Broken PC?!?!

[vaio-fx]

I think my computer is broken, its a custom build so its not as if I can just send the whole thing back. It has been fine for a few moths until yesterday it just started going all weird. When I turn it on, it makes it as far as the logon screen then just freezes, sometimes you can move the mouse for a few seconds then thats it - it just freezes. I checked it wasnt the keyboard and mouse by using an old PS2 socket one and that didnt help. So its obviously the pc, not the keyboard and mouse. I wondered if it was due to overheating or a loose wire so I opened it up, took it all appart and then put it back together and did some cable tidying, it still doesnt work so this rules out loose wires. The Spec of this PC is in my sig. Thanks for any help.

EDIT: I have made it to the desktop on the odd occasion.

 

[Teny]

maybe its something with the HDD, do you have another HDD where you can install an OS on?

 

[vaio-fx]

I have got a spare HDD in another pc, its 120GB but IDE so I can't use it, my motherboard only has one IDE socket and I need that for the DVD otherwise I cant install vista - I have none of those IDE cables with 2 plugs sadly.

 

[Teny]

can you back up all your files on your HDD so you can reinstall windows?

 

[IAntDemo]

why not put your disk and and repair it.

to do this, put windows xp install disk in, reboot it and it should ask you to press any key to boot from cd, once this has been done a blue screen will appear and it should load files then it should say press f3 to repair, press f3 and then you will be in a black screen, log in by typing 1 and then press enter and enter the password, or leave it blank, now type in chkdsk /p

 

[Teny]

hes using Vista, is vista the same as XP when it comes to pressing F3?
i never used F3 before, i would just rather reinstall it.
Theres 2 pros to reinstall, going faster, and might fix the problem
the con is only if you didnt back anything up

 

[Joel~]

Disconnect the DVD drive and insert the spare HDD, back up your vital data, reconnect the DVD drive, reinstall Vista, get hold of a new IDE cable so you can run the DVD drive and IDE HDD at the same time, then use Vista Business/Ultimate's built-in backup tool (Backup and Restore Centre) to make a complete pc image and dump it on to the second drive.

This is a handy tool as we found out when we gave it a trial run at work the other day. Saves you reinstalling from scratch and copying the image back on to the hard drive took less than half an hour to do, which is quicker than my experiences with Ghost.

 

[vaio-fx]

Thanks for all the help, I don't mind formatting, I have done it on this pc quite a few times actually, I was just wondering if this problem was hardware related.