- Jan 18, 2012
- 22
- 0
- 18,510
System Configuration
Main Board: Asrock Z68 Extreme 3 Generation 3
CPU: i7 2600k sandy bridge
Memory: 2x4 Gigabytes G. Skill Ripjaw X
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 460
I have been get this machine working for a week almost. The Problems I am having are mostly based around windows install or driver install however there are other things that are a little weird to.
Background info:
The first time I booted up the machine I loaded into the bios to make sure all my hardware was being recognized. Everything was recognized correctly except the ram timings were off on the auto settings so I set them to the default XMP 1.2 setting that makes them run in there native timings 9-9-9-24. I also noticed that my CPU was running very hot (50-70 c...) and am still unsure about. I then made sure that my boot order was correct and rebooted to install from the windows CD. The windows installation went smoothly however i had a few crashes during driver installs when I rebooted. The System recovered from the crashes with out an issue and I finished the driver installations and windows updates without any issues. I then installed the programs i needed and a few games. Most of my games were running excellent at maximum settings. BF3 was not run on max but a mixture of mid/high and max settings due to my video cards bandwidth limitations but it ran flawlessly on the correct settings. The CPU never went past 15-30% on load and the temperatures in the AXTU Hardware Monitor were idling around 30C and never went above 55C on load. And everything ran great for 3 days.
On the morning of the 4th day I started getting some artifacts and general game crashed while playing battlefield 3. I initially thought these were general BF3 bugs that everyone is talking about however I then started getting a message saying my game was corrupt, then my nvidia drivers crashed and recovered, then I got blue screens. I rebooted and loaded into the bios and double checked everything. It turns out I accidentaly changed a setting in the storage setting enabling smart response for my SATA drive when I was looking over the bios settings about an hour before. I then reset my bios to default settings and made sure my RAM timings were correct and rebooted windows. Everything ran like new after that for about an hour. Then I started getting blue screens while surfing the internet and finally my windows update froze up about 80% into installing SP1. Furthermore, At one point the my windows operating system wouldn't even let me access a single file folder saying it could find the folder or something. I also heard crackling from my audio output which is connected to the Asrock onboard at one point although this was only momentary. I figured that at this point either my mobo was a POS or I had corrupted my installation and I attempted to do a repair from the system disk. The windows 7 repair failed saying there were missing files.
Current Issue/situation:
After all this I decided to try a clean installation of windows thinking that would solve all issues however I cant seem to even get windows installed now as I did the first time. This is what happens.
I boot up the system and start the installation from the CD/DVD drive. I choose to do a fresh install by deleting the info on the selected drive and starting the install. I the start the installation. This is were 1 of 3 issues will stop me.
1. The first time I tried to re install, I got to the point when windows is expanding the files system and I get an error saying it cannot find a certain file, please reboot and retry the installation however when I re install the OS I usually get the same problem.
2. Another time I tried this it crashed back to the begining of the installation without any error message.
(at this point i decided to flash update the bios to version 1.3)
3. After I flash updated the bios the windows install went through by some miracle of God however the system froze up while installing the Intel VGA drivers. and messed up the whole system. Now I get blue screens again and I cannot even attempt to correct the driver issues without a crash.
I since have wiped my HDD for a 3rd time... attempted to re install windows 7 again over the same bios ver. 1.30, and I am back at square 1. Windows install not working properly. I even tried a different copy of windows and I get the same problems. I have now transfered the components back to the to my old Asus setup with a dual core AMD and everything boots up flawlessly.
This is very frustrating because I have put together many PC configurations and I have never had such a strange and complex problem when installing an operating system. Why would my system work great for 3 days and then totally crap out on me? I have done research on my problem and it seems to most likely point to 2 things. Either I have a bad peice of hardware (motherboard or ram most likely) or I am installing the OS incorrectly. Can someone please point me in the right direction. What am I doing wrong? If this is a normal problem please let me know if it's easily fixable. My RMA period at new egg is closing fast and I need to know soon if the problem is hardware or software related. I cannot ask Asrock for assistance because the company is closed till next month for the new year holiday...
Thank you for taking time to read and respond to my post.
Main Board: Asrock Z68 Extreme 3 Generation 3
CPU: i7 2600k sandy bridge
Memory: 2x4 Gigabytes G. Skill Ripjaw X
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 460
I have been get this machine working for a week almost. The Problems I am having are mostly based around windows install or driver install however there are other things that are a little weird to.
Background info:
The first time I booted up the machine I loaded into the bios to make sure all my hardware was being recognized. Everything was recognized correctly except the ram timings were off on the auto settings so I set them to the default XMP 1.2 setting that makes them run in there native timings 9-9-9-24. I also noticed that my CPU was running very hot (50-70 c...) and am still unsure about. I then made sure that my boot order was correct and rebooted to install from the windows CD. The windows installation went smoothly however i had a few crashes during driver installs when I rebooted. The System recovered from the crashes with out an issue and I finished the driver installations and windows updates without any issues. I then installed the programs i needed and a few games. Most of my games were running excellent at maximum settings. BF3 was not run on max but a mixture of mid/high and max settings due to my video cards bandwidth limitations but it ran flawlessly on the correct settings. The CPU never went past 15-30% on load and the temperatures in the AXTU Hardware Monitor were idling around 30C and never went above 55C on load. And everything ran great for 3 days.
On the morning of the 4th day I started getting some artifacts and general game crashed while playing battlefield 3. I initially thought these were general BF3 bugs that everyone is talking about however I then started getting a message saying my game was corrupt, then my nvidia drivers crashed and recovered, then I got blue screens. I rebooted and loaded into the bios and double checked everything. It turns out I accidentaly changed a setting in the storage setting enabling smart response for my SATA drive when I was looking over the bios settings about an hour before. I then reset my bios to default settings and made sure my RAM timings were correct and rebooted windows. Everything ran like new after that for about an hour. Then I started getting blue screens while surfing the internet and finally my windows update froze up about 80% into installing SP1. Furthermore, At one point the my windows operating system wouldn't even let me access a single file folder saying it could find the folder or something. I also heard crackling from my audio output which is connected to the Asrock onboard at one point although this was only momentary. I figured that at this point either my mobo was a POS or I had corrupted my installation and I attempted to do a repair from the system disk. The windows 7 repair failed saying there were missing files.
Current Issue/situation:
After all this I decided to try a clean installation of windows thinking that would solve all issues however I cant seem to even get windows installed now as I did the first time. This is what happens.
I boot up the system and start the installation from the CD/DVD drive. I choose to do a fresh install by deleting the info on the selected drive and starting the install. I the start the installation. This is were 1 of 3 issues will stop me.
1. The first time I tried to re install, I got to the point when windows is expanding the files system and I get an error saying it cannot find a certain file, please reboot and retry the installation however when I re install the OS I usually get the same problem.
2. Another time I tried this it crashed back to the begining of the installation without any error message.
(at this point i decided to flash update the bios to version 1.3)
3. After I flash updated the bios the windows install went through by some miracle of God however the system froze up while installing the Intel VGA drivers. and messed up the whole system. Now I get blue screens again and I cannot even attempt to correct the driver issues without a crash.
I since have wiped my HDD for a 3rd time... attempted to re install windows 7 again over the same bios ver. 1.30, and I am back at square 1. Windows install not working properly. I even tried a different copy of windows and I get the same problems. I have now transfered the components back to the to my old Asus setup with a dual core AMD and everything boots up flawlessly.
This is very frustrating because I have put together many PC configurations and I have never had such a strange and complex problem when installing an operating system. Why would my system work great for 3 days and then totally crap out on me? I have done research on my problem and it seems to most likely point to 2 things. Either I have a bad peice of hardware (motherboard or ram most likely) or I am installing the OS incorrectly. Can someone please point me in the right direction. What am I doing wrong? If this is a normal problem please let me know if it's easily fixable. My RMA period at new egg is closing fast and I need to know soon if the problem is hardware or software related. I cannot ask Asrock for assistance because the company is closed till next month for the new year holiday...
Thank you for taking time to read and respond to my post.
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