PC death

RegisterMe · Post by **RegisterMe** » Sun, 29. Jul 18, 13:15

I was sat there last night playing a game and watching something on iPlayer when my screens went black. On boot the PC went to BIOS. I think (but am not completely sure) that I sorted that out. Now on boot it goes to a black screen, with the "four turquoise Windows graphic" and "Preparing Automatic Repair" in white underneath it. I've rebooted multiple times, completely removed power, and left if "preparing" overnight. No joy.

Win 10 64bit Home Premium.
Can't get to safe mode
No Win 10 install osi.

Current plan is to try to get hold of a DVD / USB osi and boot / get to repair / get to safe mode off that before determining what, if any, hardware has crapped out.

Any thoughts / comments / advice?

Cheers,

RM

Post by **euclid** » Sun, 29. Jul 18, 14:22

I take you do not have a backup on a memory stick or dvd/cd? Maybe even a W10 disk you could insert and try to boot from that?

Otherwise there are a few things you could check:

- lose cables (particular if you had cleaned the interior before)
- faulty PSU, tricky to check unless the burnout is obvious
- fan/cooling not working
- lose cooling on CPU
- system HD/SSD failure

Hope you can sort that out soon.

Cheers Euclid

Praefectus classis · Post by **Praefectus classis** » Sun, 29. Jul 18, 14:22

If you've got another computer to use, you could always download something like Linux Mint and boot from a live DVD or USB stick. It would at least give you an idea if the hardware is working to an extent.

Post by **Tamina** » Sun, 29. Jul 18, 14:24

Sound like the HDD failure I had a few weeks ago. It now boots directly into repair-mode every time and sometimes it boots after that but is really slow after that and crashes easily.

RegisterMe · Post by **RegisterMe** » Sun, 29. Jul 18, 14:37

Turning off overclocking has let me get into safe mode.

RegisterMe · Post by **RegisterMe** » Sun, 29. Jul 18, 14:39

And doing that once let me get back to my normal desktop. Weird. Good, but weird.

Feeling a lot less vexed right now.

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Sun, 29. Jul 18, 14:52

Good to hear but get yourself a painless back-up application that does iso images and incremental backups (I use Paragon v16) as it may be that something in your system is still dying.

Post by **euclid** » Sun, 29. Jul 18, 15:00

RegisterMe wrote:Turning off overclocking has let me get into safe mode.....And doing that once let me get back to my normal desktop. Weird. Good, but weird.

What Alan said; I got a recovery on a 32GB mem stick just in case.

Anyway, I'd do a clean reboot (shut down the PC and then back up) because it may be a sorftware (OC drivers) issue. However, it may also be a mem leak so try to run a memory check. Finally oc'ing causes heat and/or voltage increase, hence check PSU and cooling.

Good luck.

Cheers Euclid

RegisterMe · Post by **RegisterMe** » Sun, 29. Jul 18, 15:06

Yeah getting a Win 10 boot / install is definitely on my list of things to do tomorrow, in addition to calling the manufacturers to find out what the OC settings are actually meant to be.

I'm also going to ask a friend {cough Anti cough} to remote in later and check things out.

My data is on a separate HDD and is backed up with OneDrive and manually so I wasn't too concerned about that.

What I am concerned about is quite how dependent I am on having a working PC. And quite how stressful it is when I don't have one. I'm not sure that's healthy.

pjknibbs · Post by **pjknibbs** » Sun, 29. Jul 18, 17:23

This sounds very similar to what happened to the machine I had a few years ago. It was a 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo which I had overclocked to 2.7GHz, and it worked fine that way for a couple of years. Then it started erroring out and I had to take the overclock off a bit at a time--within a couple of weeks it was back to stock clock and I decided it was time for an upgrade.

Chips · Post by **Chips** » Sun, 29. Jul 18, 17:53

Did a windows update get pushed or something recently?

Was it back in Feb i had to reinstall. PC wouldn't start windows - eventually got it to do a reinstall (without deleting existing data), and everything has worked perfect since.

I think it was a week or two later I heard there had been a botched up windows 10 update that cocked up some pc's and was fixed shortly thereafter...

RegisterMe · Post by **RegisterMe** » Sun, 29. Jul 18, 19:59

Chips wrote:Did a windows update get pushed or something recently?

That was an initial thought / concern of mine too but no, I don't think I can point the blame in that direction.

I just left it for a few hours whilst I was out and all was good when I got back. I think the acid test, alluding to pjknibbs post above, will be tomorrow when I talk to the manufacturer and find out what it should be overclocked at.....

Morkonan · Post by **Morkonan** » Sun, 29. Jul 18, 22:00

Chips wrote:Did a windows update get pushed or something recently?

^--- This.

I've had this happen three times with a laptop running Win10... Three times. Three "LOLZ IT'S @$%$%'ED UP" events due to Windows 10 bending over and inserting a telephone-pole up it's own arse... dry. And, its super-duper "Windows discovered something borked up and is going to try to fix it like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest" repair feature? Lolz... And, the laptop's emergency recovery hardware-enabled-nuclear-bomb-of-system-resets features? Lols... utter crap.

My suggestion is that anyone running Win10 change their boot sequences, first, preferably including both CD and USB boot-first options before the system disk. (Doesn't seem to mean @$$^$ to my laptop, though, since it seems to forget where its controllers are when that happens.)

Anyway, when this happens to me, the only thing that seems to fix it is "magic." IOW - Windows 10 does not give enough immediately accessible feedback to the user regarding the system. It's all Fourth Grade feedback crap. "Your system seems to be having itsy-bitsy problems. We're going to try to fix it! Would you like to associate your social media accounts, now?" Friggin "Clippy" would be more consoling than what Win10 gives me.

Anyway, what will fix this?

Magic.

Keep trying to run through the BIOS if you can get to it, let the Win10 troubleshooter run, no matter how many times it claims it is still trying to fix the problem, and hope for the best. If you have an old copy of Windows XP, wave that over the keyboard in a threatening manner. That seems to help...

RegisterMe · Post by **RegisterMe** » Sun, 29. Jul 18, 22:04

Mork, read the thread, fixed(ish) already

.

Morkonan · Post by **Morkonan** » Sun, 29. Jul 18, 22:10

RegisterMe wrote:Mork, read the thread, fixed(ish) already .

I did read it.

But, it will happen again - I guarantee it.

Win10 just wants you to think the problem is fixed. It's lulling you into a false-sense of security. Then, as soon as you're not worried about it happening... <BAM> It's gonna happen!

Antilogic · Post by **Antilogic** » Sun, 29. Jul 18, 22:10

RegisterMe wrote:{cough Anti cough}

Blimy....

RegisterMe · Post by **RegisterMe** » Sun, 29. Jul 18, 22:52

Morkonan wrote:But, it will happen again - I guarantee it.

No argument there

.

Post by **Tamina** » Mon, 30. Jul 18, 00:54

Morkonan wrote:I've had this happen three times with a laptop running Win10...

Windows 10 sometimes decides to update your drivers without your consent. Which is great but when those laptop brands think it is a good idea to make drivers "proprietary" then it might happen - it happened to me - that like AMD registers the proprietary device id from your old gpu as a brand new RX580 for some reason and installs "newer" drivers for this GPU.
All hail the Bluescreen.

Thanks, ACER!! I hate Acer. Never again.

Morkonan · Post by **Morkonan** » Mon, 30. Jul 18, 20:02

Tamina wrote:
Morkonan wrote:I've had this happen three times with a laptop running Win10...
Windows 10 sometimes decides to update your drivers without your consent.

^--- This.

"Hey, guess what? While you're working with critical computer components, we're gonna update all your drivers and while their registering we're gonna lock up everything interacting with those devices so everything loses its mind. Won't that be fun?"

Which is great but when those laptop brands think it is a good idea to make drivers "proprietary" then it might happen

All the devices on my laptop is chip manufacturer or Microsoft. There's "companion software" of course. I should probably let Win10 dump all that stuff, but I don't use my laptop for anything important. (If it exploded, I'd lose nothing except for a few notes and such and have a bit of inconvenience.)

Question: Win10 has an option to remove anything not in a normal Win10 install. ie "Clean full install" Anyone had any experience with that and, if so, any general opinions on doing that? There's not a lot of crap the provider put on that laptop. Microsoft is actually more guilty of unwanted bundling. But, I'm wondering if I should just go ahead and wipe that junk, anyway.

Post by **euclid** » Mon, 30. Jul 18, 20:23

Morkonan wrote:.....
Question: Win10 has an option to remove anything not in a normal Win10 install. ie "Clean full install" Anyone had any experience with that and, if so, any general opinions on doing that? There's not a lot of crap the provider put on that laptop. Microsoft is actually more guilty of unwanted bundling. But, I'm wondering if I should just go ahead and wipe that junk, anyway.

I have no experience with the unwanted stuff because for many years I build my PCs myself and hence only things get on there which I really want.

However, shortly after a successful upgrade to W10 I've decided to replace the system HD (an old raptor) with a new 500GB one. For that I had to do a "clean install" using Macrium Reflect and a 32GB memory stick (think 16GB is the minimum). It worked fine. There is a little "trick" to tell the OS about the increased size of the HD but it was no big deal. Just follow the instructions on the Macrium Reflect website.

Not sure this is what you are looking for but I hope it helps.

Cheers Euclid

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PC death

PC death