PC wont boot to OS...Help plz

[Bangirang]

Hi guys. I have an issue with my new pc that I put together about a month ago. Everything was fine and dandy with my new rig until yesterday. After using it briefly I left it on and came back to find the screen black, assuming it was the screensaver I moved the mouse with no response. After multiple attempts to restart the PC with no success or a post for that matter I reset the cmos and pulled the battery. Still no post or beeps so I pulled a stick of ram leaving one in the bank 1 slot, it then posted upon restart. I reset the bios to user safe and tried to start but came to a message stating a file in the win config was corrupt and that I should insert the os cd and repair the file. I set the boot to cd and started the winxp pro cd setup, the screen went to the blue setup and froze. Ive tried multiple things and retried the OS repair plan but still couldnt get past the frozen blue windows xp setup screen. Is my problem really a corrupt os file? Why wont it post with 2 stix of ram inserted if its an OS issue?

If this turns out to be a MSI MOBO issue then I do have an ADDITIONAL Asus A8V 939 board but have issues with the XP installation crashing at the same point "everytime" when I previously tried to use it, had it beyond the return deadline so I simply kept both boards. This is another issue Id appreciate advice on incase I do decide to use it. Thanks for your help ahead of time.



Bangirang

MSI Neo2 Platinum 939 v1.3
2048 Ballistix PC4000 DDR
AMD 3200 90nm 939
2x 74GB Raptors Raid 0
1x 200GB Seagate 7200.7
BFG 6800 GT OC
520W OCZ Powerstream PSU

 

[HermDogg]

That's quite a large post you have there, and a bit convoluted. You say that the same problem happens with the other board? Wouldn't that logically lead you to believe it is somewhere else in the hardware? If the raptors are in Raid, can't you just pull one and the other should be fine, if it is indeed a corrupt file?

 

[Bangirang]

One raptor configured for raid 0 is dead without the other unless you format and repartition and go with just one non raid for the OS, or am I missing something? Id hate to go that route esp if there is nothing wrong with the raptors. The initial problems with my motherboard began when I ordered a 90nm 939 cpu from AMD, the bios was to old to recognize so I had to manually update it. Once that was done it was gtg. The issue with the two boards isnt the same, the asus will post with both banks filled but will crash after a specific OS setup percent. My MSI in use is the one that wont post unless I put just one stick in the bank 1 slot, thats the issue Im having as well as the corrupt file message I get at the end of the post. Once thats taken into account I try and load my XP Pro through the CD boot process and it gets to the blue screen with "Windows XP Setup" at the top left and nothing more, frozen to the core every time I try. It was fully functional, completely updated with all my app's and games loaded for a good month or so and now it doesnt work. Both dimm's work when I swap them out of the bank 1 slot....has to be something else.

 

[ironique]

I had a similar problem and it turned out to be a RAM issue on a PC I worked on once. Try these:

- Switch your RAM between slots
- Relax your RAM timings to least aggressive (though i doubt PC4000 rated dimms can have issues with timings )

Just a thought.

 

[Bangirang]

Ya I figured this out last night before seeing that last post. I think one stick of ram is faulty though. I swapped between the banks and it turns out one stick works in one bank but the other in the same bank does not, cant use mem test if it doesnt work alltogether!

 

[mechBgon]

Are you giving the memory the 2.8 volts that it's designed for?

 

[Bangirang]

The bios had it at "auto", would that have been good enough? I manually redid it to 2.8 after checking the specifics on the stix and seeing your post.

 

[mechBgon]

On that board I think AUTO gives them 2.6 volts. Fancy memory is sometimes fussy about that, so giving them 2.8 volts may help. In the BIOS's hardware-monitor area, are the voltages looking reasonable on the +12V, +5V and +3.3V? Don't worry about freaky readings on the negative voltage lines, just the positive ones. Within 5% would be nice.

 

[JoeC134]

Did the blue screen say "A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to (goes off the screen) to your computer. If this is the first time this error has appeared, retstart your computer. Run chkdsk /f for hard drive corruption then restart your computer.

Technical information:
***STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF89640, 0xC000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)?

It first came up while I was running system restore and that's the first time it came up. Now it come up when I try to run Safe Mode or Safe Mode with Command Prompt. I'm currently stuck in this situation.