My little brother built his first pc around 3 months ago. He's had some strange goings-on which I can't get my head around.

[mauhjt2007]

My little brother built his first pc around 3 months ago. He's had some strange goings-on which I can't get my head around.

1. He has intermittent boot up times. If he turns the power off at the back of the computer and at the socket, switches it back on, and then boots, he often has a far increased boot up time. Furthermore, it seems to be more affected by the number of USB inputs, which makes no sense to me (it might be coincidence that this happens together).
On re-booting, without turning power off/on etc, the pc boots up fine, but sometimes has issues finding his keyboard.

2. He has altered sound output through HDMI on his videocard, sometimes. It sounds as if the sounds have been slowed to a snails pace and played (almost demon-esque). He's switched to using the DVI output for video and sound through the motherboard. It seems to be going ok currently.

3. When the pc is on the "Balanced" powerplan within windows, he sometimes notices visual distortions. By this I mean that round 3/4 down the page he sees a line of the picture altered, and when he scrolls the line stays put and images move through and are distorted on entry, and normal when they leave.
Putting the settings on "high performance" the distortions stop.
I attempted to recreate the distortion yesterday but with no luck, so i'm unsure if it to do with the powerplan setting (in my head the powerplan shouldn't affect anything visually)

I built my own pc around 2-3 years ago with any issues, so recommended it to my bro.
He's now paranoid that he's buggered the mobo on install, which I doubt as they're fairly robust things. Does this sound like software issues? Hardware issues? Mixed?

Any help is much appreciated.

 

[maddogfargo]

My little brother built his first pc around 3 months ago. He's had some strange goings-on which I can't get my head around.

1. He has intermittent boot up times. If he turns the power off at the back of the computer and at the socket, switches it back on, and then boots, he often has a far increased boot up time. Furthermore, it seems to be more affected by the number of USB inputs, which makes no sense to me (it might be coincidence that this happens together).
On re-booting, without turning power off/on etc, the pc boots up fine, but sometimes has issues finding his keyboard.

2. He has altered sound output through HDMI on his videocard, sometimes. It sounds as if the sounds have been slowed to a snails pace and played (almost demon-esque). He's switched to using the DVI output for video and sound through the motherboard. It seems to be going ok currently.

3. When the pc is on the "Balanced" powerplan within windows, he sometimes notices visual distortions. By this I mean that round 3/4 down the page he sees a line of the picture altered, and when he scrolls the line stays put and images move through and are distorted on entry, and normal when they leave.
Putting the settings on "high performance" the distortions stop.
I attempted to recreate the distortion yesterday but with no luck, so i'm unsure if it to do with the powerplan setting (in my head the powerplan shouldn't affect anything visually)

I built my own pc around 2-3 years ago with any issues, so recommended it to my bro.
He's now paranoid that he's buggered the mobo on install, which I doubt as they're fairly robust things. Does this sound like software issues? Hardware issues? Mixed?

Any help is much appreciated.

Some things to check:

Bootup time can be affected by ON/OFF USB charge and having bootable USB support + storage media attached like a USB HDD or memory stick. It can also be affected by Auto-detect settings in your BIOS hanging on memory timings or a SATA device mode. Sometimes manually setting the 4 main RAM timings manually and the T1/T2 timing will help. Sometimes manually setting ALL SATA ports to be AHCI only will also help.

I never use GPU audio output. The on-board audio with most good motherboards is actually really good. But the audio stuttering and screen render in lower power modes could be a GPU driver issue. It may be worth it to clean uninstall and then re-install the drivers.

I'd start there with troubleshooting.

 

[Demonic Heart]

Try updating bios.. it more seem like a motherboard problem than anything else...

before updating bios try to reinstall windows correctly

 

[mauhjt2007]

My little brother built his first pc around 3 months ago. He's had some strange goings-on which I can't get my head around.

1. He has intermittent boot up times. If he turns the power off at the back of the computer and at the socket, switches it back on, and then boots, he often has a far increased boot up time. Furthermore, it seems to be more affected by the number of USB inputs, which makes no sense to me (it might be coincidence that this happens together).
On re-booting, without turning power off/on etc, the pc boots up fine, but sometimes has issues finding his keyboard.

2. He has altered sound output through HDMI on his videocard, sometimes. It sounds as if the sounds have been slowed to a snails pace and played (almost demon-esque). He's switched to using the DVI output for video and sound through the motherboard. It seems to be going ok currently.

3. When the pc is on the "Balanced" powerplan within windows, he sometimes notices visual distortions. By this I mean that round 3/4 down the page he sees a line of the picture altered, and when he scrolls the line stays put and images move through and are distorted on entry, and normal when they leave.
Putting the settings on "high performance" the distortions stop.
I attempted to recreate the distortion yesterday but with no luck, so i'm unsure if it to do with the powerplan setting (in my head the powerplan shouldn't affect anything visually)

I built my own pc around 2-3 years ago with any issues, so recommended it to my bro.
He's now paranoid that he's buggered the mobo on install, which I doubt as they're fairly robust things. Does this sound like software issues? Hardware issues? Mixed?

Any help is much appreciated.

Some things to check:

Bootup time can be affected by ON/OFF USB charge and having bootable USB support + storage media attached like a USB HDD or memory stick. It can also be affected by Auto-detect settings in your BIOS hanging on memory timings or a SATA device mode. Sometimes manually setting the 4 main RAM timings manually and the T1/T2 timing will help. Sometimes manually setting ALL SATA ports to be AHCI only will also help.

I never use GPU audio output. The on-board audio with most good motherboards is actually really good. But the audio stuttering and screen render in lower power modes could be a GPU driver issue. It may be worth it to clean uninstall and then re-install the drivers.

I'd start there with troubleshooting.

Hey man, thanks for the response!

Ok, i'll try the full uninstall and reinstall of the GPU drivers. Does any of this sound like a mobo issue to you?

With regards to the USB devices he has the following plugged in:

Keyboard
Mouse
USB wireless internet dongle
USB lock device for protools
External HDD

Do you think its the external HDD that's affecting it?

 

[mauhjt2007]

Try updating bios.. it more seem like a motherboard problem than anything else...

before updating bios try to reinstall windows correctly

Hey man, thanks for the response. I'll give this a crack once I've attempted the GPU reinstall.

 

[Demonic Heart]

Try updating bios.. it more seem like a motherboard problem than anything else...

before updating bios try to reinstall windows correctly

Hey man, thanks for the response. I'll give this a crack once I've attempted the GPU reinstall.

you're welcome..

if the windows didnt install properly you will have issues.. and also if your bios is outdated...

it would help if you post your pc specs

 

[ComputerSecurityGuy]

Could be boot order settings, it might be waiting on a USB device.

 

[Demonic Heart]

if its boot order settings you need to go into bios and change boot device location to your hard disk

 

[mauhjt2007]

Try updating bios.. it more seem like a motherboard problem than anything else...

before updating bios try to reinstall windows correctly

Hey man, thanks for the response. I'll give this a crack once I've attempted the GPU reinstall.

you're welcome..

if the windows didnt install properly you will have issues.. and also if your bios is outdated...

it would help if you post your pc specs

Hey man,

this may sound noob-y, quite frankly I don't know much, but which specs would be useful? Is there a window with all relevant info on, and how would i get there?

 

[mauhjt2007]

Could be boot order settings, it might be waiting on a USB device.

When I asked him, the USB boot is the last in the boot list, with SSD being the first. Is it possible for it to wait on a USB device even with it last in order?

 

[Demonic Heart]

your motherboard model will be useful

 

[mauhjt2007]

your motherboard model will be useful

It's a Gigabyte Z97M-D3H

 

[mpse94]

Hi everyone,

I am mauhjt2007's brother and we've done a fair bit of troubleshooting over these last couple of days with some weird things happening with my PC.

Yesterday we tried uninstalling and reinstalling the graphics card drivers (GPU is a Gigabyte Geforce GTX 660) and after uninstalling the display driver the pc got stuck on restart. So we both decided to forcefully restart the pc, which then resulted in no video output whatsoever from the motherboard DVI and VGA port, no output from the GPU DVI port either. I then connected the HDMI output from the GPU to a small t.v. (which I used for a bit when I first set up my PC, before getting a PC monitor). From this HDMI port we got signal with which to uninstall and re-install the GPU drivers (using the DVD disc rather than online website this time). After all this we still experienced the same audio issues (audio slowed down drastically) from the GPU and visual distortions as described by my brother at the start of this thread.

Today we tried reinstalling Windows 7. Before doing so I changed the BIOS so that the boot order was DVD drive, SSD and then HDD. After the restart, the pc did a slow boot, where visuals showed up almost in a frame by frame style! After the first bit of installation and restart the pc boot speed returned to normal and we installed the rest of windows. After installation, under 'my computer', windows did not display the HDD (even though the BIOS window showed it was in the system). Later after some reboots the HDD eventually showed up in 'my computer'.

After resetting the BIOS so that the DVD drive was last in order and the SSD was first, the pc did another slow boot! Upon restarting, the boot speed returned to normal (between 20-30 seconds). Bear in mind that at this moment there are no other programmes except windows. I also experienced a slight loss in signal to the USB Mouse and Keyboard at the log in screen (not as bad as before where it could be 40 seconds-ish before i could type in my password) for a fraction of a second, is this normal?

Some good news though! For the first time ever on my PC. there is no loss in video output between the windows start up screen and the log-in screen (before there was a loss of signal for roughly 2-4 seconds).

Does any of this clear up anything to anyone? Does it point to saying the GPU, motherboard or operating system being at fault? Out of interest, supposing if my copy of windows 7 was faulty. Could i reinstall using my brother's copy? Or does the 25 digit code make that copy of windows specific to that one computer?

Thanks everyone for their help so far! It's been a real hassle this pc of mine!

 

[herauthon]

question: howmany watt does the PSU offer - is that a new PSU ?

step 0 : touch case for statics

step 1 : unmount all gear

step 2 : lay down mobo and basic elements on non-conduction surface
level 0 : only mobo and keyboard - psu connected - video connected
boot - check boot time and responds
level 1 - if level 0 seems ok, add hdd/sdd and reboot
if this does boot the system then add more gear

if all did work out - i think the board made short/connection with backplane
to prevent fails - use thick tape to isolate spots on the backside of mobo
step 3 : rebuild the system in level0 methode - only the essentials - reboot and check operation
increase levels of items - audiocard, cdrom,

just let us know what level0 and level1 testing gives.

Sometimes a full unmount and remount can solve short issues

 

[mpse94]

question: howmany watt does the PSU offer - is that a new PSU ?

step 0 : touch case for statics

step 1 : unmount all gear

step 2 : lay down mobo and basic elements on non-conduction surface
level 0 : only mobo and keyboard - psu connected - video connected
boot - check boot time and responds
level 1 - if level 0 seems ok, add hdd/sdd and reboot
if this does boot the system then add more gear

if all did work out - i think the board made short/connection with backplane
to prevent fails - use thick tape to isolate spots on the backside of mobo
step 3 : rebuild the system in level0 methode - only the essentials - reboot and check operation
increase levels of items - audiocard, cdrom,

just let us know what level0 and level1 testing gives.

Sometimes a full unmount and remount can solve short issues

Hi Herauthon,

PSU is a 650watt gold stanard PSU, and yes it's fairly new having bought all the equipment in September of this year.

I'll give your tests and go and see how I do.

Cheers buddy!