Vince Maskeeper
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- Jan 18, 1999
- Messages
- 6,500
Yesterday, out of the blue, my computer restarted on its own. No big deal, some fluke I figured. An hour later- it kinda did it again- only this time it just went black and never restarted...
Now the system won't boot beyond the windows splash screen- it just goes to black and shuts the monitor off.
It just started happening out of the blue yesterday (along with some other OS related problems I caused when trying to fix it)-- so I decided it was due and formatted the drive and reinstalled windows. It was working fine for the first couple hours with the reinstall, and then it started doing this again.
Whether i boot in safe mode or normal- it gets about 1/2 way through the splash screen, and then kinda goes into standby. The system is still powered up (drives and fans still spinning, power still on)- but the monitor goes into standby (can hear it click and powerdown) and the system sits.
I thought at first that maybe the monitor or video card was just shutting off- and the system was still running in the background-- but back when it was allowing me into windows before going black I tried playing some audio to see if it continued when the system died, and it didn't. So when the screen goes into standby, the entire system is dead-- reset won't work, ctrl-alt-del doesn't work, must be shut off and powered up again.
I've tried everything I can think of: stripped the system down to one stick of ram, videocard and the hd, and it still does this. Have tried different RAM, Different Video Cards, reinstalled OS- everything I can think of- still repeats the exact same thing- gets to windows splash and goes into standby.
I would be happy to chalk it up to the Mobo failing, except if I go to reinstall it will work throughout the reinstall process. No problems formatting the drive, installing windows- heck it will even boot a few times and let me install drivers before it goes nuts. If it was some sort of short or mobo power problem, it seems that it would happen regardless-- but it dies 99% of the time at the same point on Windows load.
I tried line by line confirmation on boot- and it usually dies right after confirming loading msmouse.vxd- but it dies regardless of if I load that vxd or not (I also tried not loading any VXDs, but it died regardless). It seems that whatever step it hits immediately following msmouse.vxd is killing it (??).
Also, now it only even STARTS booting every couple times I turn it on. I turn it on, powers on- but no BEEP or booting. I shut it off, power it up again- and it will boot. At first I thought it was a badly seated card, so I would power down and adjust the cards, and then it would boot. However, I eventually realized that if I powered down and didn't touch the cards, it still decided to boot when I turned it back on.
Any thoughts on this? I've put together 2 abit based systems (mine is the Abit KA7-100) recently- and both were real sketchy with the AGP slot... slightly jarring the AGP card usually prevented the system from booting, and you had to reseat the video card. But this isn't happening in my case- the system is just fucking nuts, regardless of how the videocard is seated.
-V
Now the system won't boot beyond the windows splash screen- it just goes to black and shuts the monitor off.
It just started happening out of the blue yesterday (along with some other OS related problems I caused when trying to fix it)-- so I decided it was due and formatted the drive and reinstalled windows. It was working fine for the first couple hours with the reinstall, and then it started doing this again.
Whether i boot in safe mode or normal- it gets about 1/2 way through the splash screen, and then kinda goes into standby. The system is still powered up (drives and fans still spinning, power still on)- but the monitor goes into standby (can hear it click and powerdown) and the system sits.
I thought at first that maybe the monitor or video card was just shutting off- and the system was still running in the background-- but back when it was allowing me into windows before going black I tried playing some audio to see if it continued when the system died, and it didn't. So when the screen goes into standby, the entire system is dead-- reset won't work, ctrl-alt-del doesn't work, must be shut off and powered up again.
I've tried everything I can think of: stripped the system down to one stick of ram, videocard and the hd, and it still does this. Have tried different RAM, Different Video Cards, reinstalled OS- everything I can think of- still repeats the exact same thing- gets to windows splash and goes into standby.
I would be happy to chalk it up to the Mobo failing, except if I go to reinstall it will work throughout the reinstall process. No problems formatting the drive, installing windows- heck it will even boot a few times and let me install drivers before it goes nuts. If it was some sort of short or mobo power problem, it seems that it would happen regardless-- but it dies 99% of the time at the same point on Windows load.
I tried line by line confirmation on boot- and it usually dies right after confirming loading msmouse.vxd- but it dies regardless of if I load that vxd or not (I also tried not loading any VXDs, but it died regardless). It seems that whatever step it hits immediately following msmouse.vxd is killing it (??).
Also, now it only even STARTS booting every couple times I turn it on. I turn it on, powers on- but no BEEP or booting. I shut it off, power it up again- and it will boot. At first I thought it was a badly seated card, so I would power down and adjust the cards, and then it would boot. However, I eventually realized that if I powered down and didn't touch the cards, it still decided to boot when I turned it back on.
Any thoughts on this? I've put together 2 abit based systems (mine is the Abit KA7-100) recently- and both were real sketchy with the AGP slot... slightly jarring the AGP card usually prevented the system from booting, and you had to reseat the video card. But this isn't happening in my case- the system is just fucking nuts, regardless of how the videocard is seated.
-V