Problem even after reformat

[yarilo]

Hello. Need an advice on how to fix my problem. Computer froze in the middle of game and after reboot was never the same.
Basically I see a lot of "(" symbols during startup and even in BIOS. Some type of corruption. I also see error messages that drivers are missing.

Ok, so I wipe my hard drive and resinstall Vista. However, I still see the same "(" when I go to BIOS and after PC still crashes after I reinstall all the drivers.

Question: what's happening with BIOS and should I flash it? Anything I should do instead of that?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Holysky]

try flashing it, and installing latest drivers

could be a problem with the CMOS

 

[yarilo]

Thanks. Any good guides how to flash bios? Never tried it yet and afraid to screw up PC to point of no return
Also my BIOS says Phoenix - AwardBIOS in the name. So I go with Phoenix, right?

 

[A True Folder]

before jumping into a bios flash on an unstable pc you should check some other components, because, if it takes a dump during the flash you'll be screwed royally.

Which video card do you have? I would suggest your video card has gone tits up from the symptoms you describe, can you try another card in your pc?

Run Memtest86+ to see if the memory is the problem as well.

Can you be more sprcific as to the missing drivers messages please.

 

[setishock]

Yeah I agree with hold off on a bios flash. If you muck that up on some systems you'll wind up with an expensive door prop.

Check also the temps inside the case. Some issues can be traced back to over heating. I let my P4 rig get trashed out and it let me know by tossing it's vid card drivers and acting like it was stuck in stupid.

 

[yarilo]

Thanks all for responding.
I have Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2 card and Nvidia NForce 790i Ultra SLI motherboard.

Actually among other errors I had winload32.exe missing. When I searched in Internet it appeared to be a worm... But even if it is a virus or worm how can it stay if I wiped my Hardrive and reinstalled Vista from scratch? Is it possible that BIOS is infected? I didn't think that was possible.

The first error that comes up now is:
Detecting Drives; Done; No lzivm{ founl. (( (( ((
and then the rest of the screen has
(( (((( etc.

Please note that the driver name seems to be borked as well. The line in bold has no typos, that's actually what gets displayed.


Next I have controllers displayed and also with some weird symbols. When I get a failure and windows is unable to start I can actually tab over to Memory diagnostic. I ran that and found no problems on either chip.

So still you think I should flash BIOS yet? I am just not sure what to do. I can start in safe mode with Networking though, so any advice how I can figure out the problem and fix it?

Thank you much in advance.

 

[Celegorm]

I doubt it's BIOS. It's sounding more like an over-heated/bad video card or faulty ram. burn memtest to a disk and boot from that and see if it comes up with anything.

 

[A True Folder]

I can start in safe mode with Networking though, so any advice how I can figure out the problem and fix it?

Thank you much in advance.

This suggests to me video card once more as safe mode does not load video drivers (or many drivers at all), which driver are you running? 185.85?

When you start in safe mode is everything OK? No corruption?