Why won't my computer boot?

[georgejovi]

One day my computer wouldn't POST, I just turned it on and it started clicking. Took video card out and it would boot up but give errors when running any program, and randomly reboot.

Ran Memtest, no errors. Ran Seatools HDD diagnostic, 30 some errors, but repaired them all. Bought new PSU, nothing changed.

I got it stable by downclocking RAM to 400MHz instead of the default 800, and removing the video card.

Sometimes it will boot up with the vid card and work, (with RAM underclocked) but it's really random.

Athlon 3800+ 2.4GHz
2GB G.Skill DDR2 RAM
7600GT PCIe 256MB vid card
Seagate 300GB HDD

Any ideas what it could be?

 

[wanderer27]

First off, welcome to the Forums !

The 'clicking' leads me to think failing Hard Drive, and the 30+ errors second that.

 

[Ruger22C]

Won't it POST even with a bad HDD???

 

[Dillybob]

The fact that it runs fine with underclocked RAM seems really weird to me.....maybe something's wrong with the videocard, since you can run fine without it.

 

[wanderer27]

Originally posted by: Ruger22C
Won't it POST even with a bad HDD???

Yeah, it should, but since he's new to the Forum I was thinking maybe he meant boot, and with 'click' and errors I got Brain locked on HD 😱

If he gets BIOS messages sometimes and at others he doesn't, then yeah, something else is going on.