System acting up REAL bad

[Xeoneex]

Ok, so I'm gaming. I have winamp running, all of a sudden mys ystem starts freezing up a bit here and there. Sound messing up when it freezes. Then winamp freezes, then the game freezes and my system crashes or something. Screen went black and power button was flashing. I was hearing weird clicking sounds like hard drive or like you know when you boot up your system you hear those bootup clicks? I kept hearing them randomly every so often. After I was able to boot, my system took a long time booting, some things froze wouldn't even boot right. Now I can't even boot without the screen going black. My system is not that old, maybe half a year? I upgraded motherboard and whatnot. My graphics card was a replacement after my first went out on me not too long after buying it. I had that over a year now. I'm at wits end about what to do.

 

[mechBgon]

I'm at wits end about what to do.

Well, you can start by providing some spec infos Hit Quote and fill in the sample template below, perhaps:

• CORE HARDWARE
  • Power supply Antec TruePower 430
  • Motherboard Asus K8N-E Deluxe
    • Revision 1.03
    • BIOS 1005
  • CPU Athlon64 3000+
    • Core 130nm Clawhammer
  • Memory (2) 512MB Corsair XMS 3200C2 modules
    • Voltage Manually set to 2.7 volts
    • Timings AUTO, results in 2-3-2-6 @ 200MHz
• CARDS
  • Primary video card ATI Radeon 9800Pro AGP 8x
  • PCI slot #1 (top) empty
  • PCI slot #2 empty
  • PCI slot #3 LeadTek Winfast TV/FM tuner card
  • PCI slot #4 Creative Audigy 2 ZS
  • PCI slot #5 LSI Logic Ultra160 SCSI
  • PCI slot #6 N/A (this board only has five PCI slots)
• DRIVES
  • Boot drive 160GB Seagate 7200.7
    • Interface Serial ATA
    • Controller hosting this drive nForce3 SATA controller
    • Jumper setting not applicable (SATA)
  • Additional hard drive 40GB Seagate 7200.7
    • Interface Parallel ATA
    • Controller hosting this drive nForce3 standard ATA controller, primary channel
    • Jumper setting Master
  • Additional hard drive 18GB Seagate Cheetah 15k.3
    • Interface SCSI
    • Controller hosting this drive LSI Logic U160 card
    • Jumper setting SCSI ID 01
  • Optical drive #1 NEC 3500A DVD burner
    • Interface Parallel ATA
    • Controller hosting this drive nForce3 standard ATA controller, secondary channel
    • Jumper setting Master
  • Optical drive #2 Lite-On combo DVD-ROM/CD-RW
    • Interface Parallel ATA
    • Controller hosting this drive nForce3 standard ATA controller, secondary channel
    • Jumper setting Slave
• OS AND SECURITY
  • Operating System WindowsXP Professional
  • Service Pack SP2
  • Internet connection Cable
  • Hardware firewall Netgear RP614 router
  • Software firewall WindowsXP firewall
  • Antivirus Norton Antivirus 2004

 

[Xeoneex]

# CORE HARDWARE

* Power supply Antec True 480
* Motherboard Soultek SL-K8TPro-939

* CPU Athlon64 3500+
Dunno the core

* Memory (2) 512MB Corsair Not sure the speed forget, think its 3200's


# CARDS

* Video card Gforce 6800 256MB GT


# DRIVES

* Boot drive 160GB Seagate SATA

* Hard drive 2 120GB Maxtor

* Hard drive 3 120GB Maxtor

* Hard drive 4 160GB Seagate

* Hard drive 5 200GB Seagate

# OS AND SECURITY

* Operating System WindowsXP Professional
* Service Pack SP2
* Internet connection Cable
* Hardware firewall Netgear RP614 router
* Software firewall WindowsXP firewall
* Antivirus Norton Antivirus 2004

 

[mechBgon]

Ok good. You have both the ATX12V and the auxiliary video power (if your card is so equipped) hooked up, right? Just checking

Now lighten the load on your PSU as much as practical. Unplug all the drives from data & power cables, including optical drives, and slap in a leftover GeForce2 or GF4MX or some other low-power card if possible. Does it now POST reliably? If so, let it sit for about ten minutes and just observe it. If it keeps on running, shut it down, hook up just your boot drive, and see if Windows boots and runs.

If Windows runs ok, then add your other drives one at a time, booting again after each one is added to make sure none of them is the culprit. If they're all healthy, then plunk the 6800 back in there and now does it fail again? If so, then maybe your video card went *POOF* again.

If Windows won't boot, or if it bombs while simply sitting there with no drives and a low-power video card, then LMK. Also could you examine your Corsair memory and get the precise model markings off the stickers on them.

 

[Xeoneex]

I dont have a spare fx card. Also I booted it up, it booted up nice, still making the clicks like it was booting up, but I noticed that it wanted to checkdisk my one harddrive, my 200 gig. Said something about checking consistency. Not sure if that implies that the drive is bad.

 

[Xeoneex]

It keeps making clicking sounds, like it sounds like its the harddrive. Maybe my one harddrive is going bad, but its not a boot drive, its a storage drive. Would that cause a major freeze issue and boot problems? Whats even weirder is I can't load up windows media player. My computer is NOW beeping at me. I'm not entirely sure what to do. This is getting very weird.

 

[mechBgon]

Unhook the drive that is having the problem and see what happens now.

 

[Xeoneex]

I took out all my drives sept my main boot drive. Ran a HD test on it, before it finished my screen went black again, but when I rebooted I heart the power down noises, windows turnoff theme etc... I turned it back on and the monitor wouldn't turn on, it was on and blinking as if the computer was off, after awhile I finally got the thing on. Then I was testing some things, turned my music on, and played a game, worked fine but then I saw graphic glitches. I had recently installed a new driver and my brother thinks its that. I think its either my ram or my graphics card. I have had it on for awhile now with not a single issue. no clicks beeps or nothing. played a game too, so far so good. I dunno whats going on but I can't seem to troubleshoot this :/ I'm about to run a memtest soon as I can burn this stuff to a CD. I'll probably find out whether its the ram or not. I dont know how I can test my card to find out if its on the fritz, if my ram is fine.

 

[Xeoneex]

Ok, well I ran the memtest. It passed so my memory seems fine. Since 1 1/2 days ago I've had my system on, not a single issue. I dunno what happened but oh well. I do get a request to check consistency on my 200 gig drive when I boot up. Not sure what that means exactly but it tests and nothign happens so I'm assuming everything is fine.

 

[Matt2]

Dead PSU. MY AXP 1700+ system was doing the same thing, random reboots, hard locks, etc...

Replaced the PSU and good as new.

 

[Xeoneex]

My PSU is new though. Well 5-6 monthes old O_O can it go out THAT fast?

 

[bfonnes]

Originally posted by: Xeoneex
Ok, so I'm gaming. I have winamp running, all of a sudden mys ystem starts freezing up a bit here and there. Sound messing up when it freezes. Then winamp freezes, then the game freezes and my system crashes or something. Screen went black and power button was flashing.

I had this happen b4. I would replace your PSU, ASAP!! no questions asked.

BFonnes

 

[Xeoneex]

Dang :/ this ironically was a replacement for one that came with my case I replaced. Though the other one showed bad voltages. I checked all the voltages are fine. But again not a single issue since all that.