Computer issue / oddity

[Mayhem]

Saturday night I was working on my desktop PC and was attempting to kill a program. I hit CTRL+ALT+DEL, the screen changed to VGA and the task manager came up.

I killed the app, opened a cmd window and manually ran shutdown (shutdown -f -r -t 0). That hung so I hit the rest button. Not preferred, but has never caused a failure for me.

The computer boots up to the loading animation and shuts off.

So I got into recovery (Win 7) and had it check the boot process for errors. None found. I reboot the machine with the DVD in the drive. It gets to the same place (Windows animation) while reading the disc and the computer shuts down.

So I grab Ubuntu Live 9.10 and am able to see all of the partitions and data. Ubuntu also does not detect any disc errors. I had Ubuntu detect that my laptop HDD was failing a week before it died, so I trust it. Seagate Tools doesn't find any problems either.

A friend thought that it was the PSU, but that can't be possible given that I can boot with the Live cd.

I've pulled all but my video card (mobo has video on board) and my other optical drive.

I built the computer (5th or 6th PC I've built from scratch) and have worked in both PC hardware and PC software support since the early 90s. So I'm not a n00b.

Frankly, I'm baffled. Anyone have any ideas?

 

[nyydynasty]

I agree that it sounds like a PSU issue. You might be able to boot with the Live CD because it requires less power to boot all the necessary applications/drivers. Its the only thing that I can think of as the cause of the problem

 

[Martimus]

Another possibility, that it sounds like you started to explore, is that you've got a piece of hardware that's over-drawing one of the power supply rails. If you've got lots of devices connected to your PSU that can get rather tedious trying to locate the root cause...

 

[Mayhem]

Well, I replaced the PSU today with a 500w (I was running a 430W Thermaltake) and it does the exact same thing.

I hesitate to replace the motherboard as I assume if that was bad I wouldn't have gotten that far when booting off of the Ubuntu Live cd.

 

[nyydynasty]

not necessarily. You might want to swap that out to do a proper test.

 

[SoulTerror]

Might want to rewrite your MBR.

 

[Mayhem]

Might want to rewrite your MBR.

I did that too. No change.

At the beginning of this I was able to run Startup Repair. No problems found there either.

 

[Mayhem]

not necessarily. You might want to swap that out to do a proper test.

Trust me, if I had another board to test with I would've done that before starting the thread.

Last night I pulled everything off of the board with the exception of the RAM and video card. Same thing. I pulled one stick. Same thing. I put that stick back and pulled the other. Same thing.

I did hardware and software support for BMC Software in Austin and built and tested prototype hardware for Dell, so I'm familiar with PC issues. (Hopefully that doesn't come across as being rude. Not my intention)

 

[nyydynasty]

Trust me, if I had another board to test with I would've done that before starting the thread.

Last night I pulled everything off of the board with the exception of the RAM and video card. Same thing. I pulled one stick. Same thing. I put that stick back and pulled the other. Same thing.

I did hardware and software support for BMC Software in Austin and built and tested prototype hardware for Dell, so I'm familiar with PC issues. (Hopefully that doesn't come across as being rude. Not my intention)

not taken as being rude at all.

regardless if you have (or dont have) another mobo to test....in order to properly test it, you'll have to swap it out (as you already know). Without doing that, you'll never know for sure if the mobo is the issue. And the way it sounds at this point, the mobo is looking more and more like the culprit.

 

[Mayhem]

not taken as being rude at all.

regardless if you have (or dont have) another mobo to test....in order to properly test it, you'll have to swap it out (as you already know). Without doing that, you'll never know for sure if the mobo is the issue. And the way it sounds at this point, the mobo is looking more and more like the culprit.

I agree. I've already started looking for a replacement via Newegg.

Oh well, I was looking for an excuse to give to the wife to justify upgrading.

Thanks!

 

[lunatic59]

Can you get to the safe mode boot menu prior to the animation? If so, you can go with last known good config. if that fails, then i'd have to agree with a hardware failure.

 

[SoulTerror]

Do you have a power supply tester?

 

[bikeandestroyx]

Have you ran a chkdsk /f? Sometimes this will fix weird no booting issues. Also is your harddrive failing?

 

[Mayhem]

Can you get to the safe mode boot menu prior to the animation? If so, you can go with last known good config. if that fails, then i'd have to agree with a hardware failure.

Yes. I was able to get into safe mode. I was focused on getting back to being able to boot. I don't recall seeing last known good config under Windows 7, but I wasn't focused on that either.

Do you have a power supply tester?

No, and no need to at this point. Like I said, I'd bought a new PSU and swapped it. No difference

Have you ran a chkdsk /f? Sometimes this will fix weird no booting issues. Also is your harddrive failing?

No and no.

At this point, when I get my new motherboard I'll have to reinstall. I booted up using a bootable DOS 6.2 cd and nuked all of the partition information I saw. No biggie. I was able to copy off what I needed when booting off of a Ubuntu Live 9.04 disc and copied it to a external drive.

I needed to reinstall it anyway. I had a bunch of clutter spread about the partitions and stopped using some of the stuff I had installed.
I'll post back in this thread when I get my board installed and verify it was the issue.

Thanks guys.

 

[Mayhem]

It was the motherboard.

Thanks guys.