New Graphics card causing Hard drive Problems?

[Doug Painter]

A few weeks ago I ordered a new Radeon XFX 7850 1GB Core Edition card. When it arrived I found that I needed an adapter to use it with my monitor. So I ordered one but in the mean time i wanted to test the card out and see if it worked. I used a friends monitor and it worked great no problems. I installed my old Radeon 6670 and waited for the adapter to arrive.

I got the adapter in the mail, hooked everything up and when I turned on my PC I got the "disk read error. Press ctrl+alt+delete to restart" message. I restarted several times and the same thing kept happening. I thought maybe a cable came loose. So I opened my PC up and unplugged the drive cables on both ends for the Hard drive and plugged them back in making sure they were secure. Booted it up and got the same message. After restarting a few more times I got a windows screen that displayed some errors. There were two, one pertaining to a kernel and the other to a bootloader. I rebooted one more time and windows started up but it was really slow. I got to my desktop and everything was also really slow at loading and would lock up every couple of seconds.

I figured maybe some Windows files got corrupt or something during the installation of my new card. So I used my backup disk to "Refresh Windows". It deleted all my apps and programs and replaced the old windows files with the backup ones. The "disk read error" and the other error messages stopped showing up and my computer boots up now.

The thing is it boots up way slower than it used to. I'd say it averaged about 5 to 10 seconds at the most before I put the new card in. Now it takes about 20 to 30 seconds. Also, it boots up twice every time I turn it on. I'll see the MOBO logo and hear the beep, then windows logo will appear for a split second then it will boot up again and show the MOBO logo once more and beep again as well and then it finally loads up. Sometimes when I turn it on it will beep and after the MOBO logo appears I get a "no signal" message on my monitor and it shuts off and I have to reset it to get it to boot up. I noticed after it reboots the second time when it's loading my login screen all I see is a black screen and my hard drive light on my tower lights up and stays solid as if its really struggling to load it.

I've done every possible test and scan on the hard drive and every single one of them said the hard drive was ok. I checked my RAM and that is ok too. No scans showed any errors. I defragged the hard drive, did registry scans, driver scans....everything. I have no idea what could be wrong. Another thing I noticed was "Service Host: Local System" is now constantly using 80 - 100% of my CPU unless I go into it and stop the "SuperFetch" process. Not sure if that has anything to do with it or not.

I'll post my PC specs below. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

 

[photonboy]

It sounds like there's actually an issue with the card itself. I refer to the "no signal" in particular but slow boot and reboot as well.

The only other thing I can think of is the Power Supply.

Unfortunately the only ways to confirm this are:
1) Try that HD7870 in a different PC with adequate Power Supply
2) Try a different HD7870 or greater in your PC
3) Try a different Power Supply
4) Try a different PCIe x16 slot if you have one.

My best guess is that it is the graphics card. I'd contact the manufacturer about RMA, but it would be ideal if you could do at least one of the above tests.

The general rule of thumb is that if a Power Supply has enough 6-pin/8-pin adapters it will boot just fine.

 

[Doug Painter]

It sounds like there's actually an issue with the card itself. I refer to the "no signal" in particular but slow boot and reboot as well.

The only other thing I can think of is the Power Supply.

Unfortunately the only ways to confirm this are:
1) Try that HD7870 in a different PC with adequate Power Supply
2) Try a different HD7870 or greater in your PC
3) Try a different Power Supply
4) Try a different PCIe x16 slot if you have one.

My best guess is that it is the graphics card. I'd contact the manufacturer about RMA, but it would be ideal if you could do at least one of the above tests.

The general rule of thumb is that if a Power Supply has enough 6-pin/8-pin adapters it will boot just fine.

Thanks for the reply.

My power supply is a 750w so I'm pretty sure I have more than enough power. The card plays games pretty well. I can play Battlefield 3 on high/ultra and still get above 60fps even while recording with fraps. So I haven't really had any performance issues with it. But then again I guess that doesn't necessarily mean there isn't something wrong with it. Temps never get too high either. Perhaps I'll see if I can try it out in a friends PC. Just thought it was strange that my PC started acting like this after I installed it.

 

[eatmypie]

Some of the images wouldn't load for me, but are you by any chance using an apu?

 

[Doug Painter]

Some of the images wouldn't load for me, but are you by any chance using an apu?

No I'm using an AMD FX-8120

 

[eatmypie]

Did by any chance did the bio's get reset? because I used the same card in my htpc and the on-board was on by mistake and I got similar errors

 

[Doug Painter]

Did by any chance did the bio's get reset? because I used the same card in my htpc and the on-board was on by mistake and I got similar errors

Nope I don't have any on board graphics.

 

[eatmypie]

Did you experience any random app crashes?

 

[Doug Painter]

Did you experience any random app crashes?

No Just slower boot up time and increased disk usage.

 

[eatmypie]

I had a semi weird issue likes yours when I installed my kinda fun build, it was from faulty ram maybe it got bumped shocked .... it was the last thing I suspected but when I downloaded memtest86 and ran it I got several error's so you might want to look at that

 

[Doug Painter]

I had a semi weird issue likes yours when I installed my kinda fun build, it was from faulty ram maybe it got bumped shocked .... it was the last thing I suspected but when I downloaded memtest86 and ran it I got several error's so you might want to look at that

I thought maybe there was an issue with my RAM as well. But I ran the memory diagnostics test on it twice and it found no errors. I just ran it again today as well just to be sure and once again it said everything was fine.

 

[eatmypie]

The windows build in metest? I've found that one to give false reading's I would suggest memtest86 4.2 or higher

 

[photonboy]

If it's a SOFTWARE issue it might be hard to diagnose.

If you have a SPARE drive, or enough space to create an IMAGE on a secondary drive so you can use your Windows drive (and restore the backup later). Acronis True Image Free if you have a WD drive or Windows Image.

Then reinstall Windows and see if you have any delays. No need to install too much.

If reinstalling Windows works smoothly, maybe Restore your original Windows and plan for a complete reinstallation (backup data, write down program names etc).