Bizarre Computer behavior, need opinions/advice please

[Azrael120782]

Could be a faulty power supply,I had one that wreaked havoc on a build it caused my HDD to fail,so check that too. Or you have bad cables.That can do it too. Do you have part of the mobo touching the case? that can cause issues too.

[dcgames]

It's definitely a HDD issue. I was checking some files on my C partition when it spat up some errors at me. The thing is this follows at roughly 6 months after I had removed my older HDD I was using to boot with that was also acting odd and had corruption, but was both different and worse than the current behavior. Having 2 drives both get this on the same setup makes me suspect something is causing this beyond a simple OS or HDD fault. This makes ordering the new one even more important than I at first suspected.

 

 

Hi Salamander. I had this exact same thing happen to my rig shortly after I built it. I spent days trying to diagnose it until finally someone suggested I go to the SeaGate site (I have SeaGate HDs) and download their SeaTools utility to check both my HDs. I did this and ran the utility and found one of the drives had a number of bad sectors on it. I removed the drive, but then I was still having issues with the PC. At my wits end I finally tried running a Windows memory diagnostic and discovered both my RAM modules were bad. So in the end it turned out to be bad RAM and one bad HD.

 

Now I found it odd that in my build (this was my first one) that I would get a bad HD AND two bad RAM sticks, but those things do happen sometimes. Make sure you check everything. Visit the manufacturer's website for your HDs and see if they have a utility to test them with. You could also use HD Tune to check your drives. You can get the Windows Memory Diagnostic tool here. If you have Windows 7 then it's already part of the OS.

 

As I learned when I built my rig it's a pain but checking everything is the only way to narrow down problems. I hope you get it fixed soon.

[Salamander8]

That does sound a lot like my issue. I ended up getting a 1TB external HDD to get my backups done and the new rig should be here by Tuesday. This one is so bad now that I had to reboot 6 times to get it to backup drive E without hanging indefinitely on selecting it. And this was after it did drives F and G with no hitches and G has all my Steam info, but the 'out of resources' error I got on doing a far smaller chunk of E until it finally let me do it.

 

I appreciate the help folks. Sometimes PC issues are almost ludicrously simple, and sometimes they give me ulcers.

[Nimboss]

Hi,

 

The general "boring answer" is you got something on your system that you not wanted... :whistling:

 

Now the other more truly path is that your old system hanging on the last strain of life, I have more than once over the years seen systems with the most peculiar errors with totally irrlogical reasons until I investigated the motherboards and found they had "popped" capacitors. Normally any alu. thin cans on the motherboard shall be flat on the top, if they are round or even worse, there seems to be a brown or similar leak on them, your MB is doomed.

 

If this truly is the case be gentle when running the PC or better not run it at all since you have a high risk to start corrupt files on the hard drive. If it is so close to get a new comp. it might be better in this case to let it rest and when you get the new one connect your old hard drive and salvage as much as possible.

[Salamander8]

When it started acting odd the first thing I did is a full system scan and found nothing as usual. I've only ever had 1 virus in my many years of using PCs and that one was from an old GF clicking bad links. Last night I was DLing stuff directly to my new external drive and it froze my computer up again and had to reboot three times to get it to work again! The backup to the external is all done so all I need now is to get the new one and plug this puppy in. This drive is one of the best investments I've ever made, and it wasn't even that expensive.

[Nimboss]

Good thing with the backups. Then it likely is some kind of hardware issue (three reboots) with the current rig. Since it is so close to get the new one it's not much worth to spend time on the old one (if you not plan to keep it do something else, in that case it could still be worth the time to find what causes the problem). Did you care to check if the capacitors on the mother board is still locking good?

[prandiningrat]

When it started acting odd the first thing I did is a full system scan and found nothing as usual. I've only ever had 1 virus in my many years of using PCs and that one was from an old GF clicking bad links. Last night I was DLing stuff directly to my new external drive and it froze my computer up again and had to reboot three times to get it to work again! The backup to the external is all done so all I need now is to get the new one and plug this puppy in. This drive is one of the best investments I've ever made, and it wasn't even that expensive.

 

In my personnaly opinion that's impossible that you only had one virus after many years and your PC always connected to the internet. Probably your PC could be infected by virus that your antivirus can't identify it. you do clean install your OS(with formatting drive), then you still opening your file that infected, your PC can be infected again. I never use BitDefender, just be sure that your antivirus databases is up to date.. Or try with other antivirus. We know all virus creators want to make us confused and our PC acting odd. :biggrin:

If your motherboard is more than 3 years, you do what suggested above, especially when your motherboard is not using Solid-capacitors. that's can be problem too.

Why you arent try boot your PC from CD with Linux LiveCD or anything else like that if you wish to Backup your files(and dont want to reboot repeatedly),..this can also be used to analyze your problem.

[Salamander8]

I wasn't on the internet till 2001 due to paranoia and I've always had a router and Anti-Virus and only visit a few sites once I did get on. Any remotely suspicious E-mails get deleted unread as well. It's possibly an AV program quashed a virus here and there without telling me, but I've only had the one time I had to deal with a virus actually affecting anything. I have done more clean OS installs than I care to remember over other issues (Windows corruption being the reason for at least a few), but also for the virus that Karen got from clicking a specious link. I've always been pretty anal about what gets DLed and scan frequently, and have done complete wipes several times over the years even with no problems just to start with a clean slate.

 

Speaking of BitDefender, it's time to get something new since it's being a complete git trying to get it installed on the new machine. Time for some research!

 

The new comp is here and already up and running so it's all moot now anyway. I have my external drive packed with info from the old machine so I didn't even need to network them to get things rolling. Finally left XP behind for Win7.

[prandiningrat]

Speaking of BitDefender, it's time to get something new since it's being a complete git trying to get it installed on the new machine. Time for some research!

Because there are many antivirus out there,maybe for your research you need advice from this:

1. If think about antivirus performance : http://www.passmark.com/avreport (keep in mind.apparently they worked with Symantec :biggrin:)

2. based on antivirus how often to be updated: http://www.av-test.org

3. if think how good antivirus detects virus : http://www.av-comparatives.org

whatever antivirus you choose. good luck with the research, and congrats for your new machine...:thumbsup: