Custom Built Desktop Help

Anaeran

Anaeran

The Ranka
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So I have this issue with my desktop (custom built gaming PC) where the system freezes and unfreezes when I try to log into a game. The sound gets all glitchy and I can't close or click anything on the screen. Eventually the system either lets me close the program or it unfreezes for a bit and allows me to continue.

There is also a soft scratchy noise when I put a disc into the harddrive. It doesn't damage the discs or anything but I have never heard anything like that before.

Obviously I can't game like this, and I've already replaced the motherboard and the power supply with no results. Couple of questions here:

1) What could my issue be? Is it hardware related or is it the system?



2) Would it help to reformat the thing entirely, and if so, how do I do that on a custom built system that didn't come with your typical store bought recovery discs?


System is:
OS: Windows XP Professional
2 gigs of Turbo Ram
Intel Duo Core E6600 Processor @ 2.4 GHz
Lite-On Combo SOHC-5236V DVD/CD-Rom
NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT 256mb graphics card

Thanks in advance for any possible insight into this issue.
 
Well, first off, being able to put a disk into the hard-drive is quite a feat in itself. I'm pretty sure you meant the DVD-drive though. A optical drive making some clicking noises happens, mine does it occasionally if the disk is dirty or scratched. However, if the hard-drive is making the clicking noises, it's the sound of an imminent drive failure. Back up your data and call in the warranty/buy a new drive.

Now, you said you replaced the power supply. Did you make sure your replaced (and old) power supply was/is of a high enough wattage? You've some fairly modern stuff in there, and it all needs a fair bit of juice to run, otherwise system instability occurs. 400+ watts is the norm nowadays.

Second, you said you replaced your motherboard. Did you at least uninstall the old mobo drivers, and install the new ones? Windows has basic drivers to work for pretty much all x86 boards, but they suck ass. Official drivers that match the board are an absolute must.

Third, make sure you've got the latest drivers for all your pieces of hardware installed on your machine. I doubt your video card is bad, as that failing will just cause massive (or minor) graphical issues, but everything else would work. Still, find a way to test it. If your motherboard has internal video, uninstall the drivers to the card, switch the video output to the internal card, and see if your issues still occur.

I recommend you find yourself a version of memtest and make sure your RAM is free of any errors. Just google memtest and find a version that you can use. Instructions on how to use it are provided on their websites.

If you've got the latest drivers, a up-to-spec power supply, your hard-drive is good, and your memory checks out (it's not like your CPU has failed, otherwise your PC wouldn't even work (I think)), and you've still got issues, a clean rebuild is in order. Recovery disks provided by retailers like Dell are terrible and should never be used.
If you want to go about this route, here's how I go about doing it:

1. Backup all your data onto another hard-drive
2. Find the latest drivers for all your hardware, place on alt-drive
3. Get all your downloaded apps beforehand and store on alt-drive
4. Once everything you care about is safely stored off your primary drive, go find your windows xp cd
5. Restart computer, and mash whatever key you need to get into the BIOS
6. Ensure that your computer boots from the CD drive first. I cannot help you with this, as you didn't spec the motherboard, so I can't look up the manual. If you've the manual, look it up. It's not hard.
7. *Just* before saving settings and quitting the BIOS screen, place your windows XP cd into your optical drive.
8. Save setting, quit. Your pc will restart.
9. Boot from the cd.
Now, the steps here are a little fuzzy to me, but I remember what to do.
10. You want to first format your hard-drive. Not a quick format, a full one.
11. That will take awhile, go play some console games or watch TV
12. Once complete, delete the old partition, and create a new one in its place. If you have more than one partition on your primary drive, delete them all, then create a new one. You can create the second partition once windows is finished installing.
13. Install windows.
14. Install all your drivers, starting with the motherboard, and work your way up. This is why you got them before, instead of having to find them again when windows is in 640x480 mode.
15. Install all your apps
16. Restore your data from your alt-drive.
17. Profit.

If a clean rebuild doesn't help, then something else is wrong. And I'd not know what that is, as I've tried to cover everything.

Hope this helps.

Cheers.
 
Thanks for taking the time to outline these options for me. I will go through what you wrote here and try to figure it out.

And yeah I meant the DVD drive. I'm retarded when it comes to computers.
 
A computer a notch better than mine, so probably a 500 watt PSU at a minimum, but that is unlikely to be causing the instability.

I would recommend wiping your PC as Seteyu suggested before replacing hardware.

1.) Run a Memory Test. http://www.memtest.org/ It should let you know if your RAM is addressing appropriately (though I suspect your RAM is fine). If it fails the test however, reseat the RAM. Take it out, put it back in, etc...
2.) Check Event Logs for errors. Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer > System. Look for anything that looks like driver errors. You might find a driver throwing unhandled exceptions in which case explaining the freezing.
3.) Make sure your BIOS settings are acceptable. (Temperature, Core Speed, Memory Frequencies primarily. If you haven't overclocked, the last two shouldn't be a concern).
4.) Follow Seteyu's guide for reinstalling windows if none of those help.

5.) If you still have problems, post again with the exact models of your Motherboard, RAM, CPU, and Video card.
 
I see a lot of error messages in the event log. These all repeat a bunch of times each throughout the log history. This is what most of them say:

ERROR:
The SRTSPL service failed to start due to the following error:
A device attached to the system is not functioning. 1/23/2008

ERROR:
The Parallel port driver service failed to start due to the following error:
The service cannot be started either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it. 3/14/2008

ERROR:
The Application Management service terminated with the following error:
The specified module could not be found. 3/14/2008

WARNING:
TCP/IP has reached the security limit imposed on the number of concurrent TCP connect attempts. 3/14/2008

WARNING:
An error was detected on device \Device\CdRom0 during a paging operation. 3/15/2008

WARNING:
The time service has not been able to synchronize the system time for 49152 seconds because none of the time providers has been able to provide a usable time stamp. The system clock is unsynchronized. 3/16/2008
 
prob 1 and 5 could be the primary problem causing your issues. maybe the last one too. actually. all of them could be sharing the cause but most of them are not really that important to fix. the first one could be causing random freezing. things such as bad cd drives will cause computers to start slowly or to freeze while starting. which in turn could mean that it could also cause issues when the computer is on and in normal operating state. have you checked device mgr for device problems?
 
with that said, if the prob persists, if you do use some of your older hardware, its probably a safe bet to say that a piece of old hardware is the cause
 
I see 2 potential paths.

1. It is possible your problem could be driver only. Therefore, finding the proper driver, you could fix your problem and have no need to reinstall windows.

2. It is also possibly your problem could be much more sinister such as a missing Windows library, virus, or other stupid problem. I say this because ... well:

ERROR:
The Application Management service terminated with the following error:
The specified module could not be found. 3/14/2008

I can't be sure if that is a driver issue or a library issue though. Personally, I would take the longer path to remove from all doubt the fact it is an issue with drivers or hardware. Reinstall windows, and start installing everything all over again. Motherboard Chipset Drivers, Graphics Card Drivers, Audio Drivers, CPU Driver (if you have AMD), NIC driver, etc...

Now, with all that said, lets examine:

======

ERROR:
The SRTSPL service failed to start due to the following error:
A device attached to the system is not functioning. 1/23/2008

A Symantec Error. I could find no information describing exactly what this service does. It is possible you have an expired version of Symantec Antivirus that was removed innapropriately, you got a virus that disabled and deleted certain files, or as it says, faulty hardware may exist.

I suspect your CDROM device may be acting stupid, only from a diagnostic below.
ERROR:
The Parallel port driver service failed to start due to the following error:
The service cannot be started either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it. 3/14/2008

No idea. Probably not a problem or even related to the problem.

ERROR:
The Application Management service terminated with the following error:
The specified module could not be found. 3/14/2008

This doesn't sound good. From what I just read, anything using the MSI Installer will not execute a proper installation if this service is faulting.

WARNING:
TCP/IP has reached the security limit imposed on the number of concurrent TCP connect attempts. 3/14/2008

This concerns me for virus/spyware/botnet reasons. Especially with the Symantec warning above. It is possible you have a virus, but I can't be sure without actually looking around.

WARNING:
An error was detected on device \Device\CdRom0 during a paging operation. 3/15/2008

Any paging problem will cause severe drops to whatever process is executing the page. Page faults are slow. I believe Windows XP uses on-demand paging, so if it needs something that was not loaded into memory, the process suspends while the data is read from whatever source. This could be a 20-200 ms delay or more depending on seek time and read times. If your game has to load from a disk at all, this is the culprit hands down, no doubts. The error could either be the disk or the drive.

WARNING:
The time service has not been able to synchronize the system time for 49152 seconds because none of the time providers has been able to provide a usable time stamp. The system clock is unsynchronized. 3/16/2008

Is your system time correct in Windows and in your BIOS? Not an important error though... (I don't think Windows Update suffers w.this being incorrect anyways)

=====

I would reinstall windows, your drivers, and all software and go from there. This course of action should mitigate outside factors such as faulty applications, missing system files, viruses, and anything else extraneous that would affect a clean Windows install.

Do the Windows install disconnected from the internet. Enable the Windows Firewall if your Antivirus package does not already have one. Then when absolutely ready, (after drivers and antivirus is installed) connect to the internet, get updates for Windows and your Antivirus program.
 
Last edited:
I will be taking steps to reinstall windows then. How do I go about backing up/saving drivers for hardware pieces?

I really appreciate all the help btw. I'm not the easiest guy to work with when it comes to computer issues.
 
Well, for one, in order to back everything up, you need a safe place to store it. A simple 256mb flash key would work for simple drivers and small files. Anything larger, such as a music collection, would require a second/external hard drive.

As for the actual "backing up" of drivers, before nuking your drive, the simplest method is to write down all your part numbers, and visit each of the manufactures websites, and download the latest versions, and put those on your flash key/secondary drive. Make sure you get every driver for each piece of hardware. If you don't have even a flash key, they're dirt cheap, pick one up. If you forget (or have already nuked your drive), go oops, find another machine with net access, and download the drivers from there. It is for this reason my external drive has the basics to get a windows box net-safe (or at least safer) so I can get drivers if I forget to download them beforehand.

After everything is safely stored outside your C:\ drive, aim a format c: at it, and proceed to clean-install windows, following the steps I outlined in my first post. Oh, a tip, make sure your machine is isolated from the net once windows is clean-installed (just unplug the Ethernet cord, problem solved), as a windows box is infected within minutes of being online with no form of protection.

Cheers.
 
What Seteyu said for getting the drivers. I listed many of them above but again:

Motherboard Drivers (Chipset drivers, USB 2.0 Drivers, CPU Drivers)
Network Interface Card drivers (Ethernet Drivers sometimes as they are misnomered)
Display Adapter Driver (Graphics Card)
Sound Adapter (Sound Card)
RAID Driver (If you have it which is fairly unlikely)

Have your Antivirus ready to go on some offline type of media.

Then pop in your Windows XP disk. Install it and do a Format or Quick Format (It really doesn't matter in my experience, Full Format is good when its a new disk). Then install everything back in this order:

Chipset > CPU Drivers (AMD only) > USB 2.0 > Everything else driver related > Antivirus > Windows Update
 
So I finally found the time to reformat this sucker and here's the result:

The freezing and unfreezing with reverberating sound is still going on, but the pauses don't last as long as they used to. I used to have an issue running Crysis where the menus would take forever to open, and upon reformatting all menus open immediately as they should, so some improvement was made.

However, the problem with the freezing and glitchy sound is still enough to make playing any kind of online game annoying. This clearly has to be hardware related at this point, since my harddrive is basically naked right now.

What should I do at this point? Any ideas as to what piece of hardware may be the problem? My roommate suggested it may be a corrupt memory stick, but I have no idea how much he knows about the issue.

Please help!! It's been way too long since I've had it running properly :(
 
Anaeran said:
So I finally found the time to reformat this sucker and here's the result:

The freezing and unfreezing with reverberating sound is still going on, but the pauses don't last as long as they used to. I used to have an issue running Crysis where the menus would take forever to open, and upon reformatting all menus open immediately as they should, so some improvement was made.

However, the problem with the freezing and glitchy sound is still enough to make playing any kind of online game annoying. This clearly has to be hardware related at this point, since my harddrive is basically naked right now.

What should I do at this point? Any ideas as to what piece of hardware may be the problem? My roommate suggested it may be a corrupt memory stick, but I have no idea how much he knows about the issue.

Please help!! It's been way too long since I've had it running properly :(
Click to expand...

When I first built my PC, I had a similar problem. However it only occurred when doing things remotely intensive. Games would freeze momentarily for like 2-3 seconds then unfreeze. It never happened while surfing the internet or typing up a word document. The culprit for me was due to a bad memory stick. It may be as well for you.

The best way to identify faulty memory is to run a Memory Check. MemTest86 is a free diagnostic tool that can determine if your memory has errors on it. This is what I used and my memory was chalk full of errors. http://www.memtest86.com/ - I believe Arc already mentioned it earlier. I don't know if you've tried the memory test yet or not. If you haven't, I suggest you start there.

From the specs you listed, you specified having 2Gigs of Memory which I assume is 2 sticks @ 1Gig a piece. If that is not the case, disregard everything from here down. Having 2 sticks makes testing slightly more complicated, but easier to diagnose if memory is the culprit.

===============================

Going from memory here so things may differ slightly.

After you download and create the bootable CD-ROM Image. Reboot the system and set the BIOS option to boot from CD ROM first. Save the changes and it will reboot the system upon exit of the BIOS. The memory test should run automatically. I'd let the test run for an hour at minimum unless it starts to detect multiple errors. If errors are detected, then there is a problem with your memory. However, only one of them may be faulty and the next part will determine which one (if not both) are faulty.

Power down the system, and remove one of the RAM sticks and redo the test. If memory error comes up from that test, power down the PC and remove that stick of memory. Replace it with the stick you took our previously and redo the test. You may want to redo these test again to double check your results.

Should any SINGLE stick come up clean of errors, go ahead and boot into windows and see if the problem persists. If it doesn't, then memory is your culprit. In any event, you should RMA your faulty memory stick back to the manufacturer. Most notable memory manufacturers offer lifetime warranty (at least mine did). Simply go to their website and fill out an RMA form and given their options pick one that best suits your needs. The only downside is that you will have to pay the shipping cost to send the faulty memory stick back to the company.

Hope this helps.
~Cherr
 
Cherron said:
When I first built my PC, I had a similar problem. However it only occurred when doing things remotely intensive. Games would freeze momentarily for like 2-3 seconds then unfreeze. It never happened while surfing the internet or typing up a word document. The culprit for me was due to a bad memory stick. It may be as well for you.

The best way to identify faulty memory is to run a Memory Check. MemTest86 is a free diagnostic tool that can determine if your memory has errors on it. This is what I used and my memory was chalk full of errors. http://www.memtest86.com/ - I believe Arc already mentioned it earlier. I don't know if you've tried the memory test yet or not. If you haven't, I suggest you start there.

From the specs you listed, you specified having 2Gigs of Memory which I assume is 2 sticks @ 1Gig a piece. If that is not the case, disregard everything from here down. Having 2 sticks makes testing slightly more complicated, but easier to diagnose if memory is the culprit.




===============================

Going from memory here so things may differ slightly.

After you download and create the bootable CD-ROM Image. Reboot the system and set the BIOS option to boot from CD ROM first. Save the changes and it will reboot the system upon exit of the BIOS. The memory test should run automatically. I'd let the test run for an hour at minimum unless it starts to detect multiple errors. If errors are detected, then there is a problem with your memory. However, only one of them may be faulty and the next part will determine which one (if not both) are faulty.

Power down the system, and remove one of the RAM sticks and redo the test. If memory error comes up from that test, power down the PC and remove that stick of memory. Replace it with the stick you took our previously and redo the test. You may want to redo these test again to double check your results.

Should any SINGLE stick come up clean of errors, go ahead and boot into windows and see if the problem persists. If it doesn't, then memory is your culprit. In any event, you should RMA your faulty memory stick back to the manufacturer. Most notable memory manufacturers offer lifetime warranty (at least mine did). Simply go to their website and fill out an RMA form and given their options pick one that best suits your needs. The only downside is that you will have to pay the shipping cost to send the faulty memory stick back to the company.

Hope this helps.
~Cherr
Click to expand...

This sounds exactly like my issue, and I will be following this guide word for word. Thank you so much for this post (Arc too, I musta missed the memory diagnostic thing). Hopefully this turns out to be the culprit and I can just replace the memory no problem. Thanks again!
 
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