MAJOR PC Problems ... gonna throw it off damn roof!!!

[Mighty.Mighty_XJ]

Well here I am seeking PC advice ... before I go nucking futts!

My 4 year old HP PC keeps freezing up, then shuts down or I have to manually turn it off. Then it won't boot up. Yesterday I got the scary blue screen telling me stuff to do, but it shut down before I had a chance to write anything down. Sometimes it boots, sometimes it won't boot even in Safe Mode. I was told to change the boot sequence so that my external hard drive boots first & this has helped, but I keep disconnecting it because I don't want it to be infected if this is a malware issue. This has been going on for months & I'm an inch away from throwing the damn PC out the window.

There are no infections that I can find: I run AVG full scan, MBAM & SuperAntiSpyware often in every configuration. From the interchanging information the computer grudgingly gives me from time to time, it seems I have some bad software. I have taken everything off that didn't come with the PC except for AVG & the software for my backup external hard drive. Oh, and I installed a new sound card & that was before the problems too. Yes, the problems started after they were all installed (or upgraded in the case of AVG), but not immediately after. I'm wary of uninstalling AVG. I'm wary of uninstalling the backup drive because I'm afraid I might lose my files.

Sorry for the lo-o-o-ong post. Any help or advice out there?

 

[ehall]

There are lots of things can cause sudden shutdown--temperature, bad/missing libraries, lots of things. Best thing you can do is take it to a local PC shop (not a chain) and ask them to check it out.

 

[RichP]

Hit F11 or F2 and pave it over or boot from the restore disc and wipe it. Windows should be reinstalled twice a year just on principles, add it in to your smoke detector battery changes and setting your clocks back and forward list LOL

Kidding aside, get a copy of ubuntu and boot that, see if it runs off the cd, you could have a hardware problem.

 

[superdave]

Download Memtest86, burn to CD, boot to it. Let it run overnight. Sounds like bad RAM to me.
http://www.memtest86.com/

 

[kastein]

Sounds like bad hardware (probably RAM, motherboard, or power supply) or a corrupt or buggy device driver to me. Both frequently result in blue screens. Try setting your system to not automatically restart after a crash (vista or XP? I forget where the setting is on vista, but under XP it's in Control Panel -> System -> Advanced tab -> Startup and Recovery button and it's called Automatically Restart, uncheck this) so you can at least write the info down before it reboots on you.

 

[IndyXJ]

4 years is a long time on the same "image" Start over. I do it once a year or so, keeps things tip top.

 

[Mighty.Mighty_XJ]

There are lots of things can cause sudden shutdown--temperature, bad/missing libraries, lots of things. Best thing you can do is take it to a local PC shop (not a chain) and ask them to check it out.

It has occurred to me, but I hate having people poke around on my PC. I have many dark secrets . My brother is a tech (in Atl. GA) & I can ship it to him, but ... well, I hate having people poke around in my PC. If all else fails I will. Besides he recently had surgery so it'd be a bit insensitive to call him up with my little problems right now.

Hit F11 or F2 and pave it over or boot from the restore disc and wipe it.

I might have sounded like I'm marginally computer savvy, but I'm not. Can you please explain that in English?

superdave & stein, I have run all the windows hardware testing programs (BTW I have Vista) & they all came up clean every time. Is there anything else I can do? Ken this has been happening for some time, but this is the first & only time I ever got the blue screen. Usually I get a black screen with a flashing cursor at the top, or a black screen with some sort of DOS wording or something.

 

[Mighty.Mighty_XJ]

4 years is a long time on the same "image" Start over. I do it once a year or so, keeps things tip top.

Yeah, I get your point (being a Jeep owner & all!) but I'm just wary of losing files. With my track record I will screw up badly. I just know it. It's definitely time tho. Curiously enough, I had my previous PC for at least 8 years without issue.

 

[ChiXJeff]

"Paving it over" *WILL* lose your files. Everything on your machine will be lost, so copy everything off to another drive or computer somewhere else. This process will take you back to the factory image, and you'll want to do a full update once this is complete.

If all of the hardware diagnostics come back fine, I'd try a new power supply before reloading the machine.

 

[RichP]

When most HP's boot you will see some choices across the bottom of the screen, some are press F11 for recovery, this will boot the machine using the recovery partition, if you have one, on your hard drive.
I'm not all that familiar with HP machines loaded with XP home and the 80 or so work stations that I have here, XPpro, have all been paved over at least twice by me. You should also have some recover disks, three or four, one is for booting usually labeled 'start here' that one pretty much walks you though then after it's done you go into add remove software and get rid of the crap adware and bloatware and trial stuff they put in, that usually takes longer than the install and requires more reboots. Once you have it streamlined down you go after window updates, don't use the microsoft hardware updates, they tend to hose the machines, it would be nice if they figured out how to install Nvidia and ATI updates someday. Right now I'm in the process of upgrading all the nic's to GB's so I can take advantage of my new hp procurve 4208 that I'm putting in the new building we move to next month.
One cool thing I just found out I can get any multimode fiber in any length pre-terminated from graybar electric, solves the 300 meter run from my computer room to the nearest corner of the warehouse/shipping/packing station issue I was puzzling out.

 

[Ralph]

If you plan to reimage, here is a suggestion. I have a desktop and I have installed two hard drives. I've got an 80GB drive for my OS and apps and a 250GB drive for my data. The idea is that if your OS becomes corrupted, all you have to do is reimage that drive and not worry about losing the data. Do you have access to a universal hard drive adapter? Maybe one of your geek friends has one. If not, buy one. They are cheap and very handy for capturing files. Buy a new hard drive and using the adapter copy all of your data to that drive. Then with your data saved on the extra drive, blow away your present image and rebuild it from scratch. After that is done, install the second drive into your machine and use it as your data drive. You can redirect your documents folder to it.

If you do end up throwing the computer off the roof, please make a video. I want to watch.

 

[Mesh]

Your hard drive could be failing. Install and run SpeedFan http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php click on the S.M.A.R.T. tab select your hard drive and click "Perform an in-depth online analysis of this hard disk" it gives a good graph of your hard drive smart performance. SpeedFan may also give your temperatures so you can tell if it's an overheating problem. Next I would probably run chkdsk go to my computer right click your hard drive and click properties go to the tools tab and click the check now button and check “Automatically fix file system errors” you will get a prompt to check on the next reboot allow it and reboot.

If you don’t find any problems there next I would get all the dust out of the computer it’s probably bad after 4 years. Turn off the computer remove the side cover use a can of air or an air compressor is best blow out as much dust as you can. Keep the fans from spinning when blowing over them to not damage the bearings.

Next thing is it could be an adware spyware problem I’ve seen a couple of them give lockup and blue screen problems like this. Even if all the programs you mentioned don’t detect anything you could still be infected. Download and run ComboFix http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/combofix/how-to-use-combofix

 

[87manche]

HP's restore menu is F10 at boot.

I'd parallel install Linux Mint, then use that for a few days. If it behaves normally it's not hardware, it's vista.

After tat I'd back up all my stuff, do the system restore to fix vista, then put Mint back on it and use that. Use Windows only for windows specific tasks, use linux for web surfing, midget porn, whatever else you do, it's bombproof.

If you still suspect a virus run Hitman, www.surfright.nl

then try the TDSSkiller from kaspersky, it might be rootkitted, but usually it's very apparent when that happens.

 

[kastein]

Careful if you install anything, it's pretty easy to nuke the previous partitions instead of resizing them and lose everything. I've never messed up that bad but a few friends of mine have.

I actually keep each OS on its own physical drive and disconnect all other drives while performing the install to avoid any chance of nuking things I don't want to. Data used by all OSes stays on a FAT32 partition or network share...

 

[87manche]

the mint installer is ubuntu, you'd really have to be a moron to screw it up. It has happened though, ALWAYS BACK UP BEFORE INSTALLING OSes.

There, we're covered.

 

[ChiXJeff]

<chuckle> Happens to the best of folks.... A previous hosting for pulled that off. Massive hard drive failure. Glenn Baker told them very specifically to put a new drive in as primary, mount the old drive as secondary, and load an O/S on the primary, as well as DO NOT FORMAT THE SECONDARY. Yup.... they did. Killed all of his backups. He managed to figure out how to recover from a Linux mkfs. And changed providers immediately.

 

[kastein]

Yeah, if you are careful you can grab the old fs metadata from one of the backup superblocks iirc. You have to be lucky and careful, really.

Fumblefingers mistakes like that are why I disconnect the drives physically. If the only drive connected is the one I want to bulldoze, I can't mess up.

 

[87manche]

<chuckle> Happens to the best of folks.... A previous hosting for pulled that off. Massive hard drive failure. Glenn Baker told them very specifically to put a new drive in as primary, mount the old drive as secondary, and load an O/S on the primary, as well as DO NOT FORMAT THE SECONDARY. Yup.... they did. Killed all of his backups. He managed to figure out how to recover from a Linux mkfs. And changed providers immediately.

in a situation like that I absolutely would not have had the secondary drive plugged in while I was playing with the partitioner

Yeah, if you are careful you can grab the old fs metadata from one of the backup superblocks iirc. You have to be lucky and careful, really.

Fumblefingers mistakes like that are why I disconnect the drives physically. If the only drive connected is the one I want to bulldoze, I can't mess up.

I've had to do that once. It brought the suck. at least it wasn't a customer drive.

 

[Mighty.Mighty_XJ]

Wow ... now I'm really confused ... gonna have to wait for my days off to try any of this stuff since it looks time consuming, but I might be able to do something. John gave me a name/number to try, I'll keep that for now in case of emergency.

So far today after work & before logging in I uninstalled & re-installed my graphics card since someone had told me it might be the culprit. I don't think that had any effect, but I've been online for hours now with no freeze. I do believe it's my hard drive going tho ... the computer moaned at me real loud yesterday like a sad dog & the sound came from the location of the HD. Just hope it doesn't crap out before I get the chance to use some of the suggestions here.

Thanks guys - it'll be slow because I'm semi illiterate, but I've never really been one to wimp out.

 

[Mesh]

Disregard all the partitioning and Linux stuff it's not going to help you find the problem. If the hard drive is bad you don't want to be messing with it too much.