Solved My tower works everywhere but at my house!

[gamr0217]

So about a year ago, my house was broken into and they tried to steal my computer(among many other things). All that happened was they ripped out the wires(while it was on) and knocked it over.(i found it disconnected close to my front door). I then began to have problems with my computer doing the startup repair loop. i couldnt figure anything out with it and i asked an aquaintance who repaired computers to take a look at it for me. He did(and charged me $100) and said it had a few minor problems and that it was g2g. I got it back home and it did the exact same thing to me. So he tells me that it is probably an incompatibility between my tower and something connected to it at my house( IE monitor, mouse keyboard, etc.) So i have cycled through all of those options and it still wont boot at my house. So i take it to work and have one of the IT guys take a look at it for me. He does so and keeps it for about a month, and tells me i can take it home that it is working fine. Then at home it began looping windows repair which was my original problem. I perused the forums here and managed to get it to begin a fresh install of windows after i wiped my primary drive and reinstalled some drivers. then i went into Bios and updated my primary boot drive to C and to actually being my 1st boot choice(idk how it got changed from it) and began an install of windows-currently running now. wish me luck guys and thanks to the great people here for all the available information!

 

[gamr0217]

So windows finished install. idk what isnt working but after running updates, i cant even get to the desktop again. it just sits at the black loading screen forever(all night in fact) i rebooted it and it just stalls out again before windows. i can get into safe mode. as well as bios though. does anybody have ANY ideas how i can fix this d@mn thing?

 

[Mark Phelps]

IF you can get into safe mode and everything you try works OK, then there must be some problems with items that are being loaded during startup.

Checking that out is tedious and lengthy -- and involves going into the Startup tab in MSCONFIG and turning the items on, one at a time, until the problems return. However, given the problems you have, I would not stop with the first item that causes problems, I would continue with each of all the remaining to ensure that no other items cause problems.

 

[Slartybart]

Due to the rough handling of the machine, I would pop the hood and make sure every connection is good.

Disconnect and reconnect all wires.
Remove and reseat all hardware componenets (memory, peripheral cards, etc)
The machine might not have exhibited the problems when your "friends" looked at it. As a matter of fact, I would have the $100 friend come over and validate his work with you. But you can do this your self, just make sure the power cord is removed and you take electrostatic precautions.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

What was different between the tower at your friend's location and your location? My guess would be the cables that were ripped out by the thief. You might want to check to make sure all your cables weren't damaged.

Btw, did you actually see the tower working at your friend's place?

 

[gamr0217]

Due to the rough handling of the machine, I would pop the hood and make sure every connection is good.

Disconnect and reconnect all wires.
Remove and reseat all hardware componenets (memory, peripheral cards, etc)
The machine might not have exhibited the problems when your "friends" looked at it. As a matter of fact, I would have the $100 friend come over and validate his work with you. But you can do this your self, just make sure the power cord is removed and you take electrostatic precautions.

upon that line of thought, i have been trying to get this thing going again today and, i got this bsod error, which was something to the effect of: either my cd drive or hard drive was bad. so i tried what you guys said and reseated everything. But i left the other hard drives disconnected and tried to boot it. it didnt fix anything. prior to that before i checked what you guys had to say, i did manage to get it to boot debian 6 kbe off of my thumb drive.(i found and lost a thread on here that was explaining how to use that to troubleshoot some hardware. I didnt get past getting Devian onto my thumb drive when i was forced to exit the thread by the installer.) So at this point im fairly certain that i have a harddrive problem. Debian 6 ran great on the thumb drive. At this point all my computer does is try and boot and tell me to reboot and select proper media device. but my bios is set for the correct HD. so does it sound right to you guys to be a hd failure?

 

[gamr0217]

Now it just keep looping from booting up, it gets to the mb screen and does its self checks and then tried to start booting and lags at the black screen with a curser blinking in the top left. then i get error 0XC00000E9. which implies further to me that my HD is bad

 

[Slartybart]

It does sound as though the HD is fubar. The rough handling might have caused a mechanical head crash. It might be possible to "repair" it (mark sectors bad), but if it is mechanical, you'd only be buying time before another disk problems occurs.

What's on the other drives?
Can you install Windows on one of those drives? Say the WD 250GB, assuming that isn't the bad drive. Or pick a new drive for your OS (best scenario).
- 74ums tutorial: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1649-clean-install-windows-7-a.html
- Remove suspect drive, connect drive with space, create a primary partition for the install....
- only have the one drive connected when you instlal windows to avoid other issues.

I supose you could rearrange a drive with available space while booted in Debian if you need to do that.

Other memebers might have other suggestions, so see what options they migh present
I would run diags on the non-boot drives too if they were in the machine when it was man-handled.

Good luck and post back with your results.

Bill
.

 

[gamr0217]

The 250 was my boot drive. thanks for the advice Bill. I am going to try that now. Debian isnt mountint any of my HD so idk how much that route is actually going to help at this point. i did find that thread again. http://www.sevenforums.com/installa...during-windows-boot-i-o-error-0xc00000e9.html

but for now Bill im going youre route. thanks a bunch! ill post back more when there is more

-Joe-

 

[gamr0217]

so far so good. im happy to say im doing this from my computer!!! i removed the 250g and re installed windows following your instructions. im installing all the drivers now and this is the best this computer had run in years! IDK how the heck two guys who know so much more than i do couldnt have told me that the 250 was dead but at least you awesome people here could! thanks so much again bill!!


-Joe-

 

[gamr0217]

also, it seems i need a new boot drive! any recommendations? lol i would love to get a SSD however its simply not in the budget right now ;(. Any thoughts outside of SSD though?

 

[Slartybart]

Glad your machine is back in good health.

I don't have any preference, drives are pretty much a commodity. I'd opt for 7200 and maximum 500GB for my boot drive. A Windows install is about 40GB - add about the same for applications, and that leaves plenty for storage.
I keep my user profiles as well as docs, pics, downloads, videos, etc. off the boot drive so I can restore without losing personal data (sure, I need to install applications, update Windows and drivers and reconfigure, but that's easy)

Lot's of folks 'round here make images of their boot drive and data, so that they don't have to do so much work in the event of catastrophic failure.

Top Internal Hard Drives | PCWorld
Best Hard Drive, SSD and Storage Solutions | StorageReview.com
Hard Drives reviews | PCmag