PC Problems

loudbagel

loudbagel

Pre-takeoff checklist
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Jan 16, 2011
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Hummingbird Saltalamacchia
So I have my own home built computer , It has ran fine up until a couple of weeks ago when it stopped recognizing the speakers I had plugged in. After it go's to sleep it will lose the driver and no sound will be able to play, it takes a few restarts before it will find the sound again.

Next thing that starts happening it it starts losing the hard drives. After restart it will pop up and say "please insert correct boot media and restart" so I restart 10 or 15 times and it will finally find the hard drives and start normally.

I opened it up tonight and all the connections are made and everything looks ok.....

To recap:
1 Sound go's away and comes back after multiple restarts, I have downloaded and installed some realtek drivers

2. Boot cant find my hard drives , checked them with sea tools and they passed all checks.

What am I missing or doing wrong??
 
If you came to my shop i would test the power supply as a first test. Losing the sound is strange... Hard drives not being detected is also strange. How old is this home built pc?
 
The computer is about 3 years old...

New update looks like it is dead this morning!

On startup it says the it is missing the BCD in C:/Boot and to run the repair disk. So I put the disk in and it pops up saying C:/Boot is corrupt and unreadable.

So now I guess i am really screwed! Any ideas?
 
At this point, it sounds like one of those things that's going to be a pain to try to troubleshoot over the internet. :(

It could be the motherboard, power supply, initially I was thinking sound card until you mentioned hard drive, or hard drive.

Do you have another computer that you can put components into, or borrow components from? I think the first thing I'd try is to swap out the power supply to see if that is it. The reason I'm thinking this is because you describe problems from two different unrelated components, the hard drive and the sound card. Sound card gets power from the MLB, hard drive gets it from the PS. Bad PS could cause a lot of different hard to find problems, if you don't suspect it.

If changing the power supply doesn't solve the problem, pull all cards, and all but one memory stick (try them one at a time if there are more than one) from the MLB, and test the computer adding one component at a time. I've seen this kind of problem, and even to the point of the computer acting like there was no power to it at all, because of a bad modem or a bad sound card. Unplugging the defective part solved the problem in both of those cases.

Do you hear the hard drive(s) spin up when you start the computer? If not, that could be another sign of a bad power supply. Of course, it could be that your sound card and hard drive both went out, but that would be one killer coincidence, which is why I'm not leaning that direction.
 
I would buy a name brand (HP, Dell, etc.) computer to replace it. You should not buy a whitebox clone unless you are really proficient at support and troubleshooting. Look for a computer that includes 3 years of support or purchase the extended support from the manufacturer (not third party), as they will guarantee like part replacement for the life of the warranty, avoiding having to reload the OS or install new drivers. This will provide you with the most pain free ownership.
 
> saying C:/Boot is corrupt and unreadable

If the disk is not noisy (grinding, clicking, screeching, etc) ... I have used SpinRite to
rescue disks which have had critical sectors become soft.

http://www.grc.com
 
You might also want to swap your DIMMS around, if you have more than one, or try it with only one at a time installed. Flaky memory can cause all sorts of oddball, difficult to troubleshoot problems, and the non-ECC PC memory used in most systems now has no form of error checking or even detection any more.
 
Thanks for all the advice guys! With all the recent problems I think its time to go to a new rig!

So I will start another thread where you can help me pick out the best parts!
 
I wonder if @loudbagel is almost done solving this? Three weeks is nothing compared to 8 years..... Maybe frnklin can be of some help.
 
careful pointing out the age of a thread, it might get deleted!
 
The non-booting hard drive could be a bad drive. Download Belarc Advisor and run that. https://www.belarc.com/products_belarc_advisor It will display a "Smart" reading on your hard drive. If it says the hard drive is anything other than healthy, then replace. If you wait too long, you may not be able to recover data from the hard drive.
 
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