has been an issue since you got your computer there. So yeah just give us a heads-up after you moved everything over if your having any issues.
Just remember if you start overclocking, that modern processors are a lot more sensitive to voltage than most stuff you will see online. With the much smaller nanometer nodes the CPUs are built on they just cant handle a lot of voltage. Same with graphics cards. The latest high end ATI cards also have weak power regulation, so I wouldn't recommend upping the voltage on them either. They already are almost at max capacity on power draw as it is.
just want to say, it's in, everything is working fantastic. CPU transfer was a breeze. loved having the schematics for connections, read through the book for all the BIOS info. if I understand correctly there's actually an overclock jumper setting on my mobo. haven't switched it yet but my "windows perfomrance score" would be a solid 7.5 if not for HDD data transfer rate, which is only 5.9 - I don't think it can go higher until we start seeing 6gb/s sata drives - mine is only 3gb / s. anyways, thanks again for the knowledge. I'll be asking about overclocking soon.
6gbps sata drives are a marketing ploy. No HDD can even come close to maxing out even Sata 3gbps bandwidth. The only thing you need 6.0gbps bandwidth connections for is a large RAID array of HDDs, or RAID0 of newer SSDs, or a Crucial C300 SSD. You would need something like 25,000rpms on a mechanical drive with a 1TB per platter density to hit the max bandwidth of the Sata 3.0gbps connection. And that just wont ever happen. Which motherboard did you get?