PC failing to startup properly

TetaXVI

New member
Good Evening.

I recent bought a desktop PC from PC specialist, specs are as below.

The problem i'm having is when i start it up it always gets through to the desktop, but then probably 80% of the time fails to load any programmes and hangs there, any attempts to open programmes etc will freeze the PC.
The same problem occurs on waking from hibernation and waking from standby.

With enough re-starts it will always eventually work, usually it takes 2-3 attempts, today it took almost 15 hence this message.

Ive had the PC about a month and its happened since day 1, but ive been too busy at work to do anything about it.

I was wondering if:
1) you have any knowledge of error logs i could check
2) any idea of common things that cause this.
3) any possible solutions

--------------------------------
Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-4690K (3.5GHz) 6MB Cache
Motherboard Gigabyte Z97-HD3: ATX, LG1150, USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs
Memory (RAM) 8GB KINGSTON DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card 2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 750 Ti - DVI, mHDMI, VGA - 3D Vision Ready
2nd Graphics Card NONE
3rd Graphics Card NONE
1st Hard Disk 120GB KINGSTON V300 SSD, SATA 6 Gb (450MB/R, 450MB/W)
1st Hard Disk Partitions 120GB
2nd Hard Disk 2TB 3.5" SATA-III 6GB/s HDD 7200RPM 64MB CACHE
 

Spuff

Expert
Make sure you back up any data stored on the drive if you can. Do disk checks if you can. Scan the drive for malware if you can. Try to boot up with the Windows installation disc and go to the diagnostic tools option if you can't make things work in Windows. I had a similar, but even more severe, problem recently and the conclusion on the forum was that it was probably a bad sector on the drive. It might be easier to format the drive and re-install Windows (which is what I had to do) than it might be to track down the exact cause.
(That's presuming it's not some other bit of hardware at fault, but it sounds like the problem lies on the drive.)
My drive is working fine again, so far, after a format & re-install. But I think my next upgrade will be a Samsung 850 to replace it.

My C drive is also a 120GB KINGSTON V300 SSD.
 
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TetaXVI

New member
Thank you for your rapid response Spuff.

What disk checker would you recommend?, the bog-standard windows "start up error checker" found in the advanced recovery tools on hard-restarting the PC was unable to find an issue, though i put little trust in bundled software.

Spybot and Avast have drawn a blank, i will however re-run the scan, the fact this happened from day 1 makes me reasonably confident it isnt a virus (thank god!)

I will try the windows boot via the disk.

I have happily formatted everything from windows 98 to 7 on old magnetic drives, is there anything i should be aware of formatting windows 8 / SDD's?

Many thanks again.
 

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
It might not be your SSD, it could well be the HDD, especially if you have data on there that Windows accesses at startup - as it will if you've moved the contents of your c:/users folder over there.

Open a command prompt and run the command chkdsk /r on the HDD (but backup your data first). On the SSD run the command chkdsk /f to check the filesystem.

Note: the /r on the HDD tells chkdsk to check both the filesystem and for bad sectors and recover data from them, this is not needed on the SSD, so the /f on there tells it to just to check for filesystem errors. At the end of both you'll get a report, if it shows any errors found that could not be corrected you probably need a new drive (especially on the HDD).
 

TetaXVI

New member
After formatting the PC all was well (went through 20 or so restarts to see if i could reproduce the error, i could not so i started reinstalling things) the error suddenly started again... so it must be one of my programmes, i'm now reinstalling one by one to see if i can find a cause, at the moment i think its either Steam, Avast or Core-Temp... most likely the last of the three as ive found very similar errors online and i installed it almost as soon as i got the PC which would explain why this started on "day 1".

will keep you updated if i discover the final cause.
 

Spuff

Expert
There's several temperature monitoring options. I like CPUID HWMonitor - it shows you the same temperature info as core-temp and more.
 
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