Please help before I take a sledge hammer to my computer!

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by StavrosnCO, Feb 21, 2007.

  1. StavrosnCO

    StavrosnCO Private E-2

    So my first post here is going to be the raving frustrations of a someone who has reached his wit's end. So I'll begin by thanking you for putting up with it! I'm also not sure that this is a hardware issue, though I consider myself to be fairly knowledgeable and the more time goes on the more this feels like a hardware problem

    So here's my problem(s):

    About a week ago my computer began having a few strange issues. It had been working fine and with no new hardware or software it suddenly decided to behave as if it were attempting to create for me the most challenging issue with a computer I have ever faced. It started with my sound. I have an ASUS A8N SLI Motherboard with an AC '97 Onboard Soundcard. It has one of those nifty programs with it that detects when you have plugged a new audio device into the jack and alerts you when one is plugged into the wrong slot. This began popping up with a message that I had misconnected wires and my sound became extremely distorted and full of static. After a few dismissals of the sound wizard my PC abruptly rebooted. It did this a few times with each time the sound failing before an abrupt reboot until one boot it got into windows and began to alternate completely locking up and returning to normal rotating about every second. I was able to bring up Task Manager and could see that the CPU usage was jumping between ~5% usage and 100% usage every time the computer locked up but I could see no process that was causing that kind of usage.

    I used the msconfig command to disable all of my start up services and programs except for the essential windows ones and rebooted. I got as far as the Windows loading screen and watched as the bar went across for several minutes longer than the normal loading time before it froze. I was able to boot into Windows in Safe Mode and even occassionally and seemingly randomly into Windows normally but the sound issue kept cropping back up and I could only reboot back into Windows without the loading screen freezing about 1 in 10 tries.

    So I reformatted, moved all my music and such to the new install and everything was fine for a few days. However, suddenly I had the odd sound issue happen again and now the loading problem is occurring again. The other really odd thing is that after the loading screen freezes, I have to power the machine off and turn it back on to even try to boot into windows again because if I just use the reset button, the computer acts as though the hard drive with Windows on it is not even plugged into the computer! I've already run CHKDSK with no problems found on the main drive and tried a repair install of Windows to no avail!

    To me this sounds as though my motherboard is going bad... Any thoughts on this or ideas of what to do next? Anything would be much appreciated!

    Here's a rundown of my specs as well:
    Windows XP Professional with SP2
    ASUS A8N-SLI Motherboard with the latest BIOS and Drivers
    AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Processor @ 2.02GHz
    2x512MB Kingston PC 3200 RAM sticks
    nVidia Geforce 7800 GT 256MB Video Card
    Seagate 250GB SATA Hard Drive (Windows Partition)
    Maxtor 80GB IDE Hard Drive
    Sony 80GB IDE Hard Drive

    I'm fairly well experienced with PC troubleshooting so I'm willing to try pretty much anything at this point!
     
  2. shanemail

    shanemail Fold On

    Welcome to major geeks

    the high processor usage and strange behavior may indicate some malware issues

    try the malware forum
    http://forums.majorgeeks.com/forumdisplay.php?f=35

    and follow the instructions in the post you will find there entitled:
    Sticky: READ & RUN ME FIRST. Malware Removal Guide

    Note: follow the instructions in that post to the letter

    the malware guys are very busy and they have very sharp teeth
    (they need them to attack all of the malicious stuff out there in cyberspace)

    if you follow their instructions carefully - they will see you right

    Good luck
     
  3. StavrosnCO

    StavrosnCO Private E-2

    Alright I'll head on over there and give it a try! Thanks alot!
     

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