[SOLVED] PC FROM HELL

[VOIDEV]

Alright I just finished building my friends pc and it seems like it has no end to problems with it, All components are new but I sold him my old motherboard and ram for cheap the parts are here (
https://pcpartpicker.com/user/VOIDEV/saved/LKZbhM
The first day I set it up it was all fine, left it at his place, without stress testing( forgot my laptop at home and only had one usb drive) and I drove home. the next day he said it wouldn't work, I looked into it and his pc was stuck on the motherboard bios screen, it wouldn't boot to windows, it acted as though windows wasn't even installed, we marked it up to a bad sata cable corrupting the data as it passed back and forth and we replaced the sata cable, reinstalled windows, the drivers, and this time I stress tested the system and everything looked good. the next day it was acting up again and he was unable to use his mouse and keyboard, they were bugging out and he just couldn't use them, we were somehow able to get a full virus scan to run and got rid of the culprits. the next day his windows is busted and when he turns it on it goes to the windows repair screen. I am thinking it is just a bad hard drive but want some more knowledgeable input. my friend is super pissed because he is new to computers and doesn't understand that things don't always work the first time and I would really like to get this solved quickly so he isn't put off by pc gaming. thank you in advance everyone!

 

[punkncat]

You should easily be able to check the drive for errors and such.

The MUCH larger question in my mind is how the new user has virus' in system second day in that required action?
Windows repair screen is rather self telling in it's own way.

I might try another disk but it seems rather obvious from what little you have written that there is much more in play here...

 

[VOIDEV]

You should easily be able to check the drive for errors and such.

The MUCH larger question in my mind is how the new user has virus' in system second day in that required action?
Windows repair screen is rather self telling in it's own way.

I might try another disk but it seems rather obvious from what little you have written that there is much more in play here...

well i kind of jumped the gun when I saw windows powershell pop up when I turned on his pc

 

[punkncat]

If I may offer some unsolicited advice....this is given under the assumption that all of the hardware is, indeed, good like I suspect.

First thing I would do is to purchase an el-cheapo SSD of a known brand. Take out the HDD, install the clean SSD, install Windows, CLEAN, go and do all your updates and get both the OS and Defender tip top before you do ANY other surfing or game downloading. If you use the Microsoft tool it's easy to get the most updated release of OS right off, and it really knocks down the updates required.

This next part is going to take for granted that you have a HDD dock and a place to store things safely and separately from your own system...
Take that current OS drive and dock it externally on a RUNNING system with either good AV, or fully updated defender and SCAN it. Keep in mind that if there truly is anything bad on there you run the risk of getting it yourself. An alternative to this method would be to completly format this drive with the OS install USB prior to (reinstalling) the SSD and that. Know that this loses all that information permanently, if there are no backups.

After you have scanned the old drive and are sure that there are no virus, you should be able to surf within it to recover any personal files, if such exist. Put that drive, clean/formatted, back in and use for storage. This is obviously optional but would make for a better running system overall on the cheap.

With all the updating and such done go in and tweak settings, turn on UAC to HIGH settings and attempt to educate this person or steer them towards some guides on safe surfing , how to know where to surf, what to click, etc.
It would probably be a GREAT idea to store a system image right after YOU are done, and before the new user starts so that you have a quick and easy image to get back to starting point.

This whole thing sounds MUCH more like user error than hardware problem based on your telling.

 

[punkncat]

Is the drive making any manner of noise? Been dropped in the process?

If you can talk them through it, have them double check the power connections and SATA cable on both ends.

Did you happen to set a boot priority on this machine? It would be unusual for it to "lose", but have had it happen before.

 

[punkncat]

Side question, do you know how old the HDD is?

If you happen to have ANY kind of old, small SSD I would take with and try the above suggestions.

 

[VOIDEV]

the hard drive is BRAND NEW. though when I got there he had taken it out of the box it was shipped in and was in the anti static bag,. he said he never dropped it

 

[punkncat]

Before driving over there I think I would have him check the cables and perhaps talk him through resetting the boot order, just to see...

 

[VOIDEV]

he is back to automatic repair looping

 

[punkncat]

While you are there, and just to be sure I would give a good double check to the RAM being snapped in securely as well as the power cables ALL being secure. Had a similar issue once with a computer that the 24 pin wasn't secure.

 

[tuxedoandex]

I would consider testing the motherboard/swapping for another one if possible. Since you described a lot of issues that seem to be related to a lot of different components, it's possible the motherboard (or RAM like punkncat mentioned) could be faulty. If you have any spare RAM as well I would try swapping it out to rule that out, and even a hard drive swap would be a good idea if it's possible.

 

[VOIDEV]

Thank you all for your imput, All of you guys rock! ended up being a boarderline DOA harddrive, it was clicking like crazy and we are making a warrenty claim since he has only had it for about two weeks