Win 7 Lockup on normal boot. psu and gfx card are new.

Ashandaeri said:

Dell didnt give me a windows disk. Just a recovery partition that resets the computer to factory defaults. The computer is currently running more tests and the hard drive ones are hitting self read errors. :/

Should I use the recovery partition to wipe the drive and reinstall windows?
Thats all I have for repair and recovery thanks to dell.

You can create a repair disc from someone else's computer if they have the same version as you (Home Premium 64-bit if you have Home Premium 64-bit or Home Premium 32-bit if you have Home Premium 32-bit for instance).

Let the tests finish. Maybe they will fix the problem. If not, try booting into safe mode with command prompt and running the chkdsk /r from there on all system and program files drives.

More tests are currently running. Thee drive self tests long and short both failed. however the confidence and read tests were successful. All these tests. Mobo, Ram, Hardrive. I think those would be the problem. This is the first time the hard drive has failed any of these tests. Im getting very frustrated. I could fix the problem if I only knew what it was.....all the memory tests Ive done have passed, same with processor tests. Mobo or hard drive it seems. Tomorrow I am calling dell to attempt at getting a windows cd. Also I am going to move my ram chips around to manually check for bad ones. If that doesnt work I can clear the ram from being the cause. which will leave me with the mobo and hard drive. I may drive into the city to get the power supply tested just to be sure.

Thank you for helping me with this writh, Im calling it a night though.

EDIT
what will chkdsk /r do, or more specifically what does the /r extension do? and how is it different from just doing a disk check through the property section of the C drive?

"The fourth stage of CHKDSK is only invoked if the /R switch is used. /R is used to locate bad sectors in the volume's free space. When /R is used, CHKDSK attempts to read every sector on the volume to confirm that the sector is usable. Sectors associated with metadata are read during the natural course of running CHKDSK even when /R is not used. Sectors associated with user data are read during earlier phases of CHKDSK provided /R is specified. When an unreadable sector is located, NTFS will add the cluster containing that sector to its list of bad clusters and, if the cluster was in use, allocate a new cluster to do the job of the old. If a fault tolerant disk driver is being used, data is recovered and written to the newly allocated cluster. Otherwise, the new cluster is filled with a pattern of 0xFF bytes" (An explanation of CHKDSK and the new /C and /I switches).

You can do a /r through the property section of the C: drive. It is the second box to tick "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors"; a regular scan will check the drive for issues, but not actually do any repair work; a fix will just repair file errors/corruption on the disk.

Hi writh,

So. My computer is still running hard drive tests. but good news. I called dell and got them to send me a free full version of windows 7 home premium. :) nice folks. Multiple hard drive scans have failed reading tests. So I have a windows 7 CD on its way and a good sense that the hard drive is the problem.

I am tired of fighting with this. I have been running a samsung 1tb hard drive with OS high end games and music all off the same drive. I am scrapping the drive. I need this to be ready for school after the holidays. I am buying two new WD 500gb HDs and putting a fresh install of windows on it.

Looking at the WD drives, can I run a caviar blue for the OS and a black for my gaming drive? or should they be the same drive?

if the problem still occurs after a fresh install of windows Im replacing my motherboard, Im testing the ram chips today after the scans from last night finish. -_- I can either condemn or vindicate the ram as the problem, then when I go to get the new hard drives for my new install I can have my psu checked to make sure its healthy. At that point if the new hard drives dont work Ill know its the motherboard. :)

I apologize if I ran ahead on you but from experience, an operating system or hardrive with problems will remain problematic for the rest of its life. Id rather start from scratch.

EDIT
also I did not know that checking "attempt for recovery of bad sectors" enabled /r. In that case I already did that chkdsk task via the property window of the C: drive. I did that at beginning to this problem. I dont remember what the results were. Can I run it again?

Ashandaeri said:

Looking at the WD drives, can I run a caviar blue for the OS and a black for my gaming drive? or should they be the same drive?

if the problem still occurs after a fresh install of windows Im replacing my motherboard, Im testing the ram chips today after the scans from last night finish. -_- I can either condemn or vindicate the ram as the problem, then when I go to get the new hard drives for my new install I can have my psu checked to make sure its healthy. At that point if the new hard drives dont work Ill know its the motherboard. :)

I apologize if I ran ahead on you but from experience, an operating system or hardrive with problems will remain problematic for the rest of its life. Id rather start from scratch.

EDIT
also I did not know that checking "attempt for recovery of bad sectors" enabled /r. In that case I already did that chkdsk task via the property window of the C: drive. I did that at beginning to this problem. I dont remember what the results were. Can I run it again?

Sorry you are having drive issues. As to your question about WD drives, I recommend keeping all system and application programs on the same drive. You may use a secondary drive for data (pictures, music, movies, etc.) but do not use it for program files or windows system files. Program files write information to the registry, which is stored in the system files, so keeping them separate does little good as you would have to re-install the programs anyway to get them to work with the system again.

Understand you running ahead, and I actually encourage self troubleshooting as long as you use sound logic, which you seem to have done.

You can try to recover bad sectors again to see if it fixes the problem, but if the problem has persisted after doing so before, my guess is the drive is already failing. It sounds like the head of the drive may already be physically clobbering sectors, so it has become a mechanical failure and not a data corruption failure.

Alright Ill go ahead with the new windows installation and two hard drives.

But I think you misunderstood my question. I am going to be reinstalling everything anyway. In doing so would there be a benefit to having a caviar blue drive with the OS and data on it and then a separate caviar black for performance where I would install the games to? That way the OS has its own dedicated drive and the games have a dedicated drive, thereby increasing the speed of the computer in general?

Im not copying data off this drive. I have it backed up so im good to go.

Ashandaeri said:

Alright Ill go ahead with the new windows installation and two hard drives.

But I think you misunderstood my question. I am going to be reinstalling everything anyway. In doing so would there be a benefit to having a caviar blue drive with the OS and data on it and then a separate caviar black for performance where I would install the games to? That way the OS has its own dedicated drive and the games have a dedicated drive, thereby increasing the speed of the computer in general?

Im not copying data off this drive. I have it backed up so im good to go.

If you are looking for a performance boost, install your OS and games/program files on the black and use the blue for your personal files (pictures, music, movies, word documents, etc.). It is mostly data/temporary files that cause the performance to drop on drives.
Have this set up on your black drive: Write-Caching - Enable or Disable. Move your temporary files: How do I change the location of Windows temporary files? and temporary internet files: Move Temporary Internet Files Folder - Internet Explorer 7 Misc to the blue instead of the black.

You could install your program files on the blue drive and run just Windows on the black; that would give some small amount of (Maybe 5-10%) performance boost, but probably not enough to really justify doing so with the hassle of setting up the registry to install program files there.

Edit: If you want a performance boost, it is best to have your OS on the best performance drive, not your program files. The OS is what loads all the files needed for the game, so it needs the performance boost to make the games run better.

Edit2: If you look at how an SSD is optimized, this is esentially the same thing. You may want to look at SSD Tweaks and Optimizations in Windows 7, but disregard anything related to the SSD optimization for the hardware itself as this would not apply to your Black versus Blue question.

Thanks for the answers and advice. I have a black and blue caviar drive brand new now. Waiting for the win 7 cd in the mail from dell. since my psu is healthy as tested today, its either my motherboard or my hard drive. The ram is clean I did a manual test by moving the chips around the motherboard. 1 chip, different slots, half then half. same result. 3-5 minutes after start up I lock up completely. Im thinking that the spiking power supply that used to be in there damaged either the hard drive or the motherboard as well as the graphics card. As to why replacing the psu and the graphics card fixed the problem for 4 weeks, I have no idea.

But I have it narrowed down to mobo or HD.

So my plan is this:

I am currently running chkdsk /r to see if it catched anything.
Then im going into safemode to manually backup as many of my files as I can to be safe. So i have two backups of the data on the drive.

Here I reach a decision, either wait for the windows 7 cd and try to repair the critical windows files IF its a logic error and hope it fixes the problem, if it doesnt then its either a mechanical error with the drive or the motherboard. The motherboard is currently passing all tests and diags I run it through though. random drivers are starting to fail for key systems, not just graphics drivers, sound drivers are failing to load on boot up now. which makes me think the hard drive is getting worse.

So i either wait for the win 7 cd to try and do a repair install so i dont lose my hard drive data OR There is a hidden partition that will restore the computer to the day I bought it, when I first turned it on. this, in turn, will format my hard drive and reinstall windows 7 to its factory state. Logically I would like to try with the cd as to avoid losing data and having to reinstall, but either way will either prove or disprove a logic error in the drive. I have done virus tests and nothing has come up, if it is a virus, is there a risk of infecting the windows 7 cd upon using it for a repair installation?

I think thats it for now. The last two things for today are the chkdsk and the manual backup of personal files. I may try the partition restore tomorrow unless you think it would make more sense to wait for the cd to avoid losing data, but at this point im getting multiple read errors from the hard drive in several competence tests.

The best way to make sure no remnants of a possible virus remain is to do a Clean Install Windows 7. You can't infect a DVD, but parts of the virus can still remain on your system after doing a repair install, so if you're really worried that it might be virus or malware related, do a clean install instead after backing up your user files.

You can download and install the free version of Malwarebytes : Free anti-malware, anti-virus and spyware removal download and run a full scan. If Malwarebytes finds nothing, also download, unzip, and let Vipre Rescue run to see if Malwarebytes missed anything.