Help with PC

[utd4life13]

Hi guys,

I bought a PC from PCspecialist 2 years ago and haven't had any problems up until last week. The pc became considerably slower than usual. I use it mainly for Flight Simulator X and also was having problems with that were it kept crashing and the screen would go black and whitish like a graphics problem.

I decided to wipe it and restore using the windows 7 disc. However, the first time I tried to install it got all the way to 'completing instillation' and a blue screen appeared saying the PC would shut down to avoid damaging the hardware or something like that.

Since then I've tried on numerous times to install windows 7 and it just wont do it. Each time is different and it gets to different stages. The furthest I got was to 'Installing updates' which took 9 hours then it said it couldn't proceed to the next part of the instillation I think because something to do with rebooting error.

I've tried following guides on line and deleting the disc partitions before installing the OS but it doesn't work.

I've tried the restore section of the OS disc but is always says it can't do repairs automatically. Also it won't let me do a disc check on startup - in fact it won't let me do any of the recovery options.

I've also had a black screen which says BootManager is missing but it doesn't always say that and I've tried to resolve that by looking online but again couldn't.

I don't know what to do as I'm not sure what's wrong and I now don't even have an OS installed.

Any ideas what it might be and some guidance as to what I can do to fix it or at least determine what is wrong?

Any help Much appreciated.

Thanks,

Danny

 

[utd4life13]

Also, here are my system Specs:

PC Specs: Overclocked Intel® Core�i5-2500k Quad Core (3.30GHz @ max 4.60GHz) : ASUS® P8Z68-V: USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs, NVIDIA®SLI�, ATI®CrossFireX: 8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (2 x 4GB KIT): 1GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 560 Ti - 2 DVI,HDMI,VGA - 3D Vision Ready: 1TB WD CAVIAR GREEN WD10EARS, SATA 3 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE: COOLIT ECO II C240 A.L.C (ADVANCED LIQUID COOLER)

Also, I am not great with understanding computers or the jargon associated with it, so if any help could be given in laymen's terms! Thanks

 

[Boozad]

I don't think Windows 7 will install if there's a problem with the rig as it checks to see if everything is working properly and 100% compatible, I had several issues to fix with my old rig before I could get Windows 7 on. It sounds like you have a hardware problem, if you have a dedicated GPU I'd start by removing it and using onboard graphics and try to reinstall again. What's your full spec?

 

[YAMAHA]

I had this problem with an old PC a couple of years back, turned out to be an overheating problem with the CPU, fins on cooler were caked with duststopping the air flow, same thing with the graphics card, once they were both cleaned it ran OK, have you checked this?
Needles to say I now check my PC regularly for dust build up.

 

[mitchell65]

Looking t the system specs it would appear tat the PC has a Nvidia graphics card fitted. I would agree that first off that card should be disconnected and the onboard grahics card tried but looking at the only image I can find of the back of the motherboard quoted in the sys. specs. there doesn't appear to be a grahics connector unless what I'm looking at is an HDMI connector?
So tha above may not be a practical test. Perhaps to get things started a Memtest might not be out of place, as we know you can boot from the CD drive. I would try Memtest from here: http://www.memtest.org/
If you need help with that just post here.

 

[utd4life13]

hi there, I gave the PC a good clean out, it was one of the first things I thought might be the cause. There was some dust build up but I managed to give it a good clean and the problem still persisted so I kinda ruled that out.

 

[utd4life13]

Hi there,

Would you be able to give me some guidance on how I go about doing this Memtest, as I don't know where to even start off. Sorry about me not being familiar with this stuff, I understand it makes your job harden in trying to help and I do appreciate it.

 

[ubuysa]

Hi there,

Would you be able to give me some guidance on how I go about doing this Memtest, as I don't know where to even start off. Sorry about me not being familiar with this stuff, I understand it makes your job harden in trying to help and I do appreciate it.

Hi. You're going to need access to another PC or laptop and a blank writeable CD to prepare Memtest (you can use a blank writeable DVD too if you want but Memtest is very small and fits easily on a CD). Go to http://www.memtest.org/download/4.20/memtest86+-4.20.iso.zip and a download will start automatically. The downloaded file is a .zip file that contains a bootable CD image that will run Memtest. To use this you need to do the following:

1. Unzip the .zip file. Windows can do this, just click the "Extract All Files" menu bar button.

2. Insert a blank writeable CD into the CD/DVD drive and burn the .iso file to the CD. Windows can do this too, right-click on the .iso file and select "Burn Disk Image". You can also use whatever CD/DVD writing software is available on the PC/laptop to burn the .iso image to disk if you like.

3. Insert the CD with the Memtest .iso image burned on it into your faulty PC and boot. You may need to use the boot selection menu on startup to make the CD/DCD drive boot first (ie. we want to boot the Memtest CD).

The Memtest memory test will start immediately. You don't need to understand what the display means, the only column you need to look at is the one labelled Errors. As the test runs the lower half of the screen will be filled with the results of each test (and there are many different ones) in every case we want the Errors column to be zero. If you get non-zero values in here (and typically if there is a problem you'll get many errors) you have a memory fault.

The test can take hours to run so leave it running overnight. If it finds errors then switch off (there's no need to shutdown Memtest) remove all but one RAM card and boot the Memtest CD again and test just that one card. Repeat this process until you find the faulty card.

If Memtest runs without errors then your hardware problem is somewhere else. But do run Memtest first, RAM is the easiest thing to test and it's often the cause of problems.

 

[utd4life13]

UPDATE: I turned on my PC this morning and it gave an error about the overclock and about pressing F1 to enter setup which took me to the BIOS page which I would usually get if I press F8.. so it may be something wrong with the overclock??

Emailed PCS and they recommended remoing the OC and seeing if the PC returns with better performance but I don't know how to remove it?

 

[utd4life13]

Hi. You're going to need access to another PC or laptop and a blank writeable CD to prepare Memtest (you can use a blank writeable DVD too if you want but Memtest is very small and fits easily on a CD). Go to http://www.memtest.org/download/4.20/memtest86+-4.20.iso.zip and a download will start automatically. The downloaded file is a .zip file that contains a bootable CD image that will run Memtest. To use this you need to do the following:

1. Unzip the .zip file. Windows can do this, just click the "Extract All Files" menu bar button.

2. Insert a blank writeable CD into the CD/DVD drive and burn the .iso file to the CD. Windows can do this too, right-click on the .iso file and select "Burn Disk Image". You can also use whatever CD/DVD writing software is available on the PC/laptop to burn the .iso image to disk if you like.

3. Insert the CD with the Memtest .iso image burned on it into your faulty PC and boot. You may need to use the boot selection menu on startup to make the CD/DCD drive boot first (ie. we want to boot the Memtest CD).

The Memtest memory test will start immediately. You don't need to understand what the display means, the only column you need to look at is the one labelled Errors. As the test runs the lower half of the screen will be filled with the results of each test (and there are many different ones) in every case we want the Errors column to be zero. If you get non-zero values in here (and typically if there is a problem you'll get many errors) you have a memory fault.

The test can take hours to run so leave it running overnight. If it finds errors then switch off (there's no need to shutdown Memtest) remove all but one RAM card and boot the Memtest CD again and test just that one card. Repeat this process until you find the faulty card.

If Memtest runs without errors then your hardware problem is somewhere else. But do run Memtest first, RAM is the easiest thing to test and it's often the cause of problems.

I can't seem to get it to recognise the disc, I've got it set to boot from CD and it boots fine from the windows cd but not the one I've created as you described above. I got the message about my overclocking as I've posted above, but it says BootManager not installed Press Ctrl+alt+del to restart... :/

 

[bigben]

UPDATE: I turned on my PC this morning and it gave an error about the overclock and about pressing F1 to enter setup which took me to the BIOS page which I would usually get if I press F8..

I had this a while ago on mine (I don't even have an overclockable CPU!?). I unplugged the CPU fans and swapped which sockets they went into and it was fine after that.
Could be worth a try?