Computer upgrade questions

[Winnow]

The "cold-boot blue screen but ok next boot" thing makes me think you should try a new PSU first, I've seen a lot of them degrade a long time before they blow up and there's bluescreens and other issues as a consequence..

After seeing multiple PSU's die in the early days, I never skimp on PSUs. I'd try that as well. I haven't had a quality PSU go bad on me yet.

[Funkmasterr]

Making this post quick and potentially in chunks, cause my computer keeps fucking blue screening on me. Bought a SSD, installed Windows to it. Everything seemed fine (installed several rounds of updates, browsers, etc) - installed Catalyst Control Center and blue screens started happening again.

[Funkmasterr]

Application log error:

Event filter with query "SELECT * FROM __InstanceModificationEvent WITHIN 60 WHERE TargetInstance ISA "Win32_Processor" AND TargetInstance.LoadPercentage > 99" could not be reactivated in namespace "//./root/CIMV2" because of error 0x80041003. Events cannot be delivered through this filter until the problem is corrected.

System log error:
The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0xa0000001 (0x0000000000000005, 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000). A dump was saved in: C:\Windows\MEMORY.DMP. Report Id: 050313-11029-01.

[Winnow]

Windows 7 or 8?

[Funkmasterr]

I have a good power supply (corsair 650W). But I did have a power outage a few months back where the power went off and on like 6-8 times in a row before I could unplug my computer (it was running when the power first went out) - so maybe the power surge fucked it up? I'm trying to see if there's any way I can narrow down what I should try replacing - I need to get my computer working for school work (finals are next week) - and I really don't have the money to just start replacing random shit until it starts working again.

Any suggestions?

[Funkmasterr]

7 Ultimate.

Tried looking at the .dmp file but it's like a bajillion pages of encrypted bullshit.

[Funkmasterr]

Hey - at least my computer boots up really fast after it blue screens every 90 seconds or so.

[Aslanna]

Did it seem fine until you installed Catalyst CC? If so could try uninstalling that and see how it goes.

[Funkmasterr]

It did - I could try that, but then how is my video card not gonna be basically worthless? I suppose it'll do to get my school work done, but after that what.


Suppose I uninstall CCC and everything is good. What would that indicate, since I went a year or more of using this video card with CCC without this stuff happening.

I suppose really it boils down to the video card? I might have to dish out the money and grab one off newegg. I just wonder then if I shouldn't get rid of my shitty dell motherboard, too.

[Zaelath]

You don't need the CCC, just the driver. There is an option on the ATI page to get the driver only.

[Aslanna]

Card could be fine and maybe your computer just doesn't like CCC. Lots of possibilities! You have to start troubleshooting somewhere and if it were me that's where I'd start.

[Spang]

The blue screen of death is a small price to pay for a somewhat larger selection of games.

[Niffoni]

I've certainly had versions of the Catalyst driver destabilize my system, and cause blue screens, but probably not with the frequency you're getting. It may actually just be that whatever version you're running isn't playing nice. Uninstalling it and trying an older driver (go two steps back, say) would be worth trying if there's a correlation there between installing the driver and the bsods.

[Funkmasterr]

Tried much older (like 10 versions) ccc, tried just the driver of several versions. It was better at some points but still not acting right. I decided to upgrade my bios (not sure why I hadn't thought of that) and last I checked it seemed like things were ok. We'll see tomorrow.

[Funkmasterr]

Driver is still crashing on me, but it hasn't blue screened on me yet. I Haven't tried going back to the newest driver since updating the bios, but later this week once my finals are done I'll fuck around with it more and see what I come up with.

[Funkmasterr]

Yeah, driver was crashing like every 2 minutes last night, little worse than I thought.

After finals are done later this week, I'm gonna try messing with the drivers a bit more. Being as a clean install of Windows and various combinations of old/new just drivers/full Catalyst CC, and updating the BIOS all haven't completely resolved the issue - and without the drivers at all the issue doesn't exist----- it would seem the motherboard is likely the cause of the issue, agree?

[Zaelath]

Nope, just as likely to be the video card or the PSU (running the real driver will draw more juice out of the PSU than the stock Windows driver).

I always do PSU replacement first, it's the cheapest component and as long as you put it back in the plastic bag it can sit on the shelf as a spare if it's not the problem.

If it's blue screening that fast, a loaner video card is the next best bet..

[Funkmasterr]

Makes sense, I suppose any number of those components could've been wrecked by the shitty brownout a while back.

[Demags]

You might want to look into a U.P.S. for you computer. For less than a hundred bucks it will protect your machine from brownout and power outage problems. Plus it gives you a few minutes to save and power down when the power goes out. If you plug your networking stuff into it you'll stay online too. (Assuming your internet provider doesn't go down too, great if you play online games.)

[Spang]

I recommend this one:

[Funkmasterr]

Oh for sure, I've been meaning to get one forever, but after this tomfoolery I'll definitely be getting one.

Thanks spang, I'll take a look.

[Funkmasterr]

Meh, hadn't had any blue screens on the new installation of windows - just the driver crashing/recovering a lot. Last night the screen just went black and the fan on the video card went to what must be 100% and it stayed that way for a half minute or so before I just shut it down. Sick of this crraaaap, at least I can use my work laptop for school crap for the time being.

[Funkmasterr]

Buying a new video card today, anyone have an opinion on which of these two to go with? They are both close in all respects, but I'm having a hard time deciding for some reason.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814127699

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814125443

[Kluden]

Its nvidia...go what's cheaper, better rma process, and what comes with more games...at least when comparing identical cards. To help slightly, lots of people swear by the MSI twin frozr coolers. I'm an evga guy for nvidia...won't buy anything else after the RMA process I have gone through with them. But I have not seen many complaints about MSI, since the warranty is long, and it goes by serial #, not owner, so transfers.

[Funkmasterr]

Well, so far so good. It appears that the video card was the issue.

[Funkmasterr]

It's me again. I think one of my hard drives is about to take a shit, which is a serious problem, because there is a lot of important shit on it that I have yet to back up. I can boot up from it (although I haven't done much other than get to the desktop so i don't know if it would crash right away.) But when I boot from another drive and try to access it, it will show up and be accessible for a while, then it's gone (from my computer, etc). It isn't making any odd noises, but that doesn't mean much.

Just looking for a little advice. I was thinking of maybe trying to boot from it and get everything loaded off onto an external... Would it be a better idea to bring it somewhere to have them try to recover the data for me? I guess I've always wondered what those data recovery places do other than exactly what I was going to try myself.

I guess the question is; what would you do in my situation.

[Aslanna]

Copy off what you can. If there's anything important that you can't copy then maybe look at one of the data recovery services and see if their rates are worth what it would cost to recover those files.

[Kluden]

How many drives do you have hooked up? are they all sata? disconnect any other drives then try it? I would take the power off whatever drives you don't need to boot from, and leave one other HDD hooked up to copy to. Then do it. it could always just be a power or sata controller issue.

[Funkmasterr]

How many drives do you have hooked up? are they all sata? disconnect any other drives then try it? I would take the power off whatever drives you don't need to boot from, and leave one other HDD hooked up to copy to. Then do it. it could always just be a power or sata controller issue.

I have three drives total, I took the one that was acting up the other day out until I get the chance to mess with it, and now when I just booted up my computer there was a buzzing/vibrating coming from (I think) where all the drives are - so I'm thinking you might be onto something here. Between my car and my computer I'm really getting sick of shit constantly breaking on me lately.

[Funkmasterr]

So I grabbed a new external and got a HDD enclosure to throw the failing drive in. The drive stays "connected" that way, and I am able to copy off some of the files, but others give me an I/O exception and won't copy. I tried to do a chkdsk repair, but apparently the file structure has been changed to RAW, so it won't work.

I read a bit about some programs you can run to "fix" these issues with hard drives with moderate success without losing your data... I'm guessing someone here has experience with this kind of stuff - any advice on what program to use? (I don't mind paying if the free programs aren't sufficient). I just kinda wanted to get a trusted opinion before I go fucking around with something and making it worse.

[Leonaerd]

Do you have logs of the errors?

[Funkmasterr]

I can post anything I have when I get home tonight. What logs would you be looking for, stuff from the event viewer?

[Leonaerd]

Sure. Anything that I can use some google fu on. Your computer troubles are intriguing.

[Funkmasterr]

Sure. Anything that I can use some google fu on. Your computer troubles are intriguing.

Haha, intriguing is one way to describe it. I prefer "you've got to be fucking kidding me, something else is going wrong...this is bullshit."

I'll see what I can come up with.

[Funkmasterr]

It just never fucking ends with this computer. I hop in here to check for errors, and I see this right away:

The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk2\DR2.

The drive currently listed as Harddisk2 in disk management is the external seagate hdd i bought last week. I am currently transferring about 500GB to it, and have transferred another couple hundred to it over the past few days, and have no problems (the current transfer is still going fine, despite the errors).

As far as event viewer logs for around the time I was actually trying to transfer from the bad internal drive:

[Show]

The system failed to flush data to the transaction log. Corruption may occur.

- System

- Provider

[ Name] Ntfs

- EventID 57

[ Qualifiers] 32772

Level 3

Task 2

Keywords 0x80000000000000

- TimeCreated

[ SystemTime] 2013-08-03T06:08:43.032820400Z

EventRecordID 11584

Channel System

Computer John-PC

Security


- EventData


0000000001000000020000003900048000000000850100C000000000000000000000000000000000


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Binary data:


In Words

0000: 00000000 00000001 00000002 80040039
0008: 00000000 C0000185 00000000 00000000
0010: 00000000 00000000


In Bytes

0000: 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 ........
0008: 02 00 00 00 39 00 04 80 ....9..€
0010: 00 00 00 00 85 01 00 C0 ....…..À
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........

That warning is there every couple of seconds for the entire window of time I was trying to transfer off of the bad drive.

This is the error that the dialogue box contained when I tried to transfer files that weren't working: "I/O device error 0x8007045D".


I'm guessing, as fucking frustrating as it is, that the seagate external that I just bought and am in the process of backing everything up to - should be replaced if I'm already getting that error - even if it is "working".

[Spang]

Sell the parts and get a Mac.

[Animalor]

See if you can get a copy of Spinrite and run that against the drive to see if that helps. I've heard it can do wonders.

[Funkmasterr]

I'll give that a shot, thanks!

The more I look into the error I'm getting with the external I bought, the more unsure I get. It doesn't seem to be an uncommon issue, and no one seems to have really "resolved" it in any of the cases. I'm thinking I might just ignore it.