Now computer freezes.

urahonky

I have been working this problem since Tuesday night and am at my wits end. I got a new motherboard (Z77A-GD65, MSI board) and a new processor (Intel i5). I put it in my new computer and obviously had to wipe windows. I put in Ubuntu 8.10 so I could do a quick backup of my user files. I then put in my windows 7 upgrade disk. I formatted the HDD I wanted and then clicked next. But I was thrown an error "Setup was unable to create a new system or locate an existing system partition. See the setup log files for more information." So I figured it had to be because it's a upgrade disk. So I went to install Windows XP and was thrown a nice blue screen every time it gets to the installation screen (the main screen in the install process).

Then I went back into windows 7, opened up command prompt and did diskpart > clean on the HDD, then formatted the hard drive, then made it active. Still nothing. I then followed the instructions on here: http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/15458-uefi-bootable-usb-flash-drive-create-windows.html to create a UEFI bootable drive. I followed it and plugged the drive in. It pulled up the same windows install screen and then it gave me the same exact error.

Please... For the love of God someone help me... I'm so very tired of dealing with computer issues at home and I'm so very close to losing my sanity. Does anyone have ANY suggestions for me?

Edit 2: computer is now running windows 7. But it locks up randomly.... turns my usb devices off and forces me to reboot. Any clues??!

McViking

Have you got multiple hard drives in there? One thing I found when installing Windows 7 was that if it wasn't going on the first partition of the first hard drive, the installer wouldn't run. I worked around it by unplugging the additional drives, letting Windows install onto the one drive that was left, and then re-attaching the other drives and configuring grub after the Windows install completed. (This was for a dual-boot system with Ubuntu on another drive, and a third drive for backup purposes.)

urahonky

Mother of God... It's working.... @McViking I could kiss you. I'm serious I was losing it... Thank you so much. If you're ever in the Dayton area I'm buying you lots and lots of alcohol.

McViking

Ha -- I'm just glad that all the pain I went through figuring out that same problem wasn't entirely in vain.

urahonky

New problem..... ugh.

The Ender

Is it only doing this while Windows is running, or does it behave the same way if, say, Ubuntu is being used as the OS?

urahonky

Running memtest now. Going to try ubuntu when that is complete.

Nova_C

That sounds an awful lot like the problem I had with a new motherboard last year. You know what the problem was? If I had more that two SATA devices plugged in, the entire system destabilized.

Really weird.

I ran it problem free with a blu-ray drive and HDD until just this past summer when I got a new MB. Now I'm up to THREE SATA devices! Glee!

Anyway, I was seeing exactly what you describe when trying to install Windows on that first MB with three SATA devices plugged in to it.

urahonky

Hmmm ill unhook my backup drive and try that.

Beazle

Did you update all your drivers?

urahonky

Got all drivers installed from the disk at least. I thought that might be it too. Well memtest passed 7 times

urahonky

Ran terraria for 15 mins and it froze... then I unplugged my wifi adapter and loaded up terraria and it has been going for an hour. Not going to get my hopes up...

urahonky

Also unplugged my sata drives and didn't fix it.

kaliyama

Device conflicts seem likely for me too. I know I had a wifi adapter that simply wouldnt work with a computer with an ASUS mono like 3-4 years ago and it resulted in a failure to post.

Random intermittent failures could mean something is dying too, though ok not sure what it would be here. Did you check to see if your RAM was compatible with the Z77?

urahonky

They are ddr3 crucial memory so they should be okay. But if it comes down to it I will run with just one stick until I find the bad one

urahonky

Interesting note:

Attempt 1: terraria with wireless adapter: 15 mins then freeze.
Attempt 2: terraria without wireless: 2 hours no freeze.

After attempt 2 I plugged in my wireless adapter and it froze immediately.

urahonky

Just tried wired and it froze.

bowen

BTW, memory goes bad all the time. You could've gotten bad chips.

grouch993

Check heat? Could be the CPU, GPU or chipset are getting too warm and shutting down.

urahonky

bowen wrote: »

BTW, memory goes bad all the time. You could've gotten bad chips.

Memtest past 7 times overnight. I'm going to try the other hdd when I get home then new psu. Its weird that the usb shuts off when it freezes. I know because I have a backlit keyboard.

Ill check heat too.

bowen

Is running a wire to the PC and ridding yourself of the buggy WIFI not an issue?

WIFI for PCs tends to be shit in a dick, especially their drivers.

urahonky

bowen wrote: »

Is running a wire to the PC and ridding yourself of the buggy WIFI not an issue?

WIFI for PCs tends to be shit in a dick, especially their drivers.

Yah I tried wired and it still froze.

urahonky

Whats a good program to check heat? Speedfan?

bowen

Nah don't even bother with heat.

You've narrowed it down to a network/driver issue at this level.

Have you tried a static IP to rule out DHCP issues?

Use 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 for DNS.

I'd look at mobo/power supply and actual hardware issues now. You could have a FUBARd board if this stuff is on board wifi/network adapter.

minirhyder

urahonky wrote: »

Whats a good program to check heat? Speedfan?

I like HW Monitor

mightyjongyo

If you have a PCI ethernet card, you can probably try using that instead of the motherboard's connection and seeing if that causes an issue as well.

Sir Carcass

urahonky wrote: »

Got all drivers installed from the disk at least. I thought that might be it too. Well memtest passed 7 times

If you haven't yet, get the latest versions of all of your drivers, especially the motherboard/network drivers.

urahonky

It is still running chkdsk so ill get back to you guys with an update when that is complete.

urahonky

mightyjongyo wrote: »

If you have a PCI ethernet card, you can probably try using that inbstead of the motherboard's connection and seeing if that causes an issue as well.

Unfortunately I don't. And this mobo is pcie only.

urahonky

Sir Carcass wrote: »

urahonky wrote: »

Got all drivers installed from the disk at least. I thought that might be it too. Well memtest passed 7 times

If you haven't yet, get the latest versions of all of your drivers, especially the motherboard/network drivers.

I will try this when chkdsk is complete.

bowen

urahonky wrote: »

mightyjongyo wrote: »

If you have a PCI ethernet card, you can probably try using that inbstead of the motherboard's connection and seeing if that causes an issue as well.

Unfortunately I don't. And this mobo is pcie only.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833106033

urahonky

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/354629-31-computer-freezes-requiring-forced-restart

Interesting. This is my exact problem.

urahonky

Seems to be working fine in Safe Mode.

BlazeFire

The guy is using the exact same motherboard as you, so I would probably focus efforts on that. Did you get to updating drivers?

urahonky

Yeah I updated everything and it seemed to freeze still... Let me reboot and find out if these ones helped at all.

urahonky

I have the networking card disabled at the moment.

Annd it froze when I started downloading borderlands 2 in steam.

MichaelLC

Not much to offer, but I've got a laptop running Windows 64x and it will occasionally freeze regardless of what's happening. My testing seems to support a network/wireless issue as well, but haven't dug too deep as it stopped for a long time.

mightyjongyo

Is there a BIOS update you can apply, maybe?

Bendery It Like Beckham

urahonky wrote: »

I have the networking card disabled at the moment.

Annd it froze when I started downloading borderlands 2 in steam.

so you're running sp1?

urahonky

Well here's an update: So far so good. I swapped the RAM to ONLY have a single pair of sticks (not mismatching them). I also moved my video card up to the top of the PCI-E x16 slots and so far so good. I was able to install Borderlands 2. I'm going to keep downloading the games and see if it freezes. I'll report back.

Essee

I would definitely bet on the motherboard in some fashion. You said you only installed a new motherboard and CPU, right? So even if moving stuff around fixes things, I'd be surprised if it weren't the motherboard. They're awfully finicky.