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Urgently need help ... Need software to diagnose my motherboard/GPU..
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Member
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30. January 2009 @ 06:56 |
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About 5-6 days ago from now, my PC started running into some very peculiar problems ... The problems started off with small-scale software related issues, but then got bigger from there on .. Here is a timeline on how things started happening:
1) It all started with a system restart: At one moment everything was fine, and then I think because of something, I needed to simply restart my PC .. No biggie, so I just told my PC to restart. However, even the PC restarted, it immediately became *very* slow !! I mean, once it went into Windows, it used to get stuck even when I just single-clicked on an icon on the desktop ... ! I thought that it was probably some virus ..
2) About the same time as above, I noticed that my chipset fan broken down ... Stopped spinning .. I am in the process of ordering an Evercool VC-RE for it right now, but for the time being, I have made some adjustments to the existing fan, and its running again (although very noisy)
3) After another 1-2 days, Windows just stopped loading properly! I could not reach the Desktop stage. It always got stuck during some stage of the Windows starting process. Sometimes it got stuck right after choosing the OS from the OS Selection boot menu, and sometimes it got stuck at the Windows's Welcome message .. ! For situations like these, I have always had a backup Windows XP installed as well, which I never used at all ! The idea was to only use them in extreme circumstances, when emergency things need to be done ... Even this Windows stopped booting! Now I knew it was something serious ..
4) To try and format my PC, I tried re-installing Windows XP from boot time .. But when the setup tried to format my drives, it used to hang !! Then it said that my hard drive is probably damaged !!
5) Then, the graphics display of my computer started going a little weird. Weird because during boot time, all the letters/words printed on the screen or normally white, right ? ... Well my problem was that some letters were coloured, while the remaining stayed white ... Here is some garbage paragraph (typed it up quickly :P), which shows what I mean (think of the black characters as the normal white ones that appear at boot time):
tty tuy tg seferfrol oi [COLOR=Orange]u[/COLOR]oiuyfosdiljfrt ety twu t gr ftu yu ujte ref d cr y t jr v rf ry tr jy ju i 75eu5t e ye i r8986 iu yu jet g fv df bn[COLOR=RoyalBlue]h[/COLOR] jku k hdf gfawe y6 e6uyr j ths g r ie uiki yj yh esty reg yj u6ik jyt hje uik eik ioik ydh y r hts f gs rt ey teh jty iu urk ut jtr ty re gs gh ytu uiku tjd yt hje 7i eu jd yj hgndh ggt teyuyru yd hj drhy r g eth s h yrj ei 7 o i7km jyth es tg s ryyueu iutj i utjrht eyuyj yrhu jgn ytty tuy tg seferfrol oi uoiuyfosdiljfrt ety twu t gr ftu yu ujte ref d cr y t jr v rf [COLOR=DarkOrange]r[/COLOR]y tr jy ju i 75eu5t e ye i r8986 iu yu jet g fv df bnh jku k hdf gfawe y6 e6uyr j ths g r ie uiki yj yh esty reg yj u6ik jyt hje uik eik ioik ydh y r hts f gs rt ey teh jty iu urk ut jtr ty re gs gh ytu uiku tjd yt hje 7i eu jd yj hgndh ggt teyuyr[COLOR=RoyalBlue]u[/COLOR] yd hj drhy r g eth s h yrj ei 7 o i7km jyth es tg s ryyueu iutj i utjrht eyuyj yrhu jgn ytty tuy tg seferfrol oi uoiuyfosdiljfrt ety twu t gr ftu yu u[COLOR=Purple]j[/COLOR]te ref d c[COLOR=DarkOrchid]r[/COLOR] y t jr v rf ry tr jy ju i 75eu5t e ye i r8986 iu yu jet g fv df bnh jku k hdf gfawe y6 e6uyr j ths g r ie uiki yj yh esty reg yj u6ik jyt hje uik eik ioik ydh y r hts f gs rt ey te[COLOR=MediumTurquoise]h[/COLOR] jty iu urk ut jtr ty re gs gh ytu uiku tjd yt [COLOR=Lime]h[/COLOR]je 7i eu jd yj hgndh ggt teyuyru yd hj drhy r g eth s h yrj ei 7 o i7km jyth es tg s ryyueu iutj i utjrht eyuyj yrhu jgn ytty tuy tg seferfrol oi uoiuyfosdiljfrt ety twu t gr ftu yu ujte ref [COLOR=Magenta]d[/COLOR] cr y t jr v rf ry tr jy ju i 75eu5[COLOR=Yellow]t[/COLOR] e ye i r8986 iu yu jet g fv df bnh jku k hdf gfawe y6 e6uyr j ths g r ie uiki yj yh esty reg yj u6ik jyt hje uik eik ioik ydh y r hts f gs rt ey teh jty iu urk ut jtr ty re gs gh ytu uiku tjd yt hje 7i eu jd yj hgndh ggt t[COLOR=Lime]e[/COLOR]yuyru yd hj drhy r g eth s h yrj ei 7 o i7km jyth es tg s ryyueu iutj i utjrht eyuyj y[COLOR=RoyalBlue]r[/COLOR]hu jgn ytty tu[COLOR=Lime]y[/COLOR] tg seferfrol oi uoiuyfosdiljfrt ety twu t gr ftu yu ujte ref d cr y t jr v rf ry tr jy ju i 75eu5t e y[COLOR=Magenta]e[/COLOR] i r8986 iu yu jet g fv df bnh jku k hdf gfawe y6 e6uyr j ths g r ie uiki yj yh esty reg yj u6ik jyt hje uik eik ioik ydh y r hts f gs [COLOR=RoyalBlue]r[/COLOR]t ey teh jty iu urk ut jtr ty re gs gh ytu uiku t[COLOR=Lime]d[/COLOR]j yt hje 7i eu jd yj hgndh ggt teyuyru yd hj drhy r g eth s h yrj ei 7 o i7km jyth es tg s ryyueu iutj i utjrht eyuyj yrhu jgn y
Thats weird right ... ? Random coloured letters ..
My troubleshooting so far about all this is listed now:
1) I have taken out the hard drive which is 'reported' to be having problems, and I have plugged it in another PC of mine. I have run some tested on it, and it seems to be fine. I got the Western Digital Diagnosis tool and run both the Quick and Full Surface tests on it. Both tests reported that the hard drive is fine ! Then why was the problematic PC reporting that there are problems with it ?? ...... I am running Spinrite on it right now (at Level 4), and even that test is running fine so far ..
2) To check whether there's some problem with the memory modules, I ran memtest for like 5 hours. Tests 5 and 8 were run about 13-14 times each, and then the rest of the tests for about 3-4 hours ... No errors anywhere ..
So this leads me to believe that maybe the problem is with the motherboard and probably the GPU as well (eVGA 7900GT OC) ...
So I need some software which can probably 'check' for problems in the motherboard and the GPU ...
I know the PC's specs are probably a bit outdated now, but I was still planning to use this rig for at least another 2 years, without any major changes/upgrades ... So bringing this PC back to health is very important to me :)
Need some expert advice on all this please .... :) .. I'm very confused :P
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AfterDawn Addict
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30. January 2009 @ 12:08 |
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You should be looking for a replacement motherboard.
Selective swapouts will be the only way to resolve this.
If you can't boot the unit, how can you expect any diagnostic software to work.
You could buy one of the "PCI POST" cards, but it will probably only confirm that the motherboard is bad, and you will still be looking at another motherboard.
You have at least one "dead component" that needs to be replaced. You have already eliminated the HDD.
In the interim, if you have more than one RAM module, you could start selectively swapping/moving the RAM modules to see if the issue changes or resolves itself.
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Member
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30. January 2009 @ 13:20 |
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No, I can boot stuff .. like I can bootup CDs, etc ... The PC even starts to boot Windows ... its during the Windows boot screen when the PC normally gets stuck ..
secondly, I can get into the BIOS and everything in this way seems normal ..
also, about the graphics issue (coloured letters), do you think that its the Graphics card's fault, or the motherboard's fault ?
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AfterDawn Addict
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30. January 2009 @ 13:40 |
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I would be selectively moving and swapping RAM if possible as a "rule out", but you haven't BSOD so that isn't it.
Graphics card problem could be either but more likely that graphics card.
"No, I can boot stuff .. like I can bootup CDs"
What exactly does that mean? Bootup what CD and into what state?
Can you boot into safe mode from your hard drive?
Does the HDD Access stay ON when it hangs during XP bootup?
Regardless, this really sounds like a hardware problem and not a software problem.
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 30. January 2009 @ 13:44
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