Weird Pc Problem. Not Sure If Hardware Related Or Virus. Maybe Easy Fix?

Not sure where to post this. I did post on this forum probably 10 years or so ago and got help to removing malware.

I'm back again but this time I'm not sure if it's malware related or just corrupted files.

Problem:

I got done playing a game on PC yesterday evening and left my PC sitting at the desktop. 10 or 15 minutes later it did a weird reboot and it just kept rebooting over and over. It would never make it to the sign in screen for the user and the display never came on.

I pushed the power button in to turn it off completely and again to turn it back on to try again and after a few attempts of that the display finally came on and then same thing it would just keep rebooting.

Finally though it got far enough to where it would show the loading icon right before it goes to user select and I would notice it would hang there and then reboot again.

After doing/noticing this a few times it finally got to the user select screen where I could login to Windows and everything seemed to be back to normal. I was able to leave my PC on for a few hours after all this happened last night and it seemed to be fine. I then shut down the PC completely when going to bed.

I woke up this morning and here we go again. Same issue when turning on my PC. Display worked though and it would get hung up when the loading icon would show up. After a few times of this the PC finally managed to get to the user select screen where I could login and everything has seemed normal since. PC has been running since 10:15 AM EST and it is now 3:08 PM EST as I type this sentence.

I'm banking on if I shut my PC down again or reboot it will have that issue I explained and do that a few times before it's normal again.

Does anyone know how I can fix this issue? I'm not very technical when it comes to the nuts and bolts and hardware and stuff like that so hoping I can get some help. To me it sounds like Windows is having trouble loading at times or has system errors or something from letting it run properly thus the reboots.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

Which version of Windows are you using?

 

Sorry, Windows 10

 

When the PC is 'normal', work through this.
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-use-dism-command-line-utility-repair-windows-10-image

 

Thanks working on that now but having issue.

I did the "Check Health" option and it didn't find anything.

When I tried to do "Scan Health" nothing happens.

I attached a pic. Maybe I'm doing it wrong?

Edit: Somehow the pic is tiny so you might not even can read it, sorry.

 

Remove the colon before DISM.

 

Alright thanks. Did that but still doesn't scan. I get text though but doesn't do the scan.

Edit: After nearly 10 minutes it started scanning. Will report back.

 

Alright so I did the check health and it didn't find anything and then the scan health and when it completed it said "The component store is repairable. Operation completed successfully."

Now what?

Edit: I didn't do the restore health action yet as it didn't say it was damaged or anything. It said it was repairable though so should I still do that? Confused there, sorry and thanks.

 

Yes, do RestoreHealth.

 

Ok thanks did that, what's next?

 

I did the SFC thing at the end too. It said it repaired corrupted files. I ran it two more times to be sure like the link said.

Is there anything else I need to do?

 

Restart the PC.

 

I did that after. And shut it down for the night.

Just woke up and tried turning it on and same problem.

It turned on. Display was black. Didn't say anything about bios. My mouse and keyboard lights never came on either and after 30 seconds my PC turned itself off.

I tried again and it's working again. But that's not normal and shouldn't be doing that. Never had this problem til a couple of days ago.

 

It also froze as soon as it got to the user sign in screen and it's taking a lot longer to get to that screen than it used to.

 

Also, I'm having a harder time getting on my PC now. I'm still not on. When I have finally managed to login the PC just kills itself or reboots

 

Still can't get on. Now most the time I don't even make it to the login screen.

At one point the windows repair popped up saying windows failed to load.

I went to advanced options and tried to do a windows repair from there but it froze and pc killed itself again when it said it was diagnosing the PC.

I was about to shut it down for good but got the windows repair to pop up again and so this time I'm trying to just do a restore point from a week ago and same thing. PC shut down.

Will take a break and wait for further instructions.

 

Then you have a hardware problem.

 

Well then how do I figure out what is the issue or what piece of hardware it is?

It literally was fine yesterday and ran for 12 hours non stop. Even gamed on it for a few hours. No interruptions.

The PC was built 10 years ago or longer. And I recently had to change the graphics card and PSU out within the last 2 to 3 years.

 

What I did yesterday to get it working for 12 hours was pop the GPU out. Cleaned all the dust out. Then tried to turn it on using the integrated graphics. It worked. So put the GPU back in and used that all day yesterday.

Today. Same thing just happened. It booted right up on integrated graphics but still took longer than usual. I was able to login for 10 minutes and then as I plugged the ethernet cable back into the PC I got a solid pink screen. Tried another HDMI cable and still solid pink screen. And now it's not booting up again even without ethernet cable plugged in. Still on integrated graphics.

If anyone can help me diagnose this I would greatly appreciate it.

Edit: Was able to login a second time so seems it's hit or miss if I can login before it messes up again.

Edit: After logging in a second time this time I got hit with a solid purple screen faster than last time. This time is was about a minute after logging in. Things were still loading.

 

The PC is 10+ years old. Check the CMOS battery.

 

A buddy shipped me a PSU. Brand new. Never even opened. 750W EVGA.

Just got here and got it in and everything.

Same issue. But now the PC isn't stuck in a reboot loop. I can also get to my Desktop now but within a couple of minutes I get a purple screen of death or a blue screen of death. I never have time to do anything like check logs or anything. PC isn't shutting down or rebooting on its own now. Dunno if that's good or bad. But seems like progress as I can get to desktop now. But like I said, a couple of minutes after logging in I get the purple or blue screen of death.

Anymore suggestions? Haven't tried the CMOS battery. Honestly don't even know what to do or how to check that.

 

https://www.technewstoday.com/motherboard-cmos-battery-dead/

 

Don't have a way to check the voltages til I can meet up with Step Dad. He probably has a tool.

I took the CMOS and jumper out for a few min. Put back. Tried it again. Same thing.

 

Another weird thing my PC has been doing is that for the past few years the fan that is on the heatsink will fail to work when the PC comes on or after a reboot. I will get a CPU fan error message. It's a 50 50 shot if it works or not. But after the PC has been on for a few and I reboot it almost always works again.

I tried it in a different spot on the MB with this new PSU and now it works but when it works the display doesn't work. And when the display comes on I get the CPU fan error again and then it starts going bonkers again rebooting itself or flat out shutting down.

 

Judging by lack of replies I'm going to assume noone can figure this out.

My Motherboard is an Asus P8Z77-V LK

CPU is an Intel Core i5-3570K Quad-Core Processor 3.4 GHz 4 Core LGA 1155 - BX80637I53570K

I have Googled my issue and have found several others with my exact same problem. Even on brand new boards they had this issue.

Was told in here to check CMOS battery. Well I popped it out and removed the jumper for a bit and put it back in and that didn't fix the issue. Even left CMOS battery out and tried it cause I heard it should still get to "post" and display should work. But nope my display has completely stopped working all day long. No display at all but everything turns on and fans spin and all that. I will get a new CMOS battery this weekend and try that but I'm not holding my breath.

I noticed the DRam light was staying on. Noone in here asked or had me check to see what lights were on. So I hit up a few tech help Discords and asked there. Got a few different people telling me all different things. One said it was the power supply. So my buddy that lives in another State sent me one of his new ones that he wasn't using. It got here yesterday and that didn't fix the issue.

Someone else said it's the hard drive. Cause it's not even an SSD since the build is 11 years old. I didn't even know they had SSDs back then or maybe they were just really expensive. Either way, I unplugged the power to the hard drive and unplugged it from the motherboard. Still didn't fix the issue.

So I started Googling my motherboard and the DRam light being on and found several people with my exact same problem. And some of these people were having this issue on brand new motherboards. Sadly none posted how or if they fixed the issue.

Then someone recommended I try re adding RAM one by 1. Tried that. Didn't work.

Then was told to hit the OK Memory button that's beside the DRam light that's on. That didn't work.

I then tried doing RAM again one more time. One by one. Hitting the Ok memory button after each slot I tried. Finally! After the first stick I tried this go around and turning it on and hitting the OK memory button I got it to boot up and the display was on.

Was able to get into the desktop on windows 10. Rebooted into safe mode and someone told me to run a chkdsk on my drives so that's what it is doing right now and it's been a few hours now and the C drive is only at 33 percent. Looks like it's going to take all night.

Anyways that's the update on my end. But I have a strong feeling that once this scan is compete and everything checks out ok or doesn't.. And I shut my PC down for the night then I will wake up in the morning and turn it on and be back at square 1 again where it goes wonky on me shutting down and restarting and not staying on. This happened last time. I said that in one of my earlier posts. It crappies out one day. I got it running again that night. Turned it off for the night. Next morning it wouldn't run. Then after a few attempts of it powering down and back in it ended up running all day. Then when I powered it down for the night it's been out of commission since then. Until now that I did the RAM trick and OK memory button trick.


Sorry for the long post just trying to be detailed as possible and maybe someone else finds this helpful and maybe someone can help me figure this thing out.

I really appreciate all the help so far so thank you for that.

 

BITD, we used to call this "cyclic redundancy".

What that means is that the hard drive is effed. Could be RAM and bad bits. Need a definitive HDD checkup. Can you obtain the make and model of the HDD? And yes, we had SSDs back then. My first one was an OCZ.