Strange problem

[sgrinavi]

E4600 @ stock speeds
Gigabyte DS3L p35 board
4 GB mushkin EP ram
Sparkle 9400GT passive video card
Vista Ultimate 32 bit
Corsair 520 HX PSU
Single DVD burner (HP)
Pair of SATA HDs, nothing special.

A little over a year old and has never been O/Cd to any extreme degree, for the past several months it has not been OCd at all.

System was working fine, went to reboot, it went through the usual routine then got a BSOD right after the windows logo came up.

Started in safe mode, same thing.

Took out all RAM (but single stick) and the same thing happened.

Stick in the Vista repair disk to do a restore; it does not see the disk drive

Reboot to the vista disc and this time after it loads the files I get the vista back-drop and nothing else. It just sits there with the HDs occassionally being accessed.

I reboot and get nothing,

Unplug the PSU, let it sit for a few minutes and I am back to square 1.

There are no strange beeps, it acts normal when it starts. I can go right to the BIOS witout issues. I tend to think the video card is OK since I do get the vista background and BIOS screens. Any ideas?

PSU maybe?

 

[mpilchfamily]

Back up all your data ans do a clean nstall. There is a chance some files are currputed that the repair instll isn't fixing. If you still have problems then you have some sort of hardware issue.

 

[sgrinavi]

Originally posted by: mpilchfamily
Back up all your data ans do a clean nstall. There is a chance some files are currputed that the repair instll isn't fixing. If you still have problems then you have some sort of hardware issue.

Since I can not even get to the Vista install screen I would tend to agree. Care to take a guess at which component it might be? Memory? MB? PSU?

 

[Slugbait]

Originally posted by: mpilchfamily
Back up all your data ans do a clean nstall.

What he means is that you need to build a BartPE disc to get to the drive, or plug it into a working machine as a non-boot disc and get your files backed up that way.

However, this should be a clue:

Stick in the Vista repair disk to do a restore; it does not see the disk drive

Vista provides generic SATA drivers on the disc, so the fact it cannot see your disk drive indicates a possible hardware issue. It could be a simple as a bad SATA cable...the first thing I'd try is to plug the cable from your second hard drive into the boot drive, see if that clears things up.

Next thing to try is to copy the mobo's SATA drivers to a USB key, and use those during the repair disc routine: this should get the repair disc to see the hard drive.

The STOP error you receive in the BSOD would be of enormous help to narrow down the cause.

 

[sgrinavi]

There's no data on the system, just some music. No biggie. I would wipe it out in a second.

I can not even get far enough into the process to do a reinstall. . The vista DVD boots fine, loads the files BUT once the Vista stock background appears the system just sits there with an occassional accesing of the FDDs

The BSOD just flashes up and goes away. If it will not boot then how would I get it to dump the BSOD to a file?

System was working fine, went to reboot, it went through the usual routine then got a BSOD right after the windows logo came up.

No changes made to the system, no new software, nothing. It was not really a reboot, just a normal start. The system had been sitting off for several hours

Started in safe mode, same thing.

After several BSODs I tried a couple versions of safe mode. Nothing changed.

Took out all RAM (but single stick) and the same thing happened.

I even swapped the RAM around, trying different sticks just in case the one I left in was bad.

Stick in the Vista repair disk to do a restore; it does not see the disk drive

I was not clear here. The vista disc booted fine, when I selected the repair option it did not find any disks.

Reboot to the vista disc and this time after it loads the files I get the vista back-drop and nothing else. It just sits there with the HDs occassionally being accessed.

Assuming that the install went south I was prepared to do the complete reinstall. However when I rebooted and, again, loaded the Vista Disc I now can not get the Vista install menu to come up

I reboot and get nothing,

Now it gets really strange. When I reboot I get nothing. No POST, NADA!

Unplug the PSU, let it sit for a few minutes and I am back to square 1.

What is up with that? Anyone, besides me, think it could be the PSU?

 

[sgrinavi]

Update! Just got a new error when attempting to load vista disc.

STOP: C0000006 The insrruction at 0x%08lx referenced memory at 0x%08lx. The required data was not placed into memory because of an I/O error status of 0x%08lx

EDIT, and another after unplugging all the hard drives

STOP: c000021a {Fatal System Error}
Th initial session process or sytem process terminated unexpectedly with a status of 0x00000000 (0xc0000221 0x0010034c)
The sytem has been shut down

 

[Slugbait]

That referenced memory is nasty. Seems others have hit it with no solutions. Closest I could find is KB833267

This problem may occur when your operating system file system is damaged, or you have a problem with your hard disk drive.

Since you can't see the drive with the optical disc, I doubt it's the OS...definitely looks like the hard drive now. I suggest entering the BIOS and resetting SATA operations to combination.

 

[sgrinavi]

Originally posted by: Slugbait

Since you can't see the drive with the optical disc, I doubt it's the OS...definitely looks like the hard drive now. I suggest entering the BIOS and resetting SATA operations to combination.

Starting to wonder WTF is going on. I just swapped PSUs and disconnected all the hard drives. It loads the Vista O/S disc, I get the Microsoft Copyright notice, but as soon as the generic windows vista background appears that's it, the system hangs.

 

[Slugbait]

I think that's expected behavior.

Plug the disks back in, change your SATA settings in the BIOS as described, and see if that does anything.

 

[sgrinavi]

Put a new HD & swapped out the burner for a newer model. It's working/

THANKS!

 

[sgrinavi]

Replaced the drives, it's working now... reinstalling everything. What A PIA