Care To Diagnose My PC Problems?

RKeaton

Baseband Member
Messages
42
Is there a House in the house? I need a diagnostician.

~ 2 y/o pc. HP "MediaCenter" model m7330n

Running Windows Vista Home Basic

Samsung Sync Master LCD monitor 930b

My computer knowledge: novice

So...all was running flawlessly but now I am having major boot-up issues. At the same time, the screen has gone all squiggly on me. These two things happened simultaneously. I think I've ruled out the monitor having any problem.

I have (or had) a 250gb C drive that came installed on the pc, but it is no longer being recognized. What was my D drive (a secondary 120 gb disc) is now being recognized as my C drive.

This change happened when tried re-installing Windows. Instead of performing the re-install on my C drive it went onto my D drive, as if the C was dead. But even after doing a clean install on the D drive there was no improvement whatsoever. The problems were exactly the same.

So here's what's happening:

It boots up badly almost every time, in a variety of ways. Sometimes it gets stuck on the blue HP screen (the one with prompts at the bottom such as 'press F1 to enter setup', etc). Other times it passes that screen but then stops at a black screen and fails to complete the boot-up. On the rare occasion that it completes the boot up it then just crashes and tries to restart.

Then there's this weird one: often times the moment I push the power button it will go into this high rpm fan mode and just get stuck there. Nothing happens at all, it just makes a loud noise. I have to manually power it off and on several times to get it to stop.

The best I've been able to do it get it to run in safe mode (after repeated boot attemps). Other than that there is the issue of the very squiggly screen. Text is very difficult to read.

Other than re-installing Windows, the only thing I have tried is going into the boot menu and putting hard drive group (my former D/now C drive) as the first priority. I read online that that might help but it had no effect.

So, who out there can help save my machine? Any advice would be really appreciated :)



Rob
 
Could it really be something that low-tech?

I opened it up. It doesn't look particularly dusty to me. Plus if it were an overheating thing wouldn't it only happen after it's been running for awhile? I wake up in the morning, turn it on and the problems begin.
 
I would start by pulling the power on the secondary backup drive and restoring windows to the factory settings on the master hard drive. Doing that should clear up the problems that happened after the restore. Be sure to do a destructive restore so all partitions are wiped and new ones are made.

If the computer has restore cds use those..if its a backup partition i believe its f11 before boot up
 
well, first of all the problems were already happening before i (it) switched drives. but regardless, your suggestions sound good but i'm not sure exactly how to do it. i'm sure i can figure out how to unplug my secondary drive.

By 'destructive restore' do you mean what Windows calls a 'clean install'?

And by factory setting do you mean put that drive back to top priority in the boot order?

p.s. problem keeps getting worse. Came home today to find it even tougher to start. Ugh...
 
Clean install sounds like its the same as destructive. By factory settings I meant to have the restore wipe the drive and restore the computer to the original out of box state. Setting the primary drive as the first in the boot order is good.


well, first of all the problems were already happening before i (it) switched drives. but regardless, your suggestions sound good but i'm not sure exactly how to do it. i'm sure i can figure out how to unplug my secondary drive.

By 'destructive restore' do you mean what Windows calls a 'clean install'?

And by factory setting do you mean put that drive back to top priority in the boot order?

p.s. problem keeps getting worse. Came home today to find it even tougher to start. Ugh...
 
Man, has this site changed? I posted questions here a couple times in the past and got lots of help. Now when I need it most I only get a couple of replies. What's up?

I know my original post is long, but I only included relevant info. Still working with a barely running pc over here...
 
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