New
#1
New Computer, Windows 7 not running well
Hello all,
My name is Chris and this is my first time posting on these forums. I have been a gamer for most of my life and I just recently built my first gaming computer. I had a professional assist me in the process to check and be sure that I did everything correctly. My computer specs are as follows:
Intel i7 3770k Processor
ASRock Z77 Extreme 4 Motherboard
EVGA GeForce GTX 660Ti GPU
8 Gb of Memory
650 Watt PSU
I purchased an OEM version of Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit to run as my OS.
I started the computer off and everything was running fine. I installed the appropriate drivers, put on internet security, did all of my windows updates, and even set up Windows Live Mail. What I am getting at is that everything was running as would be expected. I have a 120 Gb SSD to act as my storage for my Operating System and what not and I have a 1 Tb HDD to act as my storage for personal things (i.e. games, music, photos). I started saving my games (from Steam) onto my HDD and what I noticed is that the games would start up once per restart of my computer. Essentially if my computer had just been started, the game would load off of my HDD. However if I exited out of the game and moved on to doing other things, when I came back to start that game, or any other game, it would not run.
The programs would be shown in the processes tab if I opened up the task manager, but they would not start. So I contacted the professional who had helped me put my computer together and he told me to try some troubleshooting steps. Basically, he believed it was a software problem where something was stopping the games from running. So we followed the procedures listed in this troubleshooting guide (How to perform a clean boot to troubleshoot a problem in Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8) and were unsuccessful in resolving the issue. So following that we decided to start the computer in safe mode and see what was up. This is where it gets interesting.
Once safe mode was starting it would go to the log in screen and then restart the computer. Then because I entered safe mode via msconfig.exe it would restart again in safe mode and do the same thing over and over again. We could not stop it, we were stuck in a safe mode boot loop. The only thing we could do was put in the OEM Windows 7 64-bit operating disk and try the repair functions it offers. None of the repair functions detected anything was wrong and when we exited we re-entered the boot loop. We ended up reformatting both disk drives and re installing windows, I redid everything from scratch.
Now here we are, I installed everything on my SSD and the games are running, I have yet to try and run anything on my HDD. The system is still patchy. I did a CHKDSK on my SSD and following that it reenter another boot loop (this time in normal windows mode) and had to shut the computer down entirely (i.e. holding down the power button). For some reason my friend and I thought (hey maybe the SATA cables are messed up), so we unplugged them and changed the ports they were plugged into. Then when I started the computer I received one blue screen and a restart before things went back to "normal." I have reformatted the HDD and both drives appear to be running smoothly. I have yet to try and run any games off of the HDD, which was what the computer was intended to do. Oddly though, when I run games on the SDD (the two games I have run so far considering this computer is about two days old) the screen goes black and a pop up says "Drivers suffered from an unexpected crash and has recovered" so I really do not know. I just feel utterly defeated.
After receiving some advice on other forums, I updated all of the drivers and tried to play some more video games. The game I tried was Starcraft 2. The game runs fine for about five minutes and then crashes, resulting in three outcomes.
1.) A pop up in the notification tray saying that the video driver has stopped responding and has recovered.
2.) The entire game crashes and says that the Video Drivers are out of date.
3.) The entire computer freezes and I manually restart it, upon which when it is restarting a blue screen always comes up saying that there was an unexpected error and I should run the fix it program Windows so kindly offers me.
Anyways I uninstalled all of the Nividia Drivers and reinstalled them from the disk, this did not work. Then I updated them all to the newest available versions and this still did not work. Then I uninstalled all of the drivers again and directly installed the most up to date ones from Nividia's website, again this did not work. Every time I did a clean install for the drivers.
I contacted Nividia customer support and they directed me towards putting my GPU into another computer to see if it is a hardware problem or a software problem. He said either the GPU is busted or there is a root problem with Windows where the registry is not properly recognizing the graphics drivers. I put my GPU and it runs beautifully. Every setting on Ultra, clear as day and gorgeous. He played 3 games of Starcraft 2 each one about 30 minutes or so with no problems what so ever. So now what do I do? What does this all mean? How do I fix this? I called Windows support and they will troubleshoot the problem for a $109.00 fee (seriously?). I am so lost
I chose Windows 7 because I loved it so much and it worked so well for me. Has it betrayed me? Please let me know what you all think, if anyone reads this wall of text and decides to help me. Thank you all so much in advance for any help that you can give me.