Need some input :3

[Cacophonus]

So guys, I'm at the end of my rope again. First MAUL issues, now PC issues. Ugh. Anyways, this is the story:

I was watching an .avi last night (Cowboy Ragtime Show ep. 10 for those who care; epic, epic anime), when suddenly the entire PC froze. I was like great, stupid win 7 ultimate! The sound, which I find odd, stopped as well on a deep buzzing sound (normally when I crash sound ends). Anyways, so I hit the warm reset button, and get greeted with BIOS. The pc posts out, all clear, then windows asks me "last good configuration, safe mode, yayayaya" all that junk. This point I'm tired, go to bed, and come back to it tomorrow morning.

Now, this morning I head through bios, triple check everything is in proper working order, the pc posts fine again, and we're back to the windows did not shut down correctly screen crap. I go start windows normally, the windows loading screen flashes, the screen shuts off, and the machine resets...
I do it again, this time with last known good configuration, and then with the various safe modes (tried them all for redundancy's sake), and every time I insta-reboot after seeing "Windows" and the loading bar for about 10 milliseconds. At this point I'm getting heated...

Alas, I go to the next logical step... the boot disc (boot disc here being the disc I installed windows off of... never made one via the control panel). It loads just fine... yet the next screen that greets me is "windows Boot Manager", stating the following:

Note: my Status is different than that picture; I'm thrown the interrupt 0xc0000098, not the 225 in that picture.

Joy- now I'm *really* heated. I realize its virtually guaranteed to be a hardware issue now (this disc worked to install windows; no way its suddenly "missing" or has "corrupted" files in 6 days), so I reboot the entire thing again, this time with a parted magic live linux boot cd in there (so I can copy my hdd files that are of importance...). Try to load linux into ram, soon as it's complete (at least its about 5 lines into the loading process, don't know/can't recall how long it really is) the PC crashes again. Tried all other variations on this cd's loading mechanisms (like 8 on that disc- no badram kernel though ), all end with the same result.

Here's my conclusions so far, let me know what you guys think and what I need to test:

1) RAM is probably bad. Windows Memory test fails (in that it won't move from 0% complete, and fails to respond to f1 or esc keys), and the version of memorytest86 on the linux boot disc tosses me a mindboggling 250,000,000+ errors within the first 4 tests (how in the world....). Plus linux fails to load into ram (considering the pc crashes at some point while it tries).

2) HDD is bad/master boot area got damaged. How? perhaps when I reset the beast after it froze some hdd operation was in progress, and the loss of power damaged something. No idea.

3) My "boot" disc is bad- yea, this is about as likely as someone knowing exactly what 0xc0000098 actually stood for.

Now, just for reference, these are the things I've already done to try to resolve this issue, and where each has failed.

1) Safe Mode/Last Good Configuration/Normal Start. All failed at the windows loading screen, only flashing "Windows" then immediately restarting the pc.

2) Windows "boot" disc. Throws interrupt 0xc0000098 on \windows\system32\boot\winload.exe.

3) Memorytest86. 250,000,000 + errors half way through the operation.

4) Windows memory test from boot disc. Does not respond, does not do anything. Hangs as soon as it is initiated.

5) Linux boot disc. Crashes PC like Windows does when its loading, except this happens while linux loads itself into ram.

6) Disconnected HDD and tried all the boot disc stuff again (both Windows 7 and Linux). Still problems.

7) Refrained from bashing my head into a wall a few times out of frustration.

PC "Stats":

i875k i7 quad-core
HD 5870
Seasonic x750
GIGABYTE GA-P55A-UD3
CORSAIR XMS3 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666)
Win 7 Ultimate 64-bit OS.

So, please, any input/tips/ideas would be nice, because I'm about to get on the phone with newegg and start RMA'ing everything starting with the RAM until this beast works again. Though the call may have to wait till monday.

 

[Snipeye]

1) Go ahead and bash your head against the wall
2) Have you tried switching out the memory yet? Looks like you already found the problem, but haven't tested it fully.

 

[Cacophonus]

1) Go ahead and bash your head against the wall
2) Have you tried switching out the memory yet? Looks like you already found the problem, but haven't tested it fully.

I'm telling you, sometimes this is just a bit too frustrating. Luckily I have my important documents on a flash drive since they are due tonight... and considering they are term papers, I think I just lucked out :3.

I've taken the memory out, tested each individually and in different combinations together.

I'm going to RMA the ram tonight (before 5pm PST), though I'm not quite sure that they are the sole problem. My main concern is how this happened, considering the RAM was fine and operational for about 120 hours of uptime- not to mention the pc posts each time and doesn't complain (no bios codes, nada). As to completely swapping it out with different ram, i don't have any other ones on hand to do that with .

What else is there to test on the ram? First time I've had to actually troubleshoot hardware components on a PC, and I'm not so sure I'm doing it right.

 

[DUCE]

You could've had a voltage spike somewhere along the line, the PSU just gave the RAM too much juice. Did you ever overclock or mess with the memory timings? It could've been that the sticks were defective from the start, and just degraded fast. I remember one time (actually the first time I built a PC from scratch) that I could POST, but couldn't install Windows because the RAM was bad, and it wasn't until I tested them I found out. Hopefully it works out well for ya!

 

[Cacophonus]

You could've had a voltage spike somewhere along the line, the PSU just gave the RAM too much juice. Did you ever overclock or mess with the memory timings? It could've been that the sticks were defective from the start, and just degraded fast. I remember one time (actually the first time I built a PC from scratch) that I could POST, but couldn't install Windows because the RAM was bad, and it wasn't until I tested them I found out. Hopefully it works out well for ya!

Thanks for the vote of confidence, after I finish last minute edits to my paper I'll go ahead and RMA the ram. Hopefully that's all thats to it, and we'll be back up and running in a week.

 

[Snipeye]

You definitely lucked out with those papers!

Now with the memory, you tested them individually, but still got problems (or at least, that's how I'm reading it). If that's the case, I'm say you're sitting on the verdict: Bad RAM. RMA it, get some new ones to replace. In the meantime, do you happen to have any spare memory sitting around unused, that you could try loading your PC up with? That's what I originally meant by testing the memory. You did almost all the tests, the last one is trying other RAM sticks to see if the PC will boot up fine with them instead. If not, then there may be other issues. That's where you really start to getting into troubleshooting hardware. Start with one part, and test the hell outta it before moving onto the next one... ;-)

 

[Cacophonus]

Yeah, I transferred them last night about an hour before the ram died. \o/ for preparing to print elsewhere.

On topic, about to head out in 30 minutes, but I've just come back from RMA'ing the ram; hopefully Newegg will have it by Monday and I'll have the new ram by Tuesday (they are *really* good about shipping I've noticed; 3 day shipping comes in 1 day for me when Newegg sends it).

And no, no extra memory sticks laying around. I could take some out of this laptop, but intuition tells me that wouldn't work. Lets just hope that its only the ram, otherwise... Well, otherwise I have alot to take apart and send back :*(.

 

[iOprah]

Most likely the ram in your laptop will not fit in your desktop. Wait for the RAM and if it doesn't work we'll go to the next likely culprit.

 

[Monkey Brawler]

Just a suggestion, if your rams gone...no use in trying it.....Disconnect the hard drive and try running the linux live disc. I just got done with a computer that a bad hard drive threw errors on the optical drive, ram and hardrive.

 

[WarliKe]

Just a suggestion, if your rams gone...no use in trying it.....Disconnect the hard drive and try running the linux live disc. I just got done with a computer that a bad hard drive threw errors on the optical drive, ram and hardrive.

I totally agree I blame the HDD!!!

 

[Cacophonus]

\o/ new ram got here, it actually works. Still had to run the "repair" wizard from the win7 boot disc, but at least the whole fiasco is over with- I can only hope it stays that way, since I still have no definitive (nor way of having a definitive) answer as to why that RAM fried itself.

Slightly off-topic question: anyway to alter the turbo boost multipliers on a gigabyte board? Else I'll just go back to normal oc'ing, but having power saving options would be nice.