PC won't boot after restart.

dunlapc308

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Dec 9, 2012
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Hey everyone. I've had issues with my PC booting up for a while now but usually after a few restarts it would work right. A few days ago it stopped booting. It would get through the system startup but would stop at a black screen when it should be loading the OS. I reinstalled the OS and it worked on initial startup. But once the PC was restarted the problem came back. I tried changing out the hard drive but the same thing happened. I then used a friends computer to download an ISO of windows 8 developer trial. It installed fine but upon restart did the same thing. Although windows 8 said something about not being able to find some windows start file. I'm not sure how to diagnose the problem further or fix it. I'd rather not spend money buying things if they are not necessary. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 

Cyberat_88

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Are you able to boot in safe mode ?
Run msconfig, go to Boot, Advanced Options, make sure number of processors and max. memory is unchecked.
Go to Startup tab and remove anything not needed by normal software operation.
Do a MalwareBytes Scan and Anti-Virus scan.
 

dunlapc308

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If it comes up ill try this. At the moment it doesn't even get to the safe mode screen options though. As soon as bios starts and it finishes detecting devices it goes to a black screen and the display goes into standby.
 
open your case and see if there onboard gpu and a add in gpu. if there two of them check that the fan on the gpu is working and the card is seated and the ram is seated and all the fans are working. most times when the video good out like that is because windows switched from the add in gpu to the onboard gpu. if there not any onboard video check that all the power cables are firm. then see if someone had a spare video card to try.
 

dunlapc308

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It does have both an onboard and pci card but that seems to be working fine. I tried installing Ubuntu instead but it was unable to install GRUB. I'm starting to think there may be an issue with the MBR on the motherboard. What do you guys think?
 

johnnyq1233

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I'm suspecting you have a bad memory module...
And while it may install and run..after a reboot the problems start piling up..
You should run a memtest 86+ it is a bootable and will tell you if your memory is ok.
Hope this helps..JQ
 

electronian

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You "burn a disk image" from the download ( http://www.memtest.org/download/4.10/memtest86+-4.10.iso.zip ) with "disk burning software" package (like LG Burning Tool). It will fit on a CD. Then you can just put the disk in, and restart the computer.
Let it run. Some prefer to let it run all night. 2 or 3 hours will probably suffice.
Press "C" to stop the test.
It's a one-screen output program--easy to understand...the number of errors encountered is tallied.
 

dunlapc308

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I'll do this when I get home to make sure, but it shouldn't be a hard drive issue. It happened on my older hard drive, so I thought that may be the problem and I have had the drive for about 5 years so I figured its about time to change it anyway. I just put a brand new Seagate drive in 2 days ago and the same thing happens on it.
 

dunlapc308

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Ok. So I did not run any HDD tests last night. I have an MSI motherboard with the GUI interface for BIOS. There was no option to reset the settings for HDDs so instead I just reset the entire BIOS settings. I then made sure the Onboard GPU was disabled. I was then able to install Ubuntu 12.04 without a hitch. So then, I decided I would give Windows 7 a try again.

The windows 7 install worked, at first. I went through several series of windows updates before it reverted to the original black screen problem. I started executing recoveries, and doing fewer updates at a time to narrow it down to the update that was causing the issue. I figured out that Windows was trying to install the graphics driver for my dedicated GPU (ASUS nVidia GeForce GTX 560) so I disabled this update and attempted to install the other 124 'important' windows updates. Most of the updates failed to install. I think only 18 of them were successful. But the PC continued to boot up properly. When I shutdown the PC to go to bed, it installed 48 more updates. When I woke up this morning, I tried to boot up my PC and it was back to the original problem. So it seems there is something going on between the graphics driver, and windows updates.
 

Cyberat_88

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Go to Auto Updates in Control Panel, Switch from Automatic and put it in Notify me of updates but do not download, this will give you control.
Re-install nVidia drivers and do not allow audio/video updates from Microsoft in the future. Nor any other chipset drivers that may cause question marks or problems in Device Manager.
 

dunlapc308

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Ok, so here's another update.

I was able to identify the update that was causing issues. I disabled that update and every other update worked fine. The update that caused issues was the nvidia graphic driver. I tried instead going to nVidia's website to download the driver but it still had problems after restart.

I performed a sytem restore. Tried downloading a Legacy version of the graphics drivers, still no cigar. I'm not sure what to do. I'm not even sure that the motherboard is picking up my GPU (GeForce 560 GTX). The card is getting power though because the lights are on and the fans are spinning.
 

dunlapc308

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I haven't overclocked the card. I ran the Java GPU detection tool on nVidia's website and it recognized the correct card. I'm not sure how to set the GTX 560 as my primary card in the MSI clickable BIOS. It doesn't give as many options as your standard BIOS. It has a setting for the GPU for Virtu Technology though. I have it disabled at the moment. Maybe I should try turning it on and setting the dedicated card as primary that way? It acts like the driver install correctly for the GPU but I get no video after restart once it gets passed the Windows splash screen. I had a second card in the PC as an SLI PhysX card. I took that out though until I get the single GPU working correctly.

I won't be home tonight, but tomorrow after work I can try swapping the cards to see if maybe its just the GTX 560 is not working. If that's the case ASUS will be getting a call. The card has not been run on anything other than default settings, barely used and have only had it for about a year. Whereas my EVGA 9800gtx+ (the PhysX SLI card) has lasted me about 5 years now with no problems.
 

dunlapc308

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I'm not sure exactly what I did but the problem has been resolved. I had to revert to a system restore several times because the graphics drivers, whether installed via nVidia or through Windows updates, were failing. Eventually something clicked I guess and windows was able to install the graphic driver correctly and everything has been working find since.
 

electronian

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Reminds me of what a pain Input/Output (output in this case) had been in the early computing days on old 360 Mainframes with Assembler 360--or even VS Pascal! You had to damnear rewrite the operating system for every output operation.
 

abhinann

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Go to bios setting than change ur setting ACHI TO IDE mode it may work..