Comp Death?

[Pickle_mole]

So i was playing a multiplayer napolean campaign over lan with my brother and then in one of the battle my computer made about 2 seconds of rapid beeps then shut off, after that any time i would boot it would freeze on startup before loading windows or get far enough to see windows recovery fail and finds no solution. I reinstalled windows 7 and twice now ive gotten a bsod just surfing the web on my completely fresh windows 7 install. Now my Mobo has been pretty lame recently, any time i transport my case to like a friends house the internal clock resets like the mobo battery doesnt work and it gives me some trouble on start up, maybe requiring me to restart a few times before everything is normal. Now if my HDD was wasted how could i install a new windows on it? i wanna say its my mobo, what do you guys think?

[Top-Tier-Tech]

If it is forgetting the time then the battery must be dead, replace that first.

[Pickle_mole]

will do, it is about a year and a half old, wierd to die so soon? also this sounds like more of an issue than that right?

[Top-Tier-Tech]

will do, it is about a year and a half old, wierd to die so soon? also this sounds like more of an issue than that right?

Yeah that is awful early, seems like 4-6 years would be about average, the battery itself was prolly goofed up in manufacturing.

Your problem is definitely more than just the battery, but when troubleshooting I always fix the most obvious problem first. If replacing the battery doesn't fix the time keeping problem then that would point to problems on the motherboard itself which could explain your random crashes. Otherwise the GPU (or GPU drivers) or RAM (memtest diagnostic) would be the next things I look into, first things first though, try a new battery.

[Pickle_mole]

can ram just go bad?

[Top-Tier-Tech]

can ram just go bad?

Yes, I use Memtest86+ to test that.

[Pickle_mole]

will do.

I think im gonna get this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231223
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboD...t=Combo.342787
plus keep the gtx 295 i got

Is there a test to make sure your gpu is good?

[Top-Tier-Tech]

Your gonna buy a new motherboard and RAM before troubleshooting?!


GPU drivers can cause crashes and BSOD's. There was one Nvidia driver version that was causing many issues with Win7 users. What drivers are you running currently? Regardless of that I would upgrade to the most recent drivers to see if that fixes the crashing issues.

[Pickle_mole]

no im gonna run diagnostics first but i dont have high hopes

[Top-Tier-Tech]

i dont have high hopes

Ah, but I do

[GasMask]

This thread has also helped me thank you my Battery also died >_<.

[Pickle_mole]

i want to rep you but i cant! and is there no test to determine if your gpu is bad?

ill test tommorow

[Freddie]

Well since your PC fell over when playing a game it suggests an issue with the CPU, Video card or PSU, I would stress test your whole system by testing one part at time

- Run Prime95 for half an hour to stress the CPU, note results.
- Run ATI tools artifacting test. This will stress the video card (works both on Nvidia and ATI hardware). Run this EVEN if your PC crashed when using Prime95 again run this for about half an hour.
- Next run both ATI Tools and Prime95 at the same time to put the maximum amount of strain on your PSU. Here were looking to see if your 12v rail on your PSU is up to the task, if it's weak then you PC will crash soon after both apps are launched and running and if it does then it's a new PSU. Don't just assume that you have enough amps on your 12v rail to run your hardware if the 12v rail is inherently faulty it can have all the amps it likes but it doesn't make it stable.

Also keep an eye on your temps for both your CPU and video card.

[Top-Tier-Tech]

I'm strongly leaning toward GPU drivers as the cause, I had one driver that gave me BSOD in Crysis and random desktop crashes while playing music or browsing the web.

Bad RAM would be the next likely IMO.

[Pickle_mole]

roger, starting testing, will update

[Pickle_mole]

well i cant even get the thing to display an image 9/10 times. I keep restarting and shutting off and turning on and it almost never displays the mobo screen let alone my moniter shows no signal most of the time. Now in the past 30 mins while trying to do this i got it to boot from disk since im trying to reinstall the correct windows 7 my key is for and twice it bsod'ed and once it froze while loading the files. To me and my limited knowledge it sounds like my cpu has crapped the bed. i havent taken out my ram yet (i have taken my gpu in and out) but i woulkd think that it should be able to get to the mobo screen even with bad ram right?

[Pickle_mole]

well i took out 2 2gb ram sticks so now im down to 4gb of total ram and its booted and fixing windows files now, seems like some good progress, will keep you updated


EDIT: im on the comp in question now, seems to be working fine, gonna run tests

[Pickle_mole]

UPDATE!!!!

so i think its fixed, i had four 2gb sticks of ram and i took out one of the sticks in the fourth slot and everything seems to be fine. i even put it back in and when i did my comp started crapping out again. Im not sure if i got really lucky and that one stick i pulled was the bad one or if something is wrong with the port on the mobo? Time to run napolean and see what happens.

[Pickle_mole]

everything works good now

[Top-Tier-Tech]

Awesome! Either one RAM slot is bad or you have one bad stick, if you want to know for sure you can take the stick that was in the forth slot and try it in another with only 2 sticks in (none using the forth), otherwise if 4GB is enough for you then I wouldn't worry about it.