Computer shut off no warning ?

[Wildman95gst]

Crazy thing happened to my wife yesterday morning while checking her e-mail, the computer just shut off. She tried to restart and it gave her black screen with warning messages and an option to hit f1 to continue, after doing this it went to a blank screen with only the cursor blinking in the upper left corner. I came home and found the computer down, when i booted up it posted ok but when windows tried to load, it went to the warning screen "windows has encountered a problem new software or hardware has been changed" bla bla bla. SiSoft Sandra was the only software i had recently installed, no hardware change and i do not have anything overclocked. I removed my cmos battery and tried to reboot, same thing. I finally fixed it by going into safe mode, which it only went into the black screen with start up installs. This took almost 5 min. the hd was going like crazy during this time. It finally rebooted into windows but thing were running very sluggish, i un-installed SiSoftware Sandra and re-installed my chip set drivers and directX9c. I ran Prime95 for over an hour and had no errors, things seem to be back to normal. Anyone have any ideas as to what could have caused this to happen ? Could my memory be going bad

[Tradesman]

Possibility of virus/worm - how's your AV software? Do you have the MS Malicious software removal program?

Is this the same system where you were doing something with the RAM?

System may have been turned off rather than SHUT DOWN.....Any power spikes, bad weather?

Could be a number of things, did you get SiSandra from their site or a secondary site, if so what site?

Conficker worm....was this the first time on the internet since April 1?

Any other info available?

[Wildman95gst]

I have Norton AntiVirus and it is up todate. No i do not have a MS Malicious software removal program. What would be a good one to use ? Yes this is the same system, just had to replace the motherboard. The bad weather could be the problem, it is not bad now but we did loose power a few times earlier this week. Not sure what site i got SiSandra software from, i did a Google search and went from one of the download sites. No this is not the first time since April 1, between myself my wife and son, we stay on the internet most of the time we are at home. We had a problem a year my son was on Myspace and downloaded music on LimeWire and we picked up a bad bug that my Anti-Virus software did not pick up, ended up having to reformat to get rid of it.

[Tradesman]

The MS Malicious software is a Microsoft program you can download direct from Microsoft for Malware, worms, etc:

http://www.microsoft.com/security/ma...e/default.mspx

Asked about SiSandra because some sites and torrents offer pirated software and on occasion the software versions they make available may have viruses.

Norton's a pretty good AV program, but it's not a bad idea to have a backup AV program around you use in times like this, if you wanted to you could try AVG, they have theeir Free version here:

http://free.avg.com/download-avg-ant...s-free-edition



I'm guessing since you have had bad weather, it may have come from a power surge or outage, where the system wasn't allowed to shut itself down, so some of the files may have been corrupted (i.e.system config files) if so it might take a full start up or two to have rebuilt itself. (i.e. reload the system drivers for an device or two that may have gotten corrupt). I wouldn't think the RAM, although the possibility is there.

Hope this helps

[Wildman95gst]

Thanks you have been a great help. Some corrupted files could be why it took so long for the system to boot in safe mode, windows was trying to fix any problems

[Tradesman]

That was my train of thought, especially w/ the extreme HD action....would go ahead and give the two programs I mentioned a try though, just to be on the safe side, don't want your system to have a virus or become a bot.

Have a gud 1 !

[Wildman95gst]

I downloaded MS Malicious software and ran it today, good new nothing was found. I also downloaded AVG and will give it a whirl tonight

[Tradesman]

If everything still seems stable, would think that was the problem - since you reinstalled all your drivers, would believe you're good to go.

[Wildman95gst]

Kudo's to U again, i posted the same question on Guru3D which i have been a member for 5 years and had 55 people read my post and no one replied

[Tradesman]

No problem - Have a gud 1!

[Wildman95gst]

Just remembered i failed to mention, in my attempt to trouble shoot my problem and try and get my system running, i replaced the G-Skill ram modules. So untill i install them again there is still that posibility that the ram could be going bad causing corrupted files hense, my system shutting down.

[Tradesman]

Give it a shot and get back, if additional problems, we can troubleshoot from there.

[G.SKILL]

Just remembered i failed to mention, in my attempt to trouble shoot my problem and try and get my system running, i replaced the G-Skill ram modules. So untill i install them again there is still that posibility that the ram could be going bad causing corrupted files hense, my system shutting down.

it seemed you didn't mention what memory and platform did you have?
and would you like to re-install clean windows again?
the corruption of system files could be caused by both software and hardware
thanks


G.S

[Tradesman]

Wildman95gst had a previous post - F1-3200phu2-2gbns, where system specs/ram were gone into with Gskill - last post was 3/23/09

[Wildman95gst]

Installed the F1-3200phu2-2gbns modules again, and they work fine. I have another battle to fight, my system is running like it is in quicksand.