Think my studio machine is on the way out...

[Electric_Head]

Repair in windows does nothing unless your windows is damaged.
Not all pc problems can be reduced to windows issues.

Serox - had you run a descent defrag program? not the windows defrag.

[serox]

Repair in windows does nothing unless your windows is damaged.
Not all pc problems can be reduced to windows issues.

Serox - had you run a descent defrag program? not the windows defrag.

Nope. Always used Windows one, any suggestions?

[Electric_Head]

Repair in windows does nothing unless your windows is damaged.
Not all pc problems can be reduced to windows issues.

Serox - had you run a descent defrag program? not the windows defrag.

Nope. Always used Windows one, any suggestions?

Diskeeper has always been very effective.
Seems to speed things up as well.

[VirtualMark]

Think my studio machine may be on the way out. It's booted up and reset itself once loading Windows 3 times on the trot now. On the plus side, I had a random thought to back up all my samples last week.

does it boot into safe mode? if so, it would indicate that a driver or startup program is causing the problem. as its not connected to the web, then its unlikely to be malware. have you made any changes recently?

it could be a bit of hardware dying, sounds like an old machine. to be honest it wouldn't do you any harm to upgrade to something more modern. i highly recommend the i7 2600k, more power than you'll need for a while.

[wub]

Think my studio machine may be on the way out. It's booted up and reset itself once loading Windows 3 times on the trot now. On the plus side, I had a random thought to back up all my samples last week.

does it boot into safe mode? if so, it would indicate that a driver or startup program is causing the problem. as its not connected to the web, then its unlikely to be malware. have you made any changes recently?

it could be a bit of hardware dying, sounds like an old machine. to be honest it wouldn't do you any harm to upgrade to something more modern. i highly recommend the i7 2600k, more power than you'll need for a while.

UPDATE - I'm using the Christmas break as an excuse to take it back home with me when I visit my parents. That way can take it apart in the relative comfort of my Dad's office and see exactly what is going wrong. Will try the safe mode boot and take it from there, don't think it's Malware as I've been scanning with just about everything and it hasn't been connected to the Internet in years now.


IF IT NEEDS REPLACING...

Am I right in thinking that I'd need the following components;

1. Case
2. Motherboard
3. Processor
4. Memory
5. HDDs
6. PSU
7. Audio interface
8. Video card (?)

I'm having a bit of a blonde day, is there anything I'm missing off this list? Already got all the peripherals, obv...

[Pedro Sánchez]

UPDATE - I'm using the Christmas break as an excuse to take it back home with me when I visit my parents. That way can take it apart in the relative comfort of my Dad's office and see exactly what is going wrong. Will try the safe mode boot and take it from there, don't think it's Malware as I've been scanning with just about everything and it hasn't been connected to the Internet in years now.


IF IT NEEDS REPLACING...

Am I right in thinking that I'd need the following components;

1. Case
2. Motherboard
3. Processor
4. Memory
5. HDDs
6. PSU
7. Audio interface
8. Video card (?)

I'm having a bit of a blonde day, is there anything I'm missing off this list? Already got all the peripherals, obv...

video card, if you are fucking with video editing but other than that, onboard gfx are more than fine these days. Might wanna add an optical drive to the list mind, I'd go Blu-Ray reader/DVD Writer combo.

[wub]

UPDATE - I'm using the Christmas break as an excuse to take it back home with me when I visit my parents. That way can take it apart in the relative comfort of my Dad's office and see exactly what is going wrong. Will try the safe mode boot and take it from there, don't think it's Malware as I've been scanning with just about everything and it hasn't been connected to the Internet in years now.


IF IT NEEDS REPLACING...

Am I right in thinking that I'd need the following components;

1. Case
2. Motherboard
3. Processor
4. Memory
5. HDDs
6. PSU
7. Audio interface
8. Video card (?)

I'm having a bit of a blonde day, is there anything I'm missing off this list? Already got all the peripherals, obv...

video card, if you are fucking with video editing but other than that, onboard gfx are more than fine these days. Might wanna add an optical drive to the list mind, I'd go Blu-Ray reader/DVD Writer combo.

I was classing optical drive as peripheral, though tbh I'd not considered getting a Blu-Ray...is there any benefit other than for the purposes of watching films?

[Pedro Sánchez]

I'd not considered getting a Blu-Ray...is there any benefit other than for the purposes of watching films?

Not really but it's good to rip samples of blu-ray's, for the price of them these days, why not.

[wub]

Ok, update;

Took the case off today. Turns out the rattling noise is caused by the fan for the PSU - one of the bearings has gone, so it's rattling like a bastard. Glad it's not the HDD or anything, but know that out of everything to replace, the PSU is going to be the biggest pain in the ass because of the connections.

Had a quick swizz round to see if I could see any issues that might be causing the startup/reboot issue. Ran a CC cleaner to remove some registry/cache related crap (292Mb worth, apparently), and letting it cool down now so I can cold start it again and see if that's solved the issue.

If it stil reboots repeatedly on startup, then (assuming it's not a software issue which I'm fairly sure it's not), we're looking at either a mobo or memory issue. I can try taking the memory sticks out one at a time and seeing if that changes things, but past that if there is no improvement it's the mobo and that'll probably mean a new PC is the better option.

[Pedro Sánchez]

If it keeps rebooting before launching into windows and you get a startup error like 'windows could not load' or something then it's probably fucked sectors on the os hard drive, either lost the boot files or actual mechanical failure, try sticking in the windows intall disc and running recovery mode or what ever they call it. If it's rebooting in the first few seconds then it's either a memory problem (try taking out ram sticks), a CPU problem, although unlikely make sure the fan is firmly over the CPU and there is enough thermal paste.

Edit: also check all your cables are fitted snug, that is sometimes an overlooked culprit.

[wub]

If it keeps rebooting before launching into windows and you get a startup error like 'windows could not load' or something then it's probably fucked sectors on the os hard drive, either lost the boot files or actual mechanical failure, try sticking in the windows intall disc and running recovery mode or what ever they call it. If it's rebooting in the first few seconds then it's either a memory problem (try taking out ram sticks), a CPU problem, although unlikely make sure the fan is firmly over the CPU and there is enough thermal paste.

It's booting into Windows nearly completed (desktop appears/icons can be clicked on/My Computer opened etc), then it'll reboot. It does this between 1 and 3 times every time I cold start it.

[Pedro Sánchez]

If it keeps rebooting before launching into windows and you get a startup error like 'windows could not load' or something then it's probably fucked sectors on the os hard drive, either lost the boot files or actual mechanical failure, try sticking in the windows intall disc and running recovery mode or what ever they call it. If it's rebooting in the first few seconds then it's either a memory problem (try taking out ram sticks), a CPU problem, although unlikely make sure the fan is firmly over the CPU and there is enough thermal paste.

It's booting into Windows nearly completed (desktop appears/icons can be clicked on/My Computer opened etc), then it'll reboot. It does this between 1 and 3 times every time I cold start it.

Sounds like hard drive failure or overheating, jump into your bios by pressing it's launch key at startup it will be either F8, F12, or Del usually, check the temp to see if it's rocketing and see if the harddrive is listed.

[wub]

If it was HDD failure, I'd assume it'd crash repeatedly as opposed to just on startup - unless getting it up to speed means that once it gets 'warm' the problem solves itself

[Pedro Sánchez]

I bet it's the PSU, go into bios and monitor the temperature, for as long as it takes the crash restarts to happen, if it does restart in the bios, then you can rule out Hard drive failure. If the temp is above 95c or so then it's overheating.
Direct CPU or memory problems would halt the machine before it even got into boot stage so you can rule that out.

[wub]

But why would it overheat on startup, that's the issue? The reboots happen when I boot from cold, but then stop once it's been running for a while.

[Pedro Sánchez]

But why would it overheat on startup, that's the issue? The reboots happen when I boot from cold, but then stop once it's been running for a while.

Right... that sounds like a HDD failure then, the parts that drive the arm that read-write across the platter get worn out over time so it could be that, it's only getting going fully every other couple of times.
Fucking hell wub you better fix this because it's going to keep me awake

[Pedro Sánchez]

Is the HDD clicking by the way?

[wub]

Is the HDD clicking by the way?

Nope, not at all.

EDIT - although IME, HDDs do one of two things;

1) Go clickclickclickclickclickclickclick then stop working
2) Stop working.

[VirtualMark]

things like this can be a pain to track down. personally, before i bought new components, i'd reinstall windows clean. it could be a corrupt registry or dll file. does it give you a blue screen? or just reboot?

if the blue screen flashes up before it reboots, you can set windows to keep it until a key is pressed. Right click on my computer, choose properties, advanced tab and its under startup and recovery. If it displays an error message then its worth googling to see what it could be about. also worth checking event viewer to see if there are any crashes reported.

also does it run in safe mode ok?

[wub]

No blue screen, just a reboot.

Will try the safe mode thing later today and see if I get the same issues.