keeps crashing and wont reformat

[krazylegz]

my bros pc is playing up, he had xp pro on it and recently its been crashing, could be ok for say 20 mins then would crash, turn it back on and crash again instantly, sometimes it wont boot up at all.

tried it in safemode and it was ok never crashed so i thought maybes it just needs formatting, so tried putting windows 7 on and it gets to the last step the does nothing.

if it were mine i would have smashed it up by now .

would say a faulty graphics card cause it to crash?

or maybes a overheating issue or faulty HDD?

[caveman_nige]

i would go for it being a faulty HDD to start with mate... if you know the brand you can use their oem diags software to test it..

[Meat-Head]

or cooling fan/cpu full of bum fluff etc.

Had a problem at work, it refused to re-format, so put it as a slave, used windows to re-format, put it back as master, then it was happy again.

[krazylegz]

i can easily find out the brand as i told him to take the side off and suck out all the dust incase the heatsink was blocked when i was away, and the side is still off.

i'll try and install it as a second HDD and reformat it in my mams pc to at least get an operating system back on it, then try the tools

just wandering how it wan in safemode ok though?

[krazylegz]

i told him to get some paste for the cpu, would it be worth cleaning the old one off and reapplying this yous think?

[Meat-Head]

just wandering how it wan in safemode ok though?

no drivers, not working as hard ! and/or ?

Oh it might not be backwards compatable with win7

eg dell makes a new video card say and they make a driver for it only
for vista say, goes backwards where vista might not have the drivers for 'on old grotty card'

xp 'wont' have a driver as the card wasn't invented then
vista 'wont' have a driver as is pointless mkinga a driver for an old cards!

Enkoy.

Oh just format the hdd with your mums pc then swap over, less risk of screwing up uoyr mams pc, remeber you might have to tell her bios it's got a 'new' drive

[satsmo]

If it worked OK in safemode sounds like a corrupt driver m8, as safemode will only load default drivers. Has he installed anything recently and if so I would try a system restore to a previous state.

[caveman_nige]

download a copy of the hiren boot cd mate and use that to diagnose it, it has loads of apps that you can use to diagnose/sort it out..

http://www.hirensbootcd.net/download.html

[krazylegz]

download a copy of the hiren boot cd mate and use that to diagnose it, it has loads of apps that you can use to diagnose/sort it out..

http://www.hirensbootcd.net/download.html

cheers nige i think i've still got that on cd somewhere aswell as ultimate boot disc unless its the same one .

yeah i'll format it on my mams after i've had car for mot and go from there

dont think hes done anything different as hes as thick as two short planks on a pc, just plays pes and footy manager thats it..... oh and downloads loads of songs so wouldn't be suprised if it was virused to the hilt

cheers lads

[oldeno]

I guess you need to install new windows (XP sp3) or windows 7 if you prefer.Check your HDD,also.

[krazylegz]

update on this i got it reformmated when i was home and seemed to be working ok so i never bothered applying the new thermo paste he bought for the heatsink, however its now playing up again.

he says its fine when hes on the net, but as soon as he tries to play a game (FM) it crashes. hes tried his old graphics card but still no joy.

i'd say HDD, but i'm 240 miles away to check with hirens boot cd... so hes on about taking it to a pc shop and no doubt get raped

[cunny]

Can you post graphics card details, along with system specs.

Also what type of crash is it? Does the pc just switch off? Do it give out a BSOD with an error code? Does it just 'freeze'

If its just turning off, then i would say overheating issue, blow any dust from out off componant fans, graphics card and CPU heatsink (may need to have thermal paste reseting)

If its BSOD with an error code. Then please post codes, this is most likely to be hardware related. IE Ram.

If its just freezing i would go with the hard drive, could need low level formatting to map the bad clusters (windows will then aviod writting to these to help disk performance).

[krazylegz]

not sure on the graphics card specks cunny mate i'll try and dind out off him though, i know the first one he had in was the better one... was a nvidia something and had a cooling fan on it, his old one that hes put back in doesn't have a fan on it.

his pc is getting on now, its a packard bell P4 he's had it about 4 years now and was a beast when he got it.... still the same HDD in it from new though

he said it just freezes and doesn't respond to anything

[cunny]

It sounds like the HDD but again without swapping it for another you wont really be able to tell.

As i said in previous post you could try a low level format to see if that helps it.

[cunny]

Another thing to try would be to replace the IDE/SATA leads from the hdd to the motherboard.