Ram issue(cable hanging out)

[ian73]

My pc started playing up a few days ago, running slow, games not loading, windows acting weird so i thought i would give it a clean, on doing so i noticed a realy thin blue wire hanging from the top of one of my ram sticks(corsair xms3 8gb) dont understand how its there but its well attached, one end goes into the top it the other end is loose, so will this be my issue and will it run on one ram stick but just slower? i dont want to damage the pc, its self built and was planning some upgrades so maybe now is the time. thx for reading.

 

[markwp]

My pc started playing up a few days ago, running slow, games not loading, windows acting weird so i thought i would give it a clean, on doing so i noticed a realy thin blue wire hanging from the top of one of my ram sticks(corsair xms3 8gb) dont understand how its there but its well attached, one end goes into the top it the other end is loose, so will this be my issue and will it run on one ram stick but just slower? i dont want to damage the pc, its self built and was planning some upgrades so maybe now is the time. thx for reading.

The wire is not from your ram. Did you remove your ram when cleaning? You probably dislodged a header wire or wifi antenna. Unseat your ram, move the wire (see if it has some type of plug end) and trace the wire to the origin. This will tell you what switch or such it is for.

Mark

 

[bumnut53]

It will run fine with 1 stick but im struggling to think what the blue wire is as ram doesn't usually have any wiring. are you sure its not another cable caught between the 2 sticks of ram?

 

[ian73]

My pc started playing up a few days ago, running slow, games not loading, windows acting weird so i thought i would give it a clean, on doing so i noticed a realy thin blue wire hanging from the top of one of my ram sticks(corsair xms3 8gb) dont understand how its there but its well attached, one end goes into the top it the other end is loose, so will this be my issue and will it run on one ram stick but just slower? i dont want to damage the pc, its self built and was planning some upgrades so maybe now is the time. thx for reading.

The wire is not from your ram. Did you remove your ram when cleaning? You probably dislodged a header wire or wifi antenna. Unseat your ram, move the wire (see if it has some type of plug end) and trace the wire to the origin. This will tell you what switch or such it is for.

Mark

Was my thoughts Mark but for the life of me i dont know how it got stuck in there, i have pulled it out now (no plugs) and its had a good clean so will fire it back up, hopfully all it needed was the clean and the problem is not from the wire.
Thx for quick replys guys.

 

[markwp]

My pc started playing up a few days ago, running slow, games not loading, windows acting weird so i thought i would give it a clean, on doing so i noticed a realy thin blue wire hanging from the top of one of my ram sticks(corsair xms3 8gb) dont understand how its there but its well attached, one end goes into the top it the other end is loose, so will this be my issue and will it run on one ram stick but just slower? i dont want to damage the pc, its self built and was planning some upgrades so maybe now is the time. thx for reading.

The wire is not from your ram. Did you remove your ram when cleaning? You probably dislodged a header wire or wifi antenna. Unseat your ram, move the wire (see if it has some type of plug end) and trace the wire to the origin. This will tell you what switch or such it is for.

Mark

Was my thoughts Mark but for the life of me i dont know how it got stuck in there, i have pulled it out now (no plugs) and its had a good clean so will fire it back up, hopfully all it needed was the clean and the problem is not from the wire.
Thx for quick replys guys.

Ian:

Did the entire wire come out, or was it just stuck in the ram area and is still in the case? If the wire was caught under one of the ram sticks or in the clip that secures the ram, that could easily throw your machine off since that would effectively disable that stick of ram.

If the wire was in the top portion of your case, that is where case makers sometimes run fan connections, header wires or such. It would be worth your while to see if you can trace either the origin or termination of that wire.

Let us know if the rig is still acting strange.

Mark

 

[ian73]

My pc started playing up a few days ago, running slow, games not loading, windows acting weird so i thought i would give it a clean, on doing so i noticed a realy thin blue wire hanging from the top of one of my ram sticks(corsair xms3 8gb) dont understand how its there but its well attached, one end goes into the top it the other end is loose, so will this be my issue and will it run on one ram stick but just slower? i dont want to damage the pc, its self built and was planning some upgrades so maybe now is the time. thx for reading.

The wire is not from your ram. Did you remove your ram when cleaning? You probably dislodged a header wire or wifi antenna. Unseat your ram, move the wire (see if it has some type of plug end) and trace the wire to the origin. This will tell you what switch or such it is for.

Mark

Was my thoughts Mark but for the life of me i dont know how it got stuck in there, i have pulled it out now (no plugs) and its had a good clean so will fire it back up, hopfully all it needed was the clean and the problem is not from the wire.
Thx for quick replys guys.

Ian:

Did the entire wire come out, or was it just stuck in the ram area and is still in the case? If the wire was caught under one of the ram sticks or in the clip that secures the ram, that could easily throw your machine off since that would effectively disable that stick of ram.

If the wire was in the top portion of your case, that is where case makers sometimes run fan connections, header wires or such. It would be worth your while to see if you can trace either the origin or termination of that wire.

Let us know if the rig is still acting strange.

Mark

The whole wire came out, was like wedged inbetween where the 2 sides of the ram come together, the other has no sign of wires. I put the pc back together, the pc came on but nothing to the mouse, monitor or keyboard, played about with ports etc but dead, pulled the offending ram out just to check and i got everything to come on but the pc is not good, the start icon is very basic with start written on it and when i click on something the circle that whirl rounds just keeps on whirring, she aint happy, could it be my motherboard? when i took 1 ram out it was the one on the left, should i put the other one over to the left or no matter?
thx for help.

 

[markwp]

My pc started playing up a few days ago, running slow, games not loading, windows acting weird so i thought i would give it a clean, on doing so i noticed a realy thin blue wire hanging from the top of one of my ram sticks(corsair xms3 8gb) dont understand how its there but its well attached, one end goes into the top it the other end is loose, so will this be my issue and will it run on one ram stick but just slower? i dont want to damage the pc, its self built and was planning some upgrades so maybe now is the time. thx for reading.

The wire is not from your ram. Did you remove your ram when cleaning? You probably dislodged a header wire or wifi antenna. Unseat your ram, move the wire (see if it has some type of plug end) and trace the wire to the origin. This will tell you what switch or such it is for.

Mark

Was my thoughts Mark but for the life of me i dont know how it got stuck in there, i have pulled it out now (no plugs) and its had a good clean so will fire it back up, hopfully all it needed was the clean and the problem is not from the wire.
Thx for quick replys guys.

Ian:

Did the entire wire come out, or was it just stuck in the ram area and is still in the case? If the wire was caught under one of the ram sticks or in the clip that secures the ram, that could easily throw your machine off since that would effectively disable that stick of ram.

If the wire was in the top portion of your case, that is where case makers sometimes run fan connections, header wires or such. It would be worth your while to see if you can trace either the origin or termination of that wire.

Let us know if the rig is still acting strange.

Mark

The whole wire came out, was like wedged inbetween where the 2 sides of the ram come together, the other has no sign of wires. I put the pc back together, the pc came on but nothing to the mouse, monitor or keyboard, played about with ports etc but dead, pulled the offending ram out just to check and i got everything to come on but the pc is not good, the start icon is very basic with start written on it and when i click on something the circle that whirl rounds just keeps on whirring, she aint happy, could it be my motherboard? when i took 1 ram out it was the one on the left, should i put the other one over to the left or no matter?
thx for help.

Make and model of pc? Operating system? Graphics card? Ram brand/info? Power supply info?

When you say you got everything to come on, does that mean you were able to boot into windows?

Are you sure you got all of the cables reattached to your drives, video card, motherboard, etc?

I know it's a lot of questions, but the more info we have, the better the chances of figuring this out.

Mark

 

[ian73]

My pc started playing up a few days ago, running slow, games not loading, windows acting weird so i thought i would give it a clean, on doing so i noticed a realy thin blue wire hanging from the top of one of my ram sticks(corsair xms3 8gb) dont understand how its there but its well attached, one end goes into the top it the other end is loose, so will this be my issue and will it run on one ram stick but just slower? i dont want to damage the pc, its self built and was planning some upgrades so maybe now is the time. thx for reading.

The wire is not from your ram. Did you remove your ram when cleaning? You probably dislodged a header wire or wifi antenna. Unseat your ram, move the wire (see if it has some type of plug end) and trace the wire to the origin. This will tell you what switch or such it is for.

Mark

Was my thoughts Mark but for the life of me i dont know how it got stuck in there, i have pulled it out now (no plugs) and its had a good clean so will fire it back up, hopfully all it needed was the clean and the problem is not from the wire.
Thx for quick replys guys.

Ian:

Did the entire wire come out, or was it just stuck in the ram area and is still in the case? If the wire was caught under one of the ram sticks or in the clip that secures the ram, that could easily throw your machine off since that would effectively disable that stick of ram.

If the wire was in the top portion of your case, that is where case makers sometimes run fan connections, header wires or such. It would be worth your while to see if you can trace either the origin or termination of that wire.

Let us know if the rig is still acting strange.

Mark

The whole wire came out, was like wedged inbetween where the 2 sides of the ram come together, the other has no sign of wires. I put the pc back together, the pc came on but nothing to the mouse, monitor or keyboard, played about with ports etc but dead, pulled the offending ram out just to check and i got everything to come on but the pc is not good, the start icon is very basic with start written on it and when i click on something the circle that whirl rounds just keeps on whirring, she aint happy, could it be my motherboard? when i took 1 ram out it was the one on the left, should i put the other one over to the left or no matter?
thx for help.

Make and model of pc? Operating system? Graphics card? Ram brand/info? Power supply info?

When you say you got everything to come on, does that mean you were able to boot into windows?

Are you sure you got all of the cables reattached to your drives, video card, motherboard, etc?

I know it's a lot of questions, but the more info we have, the better the chances of figuring this out.

Mark

Asrock FATAL1TY P67 PRO REV 3.0 1155 Motherboard
NVIDIA Ge-Force GTX 570, i5-2500k cpu 3.30GHz, windows 7, ram = corsair XMS3 DDR3 1600mhz 8gb 9-9-9-24 1.65v, power supply = corsair HX1000w
Was able to get into windows, started a virus scan and opened "my computer" and lost the whole screen bar the virus scan window, all very strange, re-booted and crashed again, can move the mouse but whirly circle up again and staying up.
Checked all the cables twice and all look ok, i fear for my motherboard ere, what you think?

 

[markwp]

I don't think it's your MB. Sounds more like a disc issue.

Run repair from your windows dvd:

1. Insert dvd in cd/dvd tray, shut down computer
2. Restart and access boot manager (on my Asus boards, I press F8 until the boot choices appear
3. Boot from your cd device - it shoud say cd/dvd/rw or some such
4. Press any key to boot from cd
5. Windows files will load, and windows start up screen will appear
6. At start screen, choose "next"
7. Choose Repair your computer (lower left side)
8. Choose your operating system and press next
9. At the choices screen you have several options, of which three will be your best choices:
a. Startup repair - this will automatically check your complete startup method, drivers, disc, etc. This may take some time to complete, so be patient, or
b. System restore - If you know you have a good restore point (prior to when you started having problems, this choice will "reset" your pc to the condition it was in on that date, or
c. Command prompt - this choice puts you on the command prompt line where you will enter dos commands. In your case the command would be "chkdsk" without the quotes. I do not recommend this unless you are comfortable working in dos. If you go this route, it will take quite some time to complete.

IMO, your best bet would be to try the startup repair first and see if that fixes the boot issues. If you are able to boot into windows, DO NOT run and programs immediately - just let it sit for a couple minutes to see if anythings burps. If it seems to be running right, click the start button and in the search box type "cleanmgr.exe" without the quotes and run that program to clean up loose junk.

If the startup repair doesn't work, then try the system restore.

If they both fail to get you running right, I suspect your hard drive is dying. If that's the case, remove the old drive and replace it as soon as possible, do a fresh install of windows (with only the cd/dvd drive and new hard drive hooked up), do all the updates, install the anti-virus of your choice (I use microsoft essentials, but then I'm very careful with surfing and emails). Once you are set to go, set up your old hard drive as a secondary (d drive and recover all your data, photos, files, etc. and store them on your new drive or burn the data to dvds.

Hope this gets you running - let me know if you need any other help.

Mark

 

[ian73]

Thx Mark for detailed answer, i will try this tonight, only issue i have is the windows 7 disc i have is an upgrade disc, i had xp installed, will this be an issue?

So you understand, i can get onto windows and everything loads, so can i run repairs from there?

Its just the system is very unstable when running and crashes alot or does nothing.

thx again.

 

[markwp]

Thx Mark for detailed answer, i will try this tonight, only issue i have is the windows 7 disc i have is an upgrade disc, i had xp installed, will this be an issue?

So you understand, i can get onto windows and everything loads, so can i run repairs from there?

Its just the system is very unstable when running and crashes alot or does nothing.

thx again.

OK - since you can get in windows, start up repair won't be necessary. Let's try a couple less invasive things first:

Run disc cleanup first: start button > all programs > accessories > system tools > disc cleanup

Reboot and see if that made any difference

Also, are you currently running an anti-virus and have you done a scan recently?

Let me know

Mark

 

[ian73]

Mark, i'm unable to do anthing now, when i selece an icon or try to do a disc cleanup its goes to do it but nothing happens, just sits in windows.
I have McAfee free from BT but recently left BT and McAfee has been unable to update for a couple of weeks.
Im at a dead end now.

Ian

 

[markwp]

Mark, i'm unable to do anthing now, when i selece an icon or try to do a disc cleanup its goes to do it but nothing happens, just sits in windows.
I have McAfee free from BT but recently left BT and McAfee has been unable to update for a couple of weeks.
Im at a dead end now.

Ian

Ian:

Last thing that we can try is system restore. You can restore from the upgrade cd, but, if the upgrade disc does NOT contain SP1 on the disc and you have already installed SP1, it may have issues.

If you are willing to give it a try, follow the directions in my earlier post. Pick a "restore to" date prior to when you first noticed the slowdowns, etc.

Short of this, I am pretty much out of ideas except a clean install.

Mark