Help! Black Screen after freeze

[pattir7]

Hi all,

I just started having this problem with my PC. It is home built and has been running fine for quite a while. It is:

tyan thunder K7X motherboard
2 AMD MP 1.67 GHz processors
1 GB DDR ECC memory
Nvidia graphic board (forget which one)


Ok...so here's the symptoms...

I shut the machine down at night. When I power up in the morning, it is fine...boots up and runs for *maybe* 10 minutes...then will either completely freeze or blue screen (with various error messages). When it froze this last time, I hit the reset button and it goes to a black screen....no blinking cursor, nothing.. it is most definately NOT booting. The power button or additional resets don't do anything. So, I remove power. Turn it back on...same thing. Black screen. Hit the reset button, now it will boot...and run all day without a problem. Pretty weird.

So, in my first troubleshooting effort, this morning, instead of booting windows, I popped my memtest floppy disk in and let it 'sit and spin'. Figured I wanted to eliminate the OS and/or drivers from the problem. After about 10 minutes, I got a bunch of multi colored random characters on the screen. Went through the same power up sequence (with the same issues as above) and now it is happily 'spinning' away in memtest without issue.

Any ideas what could be going on here? Some sort of temperature problem (problem when cold)?? If so, where do I even start??

Any help GREATLY appreciated!

Patti

 

[mattw]

when you get the error message, make a note of the error code then post again. if the blue screen is not up long enough try and take a picture of it (it works you just have to be quick lol).

when we have the code it will be easier to figure out.

 

[pattir7]

It has only done a blue screen twice. It's most recent behaviour is to just freeze. No blue screen, no response to anything other than the reset button on the front of the case.

I have two disks mirrored that have to resync everytime this happens...so, I prefer to let it happen while it is only booted off the memtest floppy.

 

[mattw]

if your pc stays on long enough try and download Motherboard Monitor 5, see if its overheating, cos my old pc used to do it.

 

[pattir7]

If it were overheating, why do I only have the problem shortly after turning it on and then it will run all day without issue?

If it were overheating, I would expect the problem to get worse as it runs longer....but that's not happening. Once it 'tanks' and I boot into memtest again, it will run all day, all night without issue. Logic tells me it can't be an overheating problem.

 

[pattir7]

Any new takers?

 

[techsheriff]

Sounds like a faulty power button. Or a faulty reset button. Salvage one from another computer or scavenge one from a friend and test it out.

Peace.

 

[pattir7]

It's not the power switch....if that were the case, why all the random characters and freezes WHILE the machine is running shortly after a 'cold start'?

Anyone else? Please help if you can... the machine has been running now for two days without issue...but I know if/when I turn it off, I'm gonna have a problem again....

 

[bradnick]

Hi there, Try using Windows cd to repair boot, sometimes a power surge or cut can cause the pc to shut down incorrectly affecting the boot, this can be rectified using the fix boot command

 

[bradnick]

Hi there,
Dodgy ram can also cause this