Slight HDD problem

[Rofltroll]

I'll be quick: When I start my computer everything is fine until i get to the windows start-up screen. More precise when i get to the "start windows normally" and "start windows in safe mode" etc screen. Starting windows normally will instanlty shut down my computer after a few seconds. Safe mode will start loadign some system files and then shut down my computer as well. My guess is that it's a hard drive problem since i've been having some problems with it lately : random blue screens and it constantly makes metallic noises. On a side note my i7 CPU's cooler was disconnected for like a week by accident, i just noticed it, but i hear it has a fail safe so hopefully that's not the problem. Any input is appreciated.

[bigball1]

What ver of windows you running?

[My_Inner_Fred]

You did reconnect the power to ur CPU cooler correct? Do you have another computer to test the HDD in? It does seem like ur HDD is failing.

[LuckyDeath]

Did you actually use your machine while the CPU cooler was unplugged?

 

A CPU without a cooler will over heat very fast, like 10 seconds. I'm surprised you were even able to login to Windows without it shutting down.

[wevsspot]

Rof - let's isolate the two problems.

 

While it's not good at all that you ran your pc for week without an active fan running on the cpu - you may have dodged the bullet simply in the fact that the machine gets through a post and attempts to start up the OS. So let's put that on the back burner.

 

Concentrating on the hard drive;

Every brand name HDD mfg. has a hard drive disk utility you can run from a bootable cd or thumbdrive to check the integrity of your drive. That's the starting point right there. Testing of the HDD outside of the OS environment. Go to your hard drive mfg.'s website and download their disk check utility and run it. See what that tells you about the condition/health of your HDD.

 

If your HDD checks out ok then we can attempt a simple rebuild of the MBR and see if that corrects your problem without a full reinstall.

[medbor]

Someone in the forum said something about installing windows on a computer without a heatsink at all (old athlon i believe), and i know a few people running their cpus passively (with towerstyle aftermarket heatsinks though), so i don't believe there to be any problem with your cpu.

[Rofltroll]

First of all thanks for all the input. Second, the i7 would shut down if it evere got at any alarming temperature. Third: I am writing all this from my brother's computer since my computer won't even get to windows. I've tried reinstalling the OS but the computer shuts down even faster now. About the time when i would normally have to "press any key to boot from CD". A thing that i forgot to mention is that i managed to start up a different hard drive that got half way through to booting up windows properly when it blue screened and instantly shut down my computer. Actually,all these problems started when i tried to hook up a neon light to my rig. One of 2 neon lights wouldn\t light up. I unplugged the neon light and then sealed up my computer (the same time i noticed my cpu was fanless and hooked it back up) and then the problem started happening. could the PSU have sustained damage while plugging the faulty neon light?

Edited June 22, 2011 by Rofltroll

[wevsspot]

I guess that's a possibility. Do you happen to have a spare power supply that you can try out? I guess that would be the first thing I would try. If that didn't work, I'd pull the whole rig apart and do a minimum hardware build outside the case. Just the bare essentials, and to be thorough I'd go ahead and clear the cmos and remove the cmos battery while I was pulling everything apart.

 

Put your motherboard on a static free surface. Pull and reseat your processor and reinstall cpu heatsink. Install one stick of memory, a known good hard drive, a video card and one optical drive. PS2 mouse and keyboard if you have them.

 

Move your cmos jumper back to the save position and put your cmos battery back in. Boot and see if you can get into the BIOS to load the optimized defaults. If so proceed with an attempt to install a fresh copy of Windows.

 

One other thing - you should consider trying a new HDD cable at the same time.

[Hoopa]

One possibility: if you installed windows on your hard drive with the bios hard drive mode in IDE, then switched to AHCI, or vice versa, windows will fail to boot. This could be the case if you did a "restore bios to default settings" or did a flash of the bios.