A
AliceValk
Hi everyone, I’m having some serious issues with my home built gaming PC.
My specs are:
Gigabyte AMD Radeon HD 7850 2 GB Graphic Card
AMD FX-8320 Eight-Core Processor
Corsair Vengeance Blue 8 GB Dual Channel Memory Kit
Corsair Builder Series CX 500 Watt
Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3
WD Blue 1 TB Desktop Hard Drive
ASUS Optical Drive
(I can give more detail on these if needed).
I hadn't had any problems with the computer since I built it in 2013. However, when I installed 3 Windows Updates in late October-early November, everything started running slowly. Steam wouldn’t load half the time the first time I tried to start it, and the computer would take a while to shut down. Once when the PC had been on the “Windows is shutting down” screen for quite a while, I forced it to shut down. I was greeted with a black screen. I tried everything, (Startup Repair with & without an installation disk, Recovery, etc.) but after nothing worked, I decided to just do a clean install of Windows, since there were very few things on the PC that were completely irreplaceable (no personal photos, etc.).
This link has more details: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/odd-black-screen-issue-please-help-windows-7/21e73b69-7c29-4773-aca5-0ba37a500378
Since I’ve done a fresh install and re-installed all of my drivers, all Windows Updates, and most driver updates (except the latest update for my Optical Drive, my Motherboard, and some of the drivers for my graphics card (I’m having some trouble getting the Gigabyte driver updates to install for some reason) I’m having even worse issues. Windows will sometimes take up to 40 minutes to boot. Sometimes there will be around 10 minutes of a black screen between the Windows logo and the login screen, and then another 10 minutes of a black screen between the sign in screen and the Windows Desktop loading. I’ve also had some very odd graphical glitches, like certain icons on the bar at the bottom of screen looking very outdated, like the "Start" button below. This happened on one of the startups that took around 40 minutes. This glitch has not repeated.
Another glitch of a white border around my Start menu seems to happen every other time I open it. And it usually doesn't disappear when I close the Start menu. Sometimes it stays until I log off or shut down the computer. Neither of these glitches ever happened before the clean install.
Almost immediately after the clean reinstall (after a regular shut down, that didn't include installing updates) I forced the PC to shut down after it was taking a long time to start up. I was forced to run Startup Repair which was thankfully successful, but I'm paranoid enough about what happened before after the black screen incident (Startup Repair failed to work many times before finally "repairing" for over 30 hours until I finally turned the system off and did a clean re-install) that I'm scared to ever force the PC to shut down, no matter how long anything takes.
I’ve run chkdsk twice, the first time it found 5 bad clusters. The second time, it found 1 bad cluster. Scannow found no errors. I downloaded the WD Data Lifeguard Tool and have only managed to get the quick test to complete with no errors once. Every other time I got the message “Quick Test on drive 1 did not complete! Status code = 07 (Failed read test element), Failure Checkpoint = 102 (Unknown Test) SMART self-test did not complete on drive 1!” When I try to run the extended test, no matter how long I leave it running (I’ve left it for over 3 hours) it gets stuck at around 5 minutes in at scanning a certain sector and will never go past it. I also ran a Windows Memory Diagnostic (which I ran before I did a clean install on my PC and although I couldn’t see the final results, it had found no errors at 99% completion) and got the message at about 20% in that my computer had a memory problem. So now I plan to remove one stick of RAM at a time a re-run the test to see if both sticks or only one is corrupted. Or if the test was inaccurate.
So from all of this, am I looking at a bad hard drive and maybe some bad RAM or possibly something more serious? Is there anything else I should do at this point to further test my system? And is there a reason why forcing the computer to shut down seems to always result in a Startup Repair? I’m hoping that issue can be fixed with a change in hard drive & RAM because it’s very annoying (and that’s without worrying about the fact that Startup Repair might just refuse to work once I reinstall everything, and I could end up back in the same situation again).
Continue reading...
My specs are:
Gigabyte AMD Radeon HD 7850 2 GB Graphic Card
AMD FX-8320 Eight-Core Processor
Corsair Vengeance Blue 8 GB Dual Channel Memory Kit
Corsair Builder Series CX 500 Watt
Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3
WD Blue 1 TB Desktop Hard Drive
ASUS Optical Drive
(I can give more detail on these if needed).
I hadn't had any problems with the computer since I built it in 2013. However, when I installed 3 Windows Updates in late October-early November, everything started running slowly. Steam wouldn’t load half the time the first time I tried to start it, and the computer would take a while to shut down. Once when the PC had been on the “Windows is shutting down” screen for quite a while, I forced it to shut down. I was greeted with a black screen. I tried everything, (Startup Repair with & without an installation disk, Recovery, etc.) but after nothing worked, I decided to just do a clean install of Windows, since there were very few things on the PC that were completely irreplaceable (no personal photos, etc.).
This link has more details: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/odd-black-screen-issue-please-help-windows-7/21e73b69-7c29-4773-aca5-0ba37a500378
Since I’ve done a fresh install and re-installed all of my drivers, all Windows Updates, and most driver updates (except the latest update for my Optical Drive, my Motherboard, and some of the drivers for my graphics card (I’m having some trouble getting the Gigabyte driver updates to install for some reason) I’m having even worse issues. Windows will sometimes take up to 40 minutes to boot. Sometimes there will be around 10 minutes of a black screen between the Windows logo and the login screen, and then another 10 minutes of a black screen between the sign in screen and the Windows Desktop loading. I’ve also had some very odd graphical glitches, like certain icons on the bar at the bottom of screen looking very outdated, like the "Start" button below. This happened on one of the startups that took around 40 minutes. This glitch has not repeated.
Another glitch of a white border around my Start menu seems to happen every other time I open it. And it usually doesn't disappear when I close the Start menu. Sometimes it stays until I log off or shut down the computer. Neither of these glitches ever happened before the clean install.
Almost immediately after the clean reinstall (after a regular shut down, that didn't include installing updates) I forced the PC to shut down after it was taking a long time to start up. I was forced to run Startup Repair which was thankfully successful, but I'm paranoid enough about what happened before after the black screen incident (Startup Repair failed to work many times before finally "repairing" for over 30 hours until I finally turned the system off and did a clean re-install) that I'm scared to ever force the PC to shut down, no matter how long anything takes.
I’ve run chkdsk twice, the first time it found 5 bad clusters. The second time, it found 1 bad cluster. Scannow found no errors. I downloaded the WD Data Lifeguard Tool and have only managed to get the quick test to complete with no errors once. Every other time I got the message “Quick Test on drive 1 did not complete! Status code = 07 (Failed read test element), Failure Checkpoint = 102 (Unknown Test) SMART self-test did not complete on drive 1!” When I try to run the extended test, no matter how long I leave it running (I’ve left it for over 3 hours) it gets stuck at around 5 minutes in at scanning a certain sector and will never go past it. I also ran a Windows Memory Diagnostic (which I ran before I did a clean install on my PC and although I couldn’t see the final results, it had found no errors at 99% completion) and got the message at about 20% in that my computer had a memory problem. So now I plan to remove one stick of RAM at a time a re-run the test to see if both sticks or only one is corrupted. Or if the test was inaccurate.
So from all of this, am I looking at a bad hard drive and maybe some bad RAM or possibly something more serious? Is there anything else I should do at this point to further test my system? And is there a reason why forcing the computer to shut down seems to always result in a Startup Repair? I’m hoping that issue can be fixed with a change in hard drive & RAM because it’s very annoying (and that’s without worrying about the fact that Startup Repair might just refuse to work once I reinstall everything, and I could end up back in the same situation again).
Continue reading...