So the owners computer has been having issues locking up and crashing and generally running slow. The major issue is his PC will restart for an update or something and wont finish restarting, the monitors will be black and unresponsive and his numlock key on his keyboard will be stuck on (mouse and keyboard unresponsive), you get the standard failed to install updates and reboots. The pc had thrown a couple hard drive errors over the past few months so I replaced the hard drive, reinstalled windows etc. Now with the new hard drive windows cant get through windows updates without locking up. I changed the power settings so it wont go to the black screen and it basically just locks up showing windows updates. I manually installed some of the updates succesfully (the ones that speed up windows updates) so of the 220 initial updates theres 190 left or so, security updates etc, and it cant make it through them. Do I just manually update them to see if they will go? I tried doing them in blocks of like 60 and they still locked it up. When I run the system check its showing a BIO HD8 error for hard drive, even on the brand new hard drive. hes got an HP pro 3130 MT, running windows 7 looking around theres a couple really pissed off people saying its a MOBO error that HP has been ignoring and to replace the mobo and thats whats throwing the BIO HD8 errors, not the actual drives. I've never done a mobo, im not really looking forward to tearing this thing all the way down and swapping a mobo to have the issue come back. Is it time to just get a new pc? Am i missing something here?
My guess would be the motherboard as well if it is still throwing drive errors on a new drive too. I have seen SATA ports go bad through the chipset. If others have seen the same problem that is MB related then it is a good bet it is MB related. If you have to replace the board, the best thing would probably be to buy an old socket 1155 motherboard and a Sandy or Ivy Bridge CPU to go with it. Trying to buy an official board for that computer will be hard and expensive if it is even possible. If you cant find a really cheap combo of a socket 1155 board and processor then just take the opportunity to upgrade to the newest stuff. Either way you go you are most likely going to have to do a Windows re-install with the new MB because you dont want any corrupted system files lingering around that were caused by this bad MB.
Yeah I really haven't done a full mobo teardown and I told him he should just buy a new pc at this point if we have to go that route. Its up and running without errors and crashes currently but its likely only a matter of time.
Ugh, my support days I used to hate this call. What I would recommend is to run system file checker (elevated command prompt: sfc /scannow). Then try to locate the failing patches and manually install them. It doesn't sound like a HD issue but running check disk couldn't hurt.
yeah I know for certain a couple updates are crashing it on restart, i managed to install half of the patches in batches without issue, and if we shut off updates it seems to be going fine. I manually installed some of the more important patches but since its running im kind of at the "if it aint broke dont fix it" stage just because getting our work pcs setup is such a pita
Did you use the re-install CD for Windows that is for the HP computer? I do not like mixing brands in a workplace and even mixing pre-built and custom machines. HP, Dell, and probably others use custom bios' in their motherboards and use custom versions of Windows designed for their PCs. You cannot take a disk from Dell and install it onto an HP or the other way around, and you cannot take one of their CDs and install Windows onto a custom built computer. You will get random crashes, bluescreen, installation fails, and other very odd behavior you wont really be able to pin down. It sounds weird I know, but dont mix computers and installation media between brands. Most (all?) of your problems are likely due to a bad motherboard, but still just a heads up not to mix stuff around.
Yeah I have the HP discs including the supplimental, I learned that the hard way twice. Unfortunately stuff gets shuffled around, I have only bought us Dells as well have replaced them We have another pc that has a bad windows update which has it totally borked, it has windows 7 but it downloaded an update that only applies to windows 8 and keeps causing it to fail to install updates, but since it has updates downloaded it keeps trying to install them everyday. Can't figure out a way around it other than to wipe the pc because it wont let me restore it to before that update was installed.
HP are notorious for issues with their hardware in their laptops. Years ago I had a HP that the either the wirsless controller or mobo would fail on all the time because they were not compatible with each other. Their fix for this was to send the exact same mobo or wireless card (depending on which blew first) that you had to fix it which only continued to do the same thing until you were finally out of warranty. My company had 20 of this laptop at the time and it was just a continuing problem until I had to speak with the CFO about getting new ones. I also got an RMA from HP for all 20 units after around 4 months of them just sitting on a shelf in my office.