Faulty hard disk?

Yogo

Thread title is not source of my problems, but the question I'm inquiring about.

This is the gist of it: My computer has been rebooting itself non-stop ever since I shut it off Friday night. After shut down a smell of burnt plastique could be smelled, but I was unable to trace the source to the exact component.

Initially I replaced the PSU, but the problem has persisted. This leaves me with 2 choices: either the motherboard is toast or the hard drive is.

So here's my question: Since I am/was able to access Safe Mode multiple times without error, can I rule out the hard disk as being faulty?

GnomeTank

The hard drive dieing will usually show up as totally different symptoms than reboots, that sounds like your motherboard. As far as the burning plastic smell, check the MOSFETs near the CPU (cylindrical looking things near the 4/8 prong plug near the CPU socket)...see if any of them have popped open. If so, there's your burning smell, you popped a MOSFET and likely need a new motherboard.

Yogo

I checked the MOSFET's, but it doesn't look like any have sprung open, so the damage must have been internally.

In any case, it seems like I will have to do a complete overhaul over my computer. The fried motherboard supports DDR2 ram and is out of production. Any replacement board comes will require DDR3 RAM blocks which means I will have to buy new ram as well.

Thanks for the help.

GnomeTank

Yeah, when I had to replace my motherboard early last year, I was still on a Core 2 Quad platform with DDR2, and finding a replacement board ended up being such a pain, I jumped ship to Sandy Bridge and went with an i5-2500k and DDR3. The only boards I could find were super budget stuff I didn't want...anything "gamer" level and above is going to be DDR3 these days, unless you can find a refurb somewhere.

GnomeTank

As a side note, it could just be bad RAM. Have you run the Windows memory diagnostic, or memtest86+?

Yogo

No, but I did take a look in the BIOS and it reports back 4 GB of memory (which is correct).

Is it possible that the BIOS could lie and one of them is faulty?

Edit: FYI, I can no longer access Windows since I decided to reformat the hard drive in hopes of fixing the problem before I ordered a new psu. Any tests which cannot be done without the operative system is impossible for me.

GnomeTank

memtest86+ doesn't require an OS, but you'll need a place you can burn a CD, a friends house maybe?

At any rate, the BIOS is going to report the correct amount of RAM even if some of the RAM is bad...you actually need to run a memory diagnostic of some kind to see if any memory is actually bad. The only time the BIOS would mis-report is if a stick of your RAM is seated wrong, or is so completely shot it can't be recognized. This is rare though, memory faults tend to start much smaller than the entire stick being bad.

Check your BIOS, some more modern BIOS have memory diagnostics built in (mine does, for instance).

Stormwatcher

OK, I'm pretty confused now. After deleting all files AND formatting my faulty HDD, SMART stopped bitching about it, and now even a full sector scan tells me everything is fine. Could the read errors that made SMART scream be caused by corrupted files, and not hardware fault?
I'm copying 500gb back to the "bad" HDD just to see if it starts complaining again...