Call to any computer repair gurus who can help...

Hi,

I am hoping you all can help me troubleshoot an issue I am having with my PC. 

When I boot up my computer I get a black screen with a movable cursor.  At first start up repair said ita bad patch.  I could not get it to restore but I could boot it up with the disk needed to reformat the hard drive.  I sent it off to a friend (IT support at a local college) who worked with it for a bit.  She was able to uninstall the "bad patch" but the problem persisted.  She ended up reformatting and it worked fine for a couple of days.  I have tried a second video card and I am still getting the same black screen but now at least I can run a start up repair and it will use a resotre point and boot up.  Currently I am just using sleep mode when I am not online -- it does seem to be doing ok when it is up and running including when playing Guild Wars 2.  It does seem to take a long time to get to character select screen though.

Basically what I am asking for is some advice on how to proceed.  The system is barely a year old and probably just out of warrenty.  It is also very basic and I am not sure worth taking it in somewhere to be fixed. I have tried doing some research but the only thing I understand is it could be several different things which translates to me as several $$$ having someone look at it and trying to fix it.

It could be your power supply or motherboard Thats the most common For example: My brother got the same thing and It was a cable in the motherboard did not connect properly so it did not function right so that might be it but don't take my word for it :) I am not a computer guru

This black screen with movable cursor - is that a mouse pointer, or a keyboard cursor? Is this happening before or after the Windows logo splash screen? Did your friend use your restore disks to reformat your machine, or an actual Windows disk? Your "reformatted and it worked fine for a couple of days" comment makes me think possibly memory. A quick and easy test is to pull all your memory modules but one, and run memtest for 15-20 minutes. Do this for each module. *Any* errors in memtest means a bad module, just replace it. If you wind up with one or more bad memory modules, you'll be in for another OS reinstall as well. There are plenty of other things to try, but let's go one step at a time, shall we?

The first thing that comes to my mind is perhaps the wrong video driver, or perhaps an error in updating from a previous version to a new version. Based on what Operating System you're using, you can either just download an update, or be required to completely remove old drivers before installing new ones. Do you see any of the boot screens while you start up? If you do, and windows just goes black at the login, then its unlikely to be anything physical, like an odd wire or bad connection. If you never see anything, then suddenly your mouse cursor...well even then, it still seems unlikely to be a physical issue, other than a physical graphics card defect. If would be helpful for you to post as many of your machine's detailed specs as possible and we can try to work it out for you!

I had at some point a malfunctioning hard drive that was acting a little bit like that: when reformatting it was fine for a while but then would start showing blue screens. It could be that. I know a program that can check the sectors on your HDD and repairs the bad ones. I will send the link to it once I find it back.

Doing a good old chkdsk first is always worth a try. How to: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb491051.aspx TL;DR Go to windows recovery console and type: chkdsk [YourDriveName]: /p /r Post the results from doing the chkdsk and we will see if we can help you out.

» Edited on: 2012-10-13 13:53:01

The black screen happens when you should see the desktop. I get the motherboard screen and the windows screen then when you would log as a user or go straight to the desktop is the point at which I get the black screen. I believe the disk used to reformat is the one you would use to install the OS. I am using Windows 7. As for the detailed specs on my computer, I am not sure how detailed you need and where do I find that info? I am thinking you are more interested in what motherboard I have than what processor and how much RAM. But here is that: Anthlon II X2 260 3.2 GHz L2 Cache 4GB RAM DDR3 SATA Hard drive (exact type I dont know) AMD HD 6670 And how do I run a memory check?

Oh and the cursor that moves is the mouse pointer not the typing cursor.

Have you tried chkdsk yet? For memory test you will need memtest86. http://www.memtest86.com/

No I have not done that one yet Kooz. I am not sure how to run that one either. I am not sure how to get to the recovery console. The problem with me is I know just enough to really mess things up but not enough to fix.

I'm not 100% sure it's your HDD because there is so much stuff that can make a pc go wrong. So if you have a second HDD, trying to install win7 on it first while keeping the second HDD has a partition (without formatting) maybe you could see if it's the HDD that is malfunctioning. Also, my bad in the latest windows os they removed the recovery console all you have now is the recovery tools. I would suggest you then to use this tool to test your HDD. It's called seatools, it's a free HDD tool to check if it's working properly. http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/ If you are on a pc with Windows vista or 7 you can burn the file as a .iso (.iso is a program that boots first over the os) by right-clicking the file and select burn iso. After that I would recommand you trying this program that has a lot more HDD options to repair it: http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/HDD-Bad-Sectors-Repair.shtml It's an other iso program.

» Edited on: 2012-10-13 21:23:30

Cool, you're getting into the operating system. That's good news - it means that you're probably not looking at replacing anything expensive. Hopefully, it means that you're not looking at replacing anything at all. Next time you reboot and wind up at the black screen, hit Ctrl-Alt-Del. If that works, "Start Task Manager". When Task Manager appears, click "File", then "New task". Another dialog box will appear, type "explorer" (no quotes) and click OK. This should bring up your desktop. Please let us know if this works. Memtest is still something that you want to do. To run it: 1. Browse to http://www.memtest86.com/ 2. Click "Free Download" 3. Click "Version 4.0a (Released 20-Aug-2011)" 4. Click "Ver 4.0a - Windows (zip) ISO image for creating bootable CD" 5. Save the file somewhere, then browse to it 6. Right click the file, "Extract All", "Extract" 7. You should now have a directory called "memtest86-4.0a.iso". Open it 8. There should be a file named "Memtest86_4.0a". Right click it, and select "Burn Disc Image" 9. Insert a blank CD, and follow the prompts to burn the disk. All the default settings are fine. 10. Put the CD in the drive, and reboot your computer. You might have to hit F2, F10, or Del at the motherboard splash screen to get to the boot options. 11. Memtest will launch and automatically start checking your memory. Let it run for 15-20 minutes. http://tinyurl.com/9pjssnh - This is good news http://tinyurl.com/9bjx365 - This is bad news Chkdsk is also probably worth running. Personally, if I get results from chkdsk, I just replace the drive, because bad sectors often indicate that the drive has one foot in the grave, and hard drives are cheap. At this point, I need a little more information from you. I am assuming that you bought your computer off the shelf. Who made your computer? A make and model number is preferable, if you have it (the model number is usually painted on the front). Also, when you bought your computer, did you bring it home and burn your recovery (Windows) disk yourself, or did it maybe come in the box with the computer? Does it have the manufacturer's name on the disk? I'm trying to determine whether you've got a recovery disk from the manufacturer, or if you've got a clean copy of Windows 7. The disks you get from the manufacturer will install Windows, but they will also install a metric ton of garbage software/adware/malware (seriously, this stuff is almost as bad as Adobe and Oracle products) that is often the cause of problems like you're having.

Hi and thanks so much for all the help. When I get the black screen I cannot hit ctrl-alt-delete. It does not come up. That is the first thing I tried when it happened. However, I have not tried it since. I did run the memory check and nothing came up. It was the good new screen. I still have to do chkdsk. My PC is a budget pc. Yeah I know ~~~ but hey my last PC was poopin out after 5 yrs of HEAVY use and would not run anything well....and was what I could afford at that time. It is made by Cyberpower. It is the Gamer Ultra GUA 120. Its best feature it the pretty blue glow it makes and it lucky it has not become a lawn ornament at this point. Anyway - The recovery disk is in fact from the manufacturer.

There's nothing wrong with a budget PC, as long as it meets the specs you need. All pre-built machines, from the $250 e-Machine to the $4000 Apple, are made of the same cheap hardware. Under the hood, they're all the same, the only difference is the logo on the side of the box. That is good news on the memory. You're still going to want to do that chkdsk. It's going to take hours to check your 500GB HDD, so it might be something you want to run overnight. We've ruled out all the expensive stuff and memory. HDD is still a possible cause, but you'll be checking that. Most likely, your issue is software-based, which is both good and bad. It's bad because it's a big pain to troubleshoot sometimes, but it's good because there's always the "nuclear option" (reload the OS). At this point, it's going to be worth your time to LOOK HERE---> *backup all your important data* <---LOOK HERE to somewhere safe (external HDD is my personal favorite). Do this as soon as possible. Software problems can go pear-shaped in a big hurry, and I'd hate for you to lose something you can't replace. CyberPower support claims that your recovery disk is a standard OEM Windows 7 disk, which is rare, but also excellent. Boot to your recovery disk, and follow this guide: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/windows-7-recovery-environment-command-prompt/ If you've been running Startup Repair to System Restore, then you've been through these steps before. This time, when you see the screen in Figure 5, hit Cancel to let Windows try to fix itself. Let us know what happens. Follow the rest of the guide. When you get to the command prompt (Figure 8), this is where you'll type the command that KooZ mentioned - "chkdsk C: /p /r" (no quotes) - when you're ready to run that. Stop following the guide here, the rest of it isn't relevant at this point.

» Edited on: 2012-10-14 09:57:10

OK, today the problem seems to be intermittent. While trying to reboot using the OS disk I get the following message. A paragraph that basically says some portable storage device such as a USB (there were none plugged in at the time) or faulty hardware such as a hard drive or CD-ROM is failing/going bad. Beneath that was Status code Oxc00000e9 and Info: An unexpected I/O error has occured. This occured everytime I told the computer to boot from Disk. I had to tell it to boot from motherboard with disk in to get to command promt window. I then typed in chkdsk C: /p /r and it told me the parameters /p was bad. I am able to install games off the CD-ROM as well as burn the disks Kooz said to. Though the install took what seemed forever to start.

So chkdsk didn't work? try chkdsk C: /r because the /p is implicite so it might work. Give me update on the chkdsk with only /r then do in order: Trying the seatools using the second program in previous posts Also, if you have raidcall maybe I could explain you some stuff live in 30 mins - 1 h from now 2:34 PST. It would be easier to answer to your questions.

» Edited on: 2012-10-14 14:35:45

Add play a movie to the list of things my CD_ROM is still doing :) Thinking about watching The Avengers now lol

I have raidcall and we are on the same time. I will try the chkdsk again. Actually I will install raidcall on my laptop

The raidcall site seems to be having issues ATM. Link is not bringing it up. I have to use system restore to get up desktop. Hope that works. I was able to run the chkdsk. It said "Windows has checked the file system and found no problems" after a bunch of other stuff. It did not appear that anything was wrong. The last thing it said was "failed to transfer logged messages to the event log with status 50". I am not sure how to get you the chkdsk report.

I don't think you can copy and paste the report unless you take a picture of it and post it but I don't need it. You should try the others HDD programs to make sure that the HDD is working properly. If you can't find any problem with your HDD I would recommend you to format your HDD and make partitions. Make 1 partition that would be only allocated for the OS and only install the OS on that one and nothing else. And for the rest of the HDD make a much bigger partition that would be holding all your games and stuff. That way if you need to format again, all the important information will be safe. Beside the HDD the only thing that cold be broke in my opinion would be the OS itself. If you have a good old XP, you might want to reinstall it as a last ressort if other stuff didn't work.

Don't worry about the error 50 at the end of chkdsk. It's trying to write it's results to the system log, which isn't running when you're on the recovery console. KooZ is right, it's time for something a little stronger than chkdsk, HDD wise. I/O errors make me unhappy - they generally mean silly things like horked drivers, but sometimes they also mean bad controllers. I'd bet $1 you've got a Hitachi HDD, but the Seagate tools should still work. Assuming the drive checks out with Seatools, the problem is either with a driver, or critical file corruption. Fixing both of these is the same - reinstall Windows cleanly, get all the newest drivers you can get (don't use the driver disk that came with your computer, those are way out of date), and start fresh. Partitioning the hard drive is up to you - it makes it easier when you have to reinstall your OS, but some applications don't like that setup, because the registry gets wiped and you wind up having to reinstall them anyway. Don't use XP, no matter what. It's garbage, and there's no reason whatsoever to use it in 2012.

My HDD is a seagate barracuda. I can actually see it through the clear side on my case. I am trying the fix test on the seagate tools overnight. I will let you know what happens.

Had a problem like this before, it was as simple as unplugging anything USB (other than the mouse/kbrd), and restarting. Printers/External HDD/Controllers etc.

It is more than likely a software issue. A start up software issue to be exact. Can you boot into safe mode? If so do the following steps. >>>After booting into safe mode, go to the start menu, in the start menu instant search type msconfig and open the program. >>>When in msconfig go to start-up programs. This is a list of programs that try to start when your OS boots. >>>Turn off (uncheck) any non-essential software (i/e skype/javeupdate/adobe ect). Leave any software that is published by Microsoft on. >>>After you have done that, hit apply and restart your computer. Tell me what you find. If that works in order to isolate the software that is causing the program we are going to use binary isolation. >>>>Go back into msconfig either through safe mode or the normal user mode. >>>>Make a list on paper of all the software you disabled. >>>>Now turn half of the software back on and restart the computer. If it fails to boot you know the software is in the group that you just turned on. If not, turn them all back off and turn on the 2nd half. >>>>When you find the half that the software is in turn off all the software except for one and reboot. Go like this one software at a time and reboot till you find the software that makes the OS fail then uninstall it and re-d/l it. Now this is only to eliminate it being a start-up program issue. If this returns no results it is either a bad HDD or bad drivers. Nuking your OS (restoring) will also fix the software issue but you will loose all your data unless backed up. Honestly it only takes a few min to do this even though it seems like a lot. Besides that you will learn a lot about your OS when doing this which is a nice plus. The usb errors you are getting are they stopping the OS from booting? If so do as Vaygrent said but also open up your case and unplug the front USBs from your motherboard. They will be near the bottom of the mobo just under the expansion slots. Let me know what you find.

OK the results of the seatools test: 10/13/2012 11:13:25 PM Model: ST3500413AS Serial Number: -------- Firmware Revision: JC45 Fix All Long - Aborted 10/13/2012 11:13:25 PM Fix All Long - FAIL 10/14/2012 11:16:32 AM Sense Key: 0x05 Sense Code: 0x20 Sense Qual: 0x00 FRU: 0x00 SeaTools Test Code: 6C9AC2A4 Short Generic - Started 10/14/2012 3:47:20 PM Short Generic - Pass 10/14/2012 3:48:45 PM Long Generic - Started 10/14/2012 3:49:04 PM Long Generic - Pass 10/14/2012 5:52:11 PM Fix All Long Aborted 10/14/2012 10:00:33 PM Fix All Long - FAIL 10/16/2012 10:04:51 AM Sense Key: 0x05 Sense Code: 0x20 Sense Qual: 0x00 FRU: 0x00 SeaTools Test Code: 6C9AC2A4 Let me know what you think... Also just so you know, I am a teacher :) and it is report card and Parent/Teacher conferences week so I probably wont be able to work on anything till Saturday. My nights will be spent filling out report cards. Morsfio, I am willing to try anything at this point only I have been unable to even boot into safe mode. When I hit F8 I only get two choices, system repair or start windows normally. Also everything on my PC was backed up. Everything I wanted anyway,when it first started. The OS has been reinstalled once and nothing has been put back on the PC yet. The only thing I really want to keep is Guild Wars 2 because that is like a 24 hr download with my stupid service provider.

Have you make a second partition? if so you should save your GW2 files on it just so the OS and the game don't need to be both reformated if the os go wrong again.

Just fail them all. You know you want to. Further, you know they deserve it. Give in to the dark side. I don't like that it didn't run a SMART test. That's really the whole point of SeaTools. If the generic tests were going to fail, you'd already know, because your HDD would be a paperweight. Is there an option to run the SMART tests? Assuming SMART checks out ok (and hence the drive is working decently well), you have several trillion options for how to proceed. Most of them involve countless hours poring over live CDs and googling undocumented error codes. Some of us are sick enough to enjoy this - I've been to the hundredth page of Google results, and what I saw there did not frighten me. I'm guessing that you're more interested in the inner workings of WvW opponents, and spilling those inner workings on the ground, than you are in the inner workings of your computer. If that's true, you can get back up and running (and maybe save yourself having to reinstall GW2) relatively quickly. The whole thing is easier if you just want to replace the HDD, but I know what teachers get paid in Colorado, and I'm sure Arizona isn't much better, so I'll assume that you'd like to keep using your current one. If you want to save GW2 - First, to possibly save your GW2 installation, you need this: http://kingwin.com/products/cate/accessories/adapters/usi_2535.asp Any brand will do. That adapter turns your *internal* hard drive into an *external* hard drive. Your IT friend should have one you can borrow, we all seem to (I have 4, for some reason). You can pick it up at a Frys or MicroCenter (and maybe BestBuy) for about $15. Yes, I just made everyone reading feel silly for paying hundreds of dollars for external hard drives. If you can't find one locally, you can order them online, but you get to decide if waiting for it to ship is better than waiting for GW2 to download. Once you have the adapter, pull the hard drive out of your desktop, and use the adapter to attach it to one of the USB ports on that laptop you mentioned. You can use it like any other external hard drive at this point. Open it up, and browse to "Program Files (x86)". Grab the "Guild Wars 2" folder, and move it over to your laptop. It runs about 15GB, so this could take awhile. When that's done, pop the HDD back into your desktop, and keep reading. If you've backed up GW2, or don't want to save it - Pop in that OS install disk that came with your computer, boot to it, and start walking through the install process. It's covered pretty well (with lots of pictures) here: http://www.techtalkz.com/windows-7/514412-windows-7-installation-guide-tutorial.html When you get to the partitioning step, take KooZ's advice and put Windows on it's own partition. Select all the partitions that you see, and delete them, until all that's left is unallocated space. Now hit "New", type "100000" (100,000) in the box that appears, and "Apply". Now hit "New" again, and "Apply" (Windows will auto-fill the box with everything that's left). This will create a 100GB partition for Windows to live on, and a 400GB partition for all your programs and data. 100GB is more than enough room for Windows to live in, and it's only 20% of your drive. Select both partitions one at a time, and hit "Format". At the end, you should have three partitions - one around 100MB, one 100GB-ish (Windows will do some rounding here) that you created, and a 400GB-ish that you also created. Select the 100GB that you created, and hit "Next". In the future, you'll never have to think twice about reloading Windows - with this set up, you can blow it away without affecting most installed software. There should be a sticker somewhere on your computer with the license key for Windows, if it asks for one. Once Windows is installed, head over to http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/support/ and download the newest drivers for your system. Install them all, run your Windows updates, if you use Antivirus then set that up, etc etc. Copy that "Guild Wars 2" directory from your laptop to your desktop and place it in "C:\Program Files (x86)". Let us know how this goes.