PC not booting correctly...please give advice.

allen9608

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Nov 19, 2010
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Hello,

This is my first post at Tom's Hardware although I've been a reader for a long time. I always come here and do research on components before I build a computer.

Anyway, I have a question, and I want to go ahead and say thank you to everyone who replies with suggestions.

Here is my problem. All this stuff started happening after I installed Fallout New Vegas.

System:
ASUS P5K Premium Wifi/AP Black Pearl Edition
Intel Quad Q6600 GO Stepping
EVGA Nvidia 8800GTS 320MB
4GB Corsair Dominator RAM (2 gigs at 800mhz, 2 gigs 1066mhz clocked down to 800mhz)

When this all started I was on Windows Vista. Fallout would freeze up and I would get the FalloutNV.exe has stopped working error and I could close the game and resume what I was doing. It went from that to black screen crashes. The system would crash to a black screen ( no input getting to the monitor ). I would have to power off the machine, pull the cable out, power cycle the machine, plug the cable back in and reboot. This was working for a while.

I came home yesterday and my pc was froze on the windows desktop. I powered off my machine and it would not boot back up. The fans would kick on the hard drives would spin up but I would get no output to the monitor, PC would not Post so I could not get into the bios. I tried clearing the CMOS multiple times and it still would not boot up. Once I got to a screen with choices like, Restore Bios Settings and Setup and stuff like that but it froze on that screen and I couldn't do anything. So eventually....

I unplugged all components from the MOBO. Put in 1 stick of ram. Booted up...it booted like it does when there is no hard drive. Put in the second stick....all the way to the fourth stick and it kept booting up. So I plug in my harddrive and it boots into Windows Vista. I decided maybe I just needed to format and start over with Windows 7 64bit which I have been needing and planning to do for a few months. So I went ahead and installed Windows 7 and did my updates.

I haven't tried playing Fallout yet to see if it black screens my computer again but that isn't really the issue I'm asking about.

It hasn't happened so far when I restart my computer but sometimes when I shut down my machine...when I power it back up the fans come on, it looks like I have power to everything but I still get the black screen with no Post or nothing. It just sits there. I can unplug the power cable and power cycle it and plug it back up and it will boot up.( it may happen everytime I've only shut down my PC once since I've put Windows 7 on here)

Does anyone have any idea what could possibly be wrong with my machine? I will come back and update my post and let you guys know if I've figured anything out or if it still hard freezes or crashes from Fallout. Fallout is the only game I've played where it is hard crashing but it could do it in others.

If you have any questions for me please ask and I will answer to the best of my ability.


BTW: Fallout New Vegas has to be one of the buggiest games I've ever played. Bethesda/Obsidian should be ashamed for releasing a game that is so broken.
 

suteck

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Does it freeze and lock up with only 1 pair of your mismatched memory? Try just putting the 1066 memory in without any over/under clocking. Let it run on the two stick as long as it can - hours. After hours of good operation try a normal shutdown and start up and see if it still works, still with only the 2 sticks of ram. If those don't work try the same thing with the other pair. Make sure you put them in the right slots of course. What PSU do you have, make, model, watts?
 

allen9608

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Nov 19, 2010
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18,510



Suteck,

Thank you for the reply. My PSU is

Antec Truepower Trio 650W
 

allen9608

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Nov 19, 2010
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18,510


BTW I will try what you recommended with the RAM. Do you think I should just run memtest first? I ran memtest on both modules before I put them in but that was a few years ago. I'm guessing RAM can go bad over time. The first matched set of Corsair Dominator 1066mhz I got was ate up with errors and I never tested it. It caused me alot of problems that I had attributed to my MOBO Ram Clock speed combination. One day I finally memtested it and it turned out it was the RAM.

I will give the RAM thing a shot and run memtest as well.