Hi, I've tried checking to make sure there are no older posts with the same problems so please excuse me if I missed one. Apologies in advance for what will be a long post I recently took the plunge and built my own PC rather than buying a prebuilt one. I approached the task with some trepidation, it's a very expensive way to learn from your mistakes Anyway, first I'll list my spec, and then launch into the problems I've been having in the hopes someone can help me as I'm at my wits' end here. Spec: AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition 3.2GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail Titan TTC-NK85TZ Fenrir CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2+/LGA775/LGA1366) XFX ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card - Inc. Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 10666C9 1333MHz TwinX Dual Channel (TW3X4G1333C9) Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 10666C9 1333MHz TwinX Dual Channel (TW3X4G1333C9) Pioneer DVR-216DBK 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3500418AS) Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3500418AS) Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium 7.1 Sound Card (70SB088000000) Antec 900 Ultimate Gaming Case - Black (No PSU) Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (66I-01939) Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard (920-000375) MSI 790FX-GD70 AMD 790FX (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard OCZ Freeze Extreme Thermal Conductivity Compound OCZ ModXStream Pro 700w Silent SLI Ready ATX2 Modular Power Supply Logitech G5 Gaming-Grade Laser Mouse (910-000094) Creative Fatal1ty Gaming Headset (51MZ0310AA001) Samsung Syncmaster 245B Problems: After putting it all together, I booted the system, went into the bios to set the time etc, then saved and booted. I got to a screen asking for a boot disk, so installed my new oem copy of vista home premium 64 bit SP1. Installation went fine, system booted up. Next, I put my mobo drivers disk in the optical drive and installed the chipset drivers and ethernet drivers. I then looked at 'the windows experience' and saw my system rating was 1.0. So I inserted the gfx card drivers. It wouldn't let me install the drivers from the disk, it literally forced me to go online to get the latest drivers from XFX/ATI. The new catalyst (9.5) downloaded and installed, but said it failed to load the windows C++ files. Windows experience now said I had a rating of 5.9. I then installed the drivers for my G15 keyboard and G5 mouse Then I installed the copy of H.A.W.X. that came free with the gfx card. This said it installed the windows C++ drivers and succeeded. After this, I installed steam, firefox, registered on a few of my old forums. I was getting this weird problem occasionally where the screen would freeze, go black and say my gpu had stopped responding and reset itself. Meanwhile, windows update was downloading all sorts of things to my system. So, the screen suddenly went haywire while I was looking at some pictures I'd downloaded from my digital camera, with weird jagged lines all over it like a corrupted vista bootup screen. I then reset the system. Upon rebooting, the new windows updates were configuring themselves, and I got another screen freeze, or maybe I was just being impatient. But after several minutes of apparent total inactivity I hit the reset button before windows had fully booted. While the PC was restarting, I got a strange message. It said "Boot critical file C:\windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe is missing or corrupt" It told me to boot from the vista disc and use repair system, but the vista disc was unable to repair it. The only way I could boot was to install vista on the second hdd and boot from there. Error code was 0x490 status 0xc0000221 Apparently this occasionally happens on multi-core processors sometimes due to memory getting locked by one application and simultaneously called by another. So anyway, as a workaround, I installed Vista onto my 2nd HDD. Install went fine, so I swapped the sata cables on the two drives so that what used to be the 2nd drive in the boot order was now the first. After using the new HDD, my gfx card hasn't reset once, but it also won't let me install the drivers. It lets me install Catalyst 9.5, but when I try to run the setup procedure, it fails to install the display drivers and the hd audio drivers. I installed the drivers for my G15, and rebooted the machine. Not sure if I installed anything else before the reboot though. Upon rebooting, the system had to perform a checkdisk. It found 3 errors and fixed them. I then installed HL2 and CS:S from steam, but every time I tried to run them, it said "verifying game files" and failed to start them. So I rebooted again, and once again checkdisk ran. This time it founds loads of errors, fixed them and then moved lots of orphaned files. Check disk was running every time I rebooted. So after doing some research, (answers were on techrepublic.com) I checked the registry settings for check disk, and these were fine. I then did the fsutil dirty check and was told my drive was dirty. So using chkntfs /x C: I disabled checkdisk for the next boot. After rebooting, I opened command prompt and did Chkdsk /f /r C: Upon reboot, this ran a full checkdisk, which took well over an hour and cleaned the dirty bit. Check disk hasn't run since. One problem solved. During the next reboot, I noticed that on the screen where it gives me the choice between which hard drive to boot from (both now having vista installed) there's also a toold option to run windows memory test. It does two passes and after both passes, windows booted and told me my memory was fine. (Which I'm glad about because my fenrir is a big beast and I'd have to remove it to remove the RAM.) It's also constantly failing to install the majority of windows updates after they're downloaded, still won't run any steam apps (I've already deleted and reinstalled these with no luck) and won't let me install the drivers for my gfx card or soundcard. Or the drivers for my monitor. I've gone into system manager and it says that the VGA device has been stopped. I'm wondering if that's because it detected my 4890 or if it's yet another problem to deal with. Is there anyone out there who has survived this wall of text and can help please?
Welcome! Sounds like a dying HDD (unlikely as you have two), a dying video card, or a problem with the Creative sound card. Try removing that from your system and see if it helps anything.
not sure on the dying HDD, this sounds more like user error. turning off your PC in the middle of updating windows files is not good and would most liklely result in corrupt files. if it was me id do full format and start again. do install stuff in this order OS chipset drivers windows updates (repeatedly until none left) graphics drivers (latest) audio drivers for creative (also make sure you have disabled onboard audio in the bios) drivers for keyboard/mouse
I also suggest disabling Automatic Updates. Personally I want to be in control when my OS is updated, and I don't want it to start updating when shutting down.
thanks for the replies. I know it was me that corrupted the OS on the first drive, which is why I installed vista on the second drive. I plan to reformat the first drive. I'll then remove the sound card (the mobo has 7.1 built it so I don't know why I bought it. Will update the chipset and then update vista like you said. It just takes soooo long Do I need to update to the latest BIOS rather than the drivers that came with the mobo?? If so, how do I do this? I'm just hoping that my vista being OEM and activated doesn't prevent me from reinstalling on the first hard drive
have you made checks to see if all the drivers are 64-bit and not 32-bit. made the mistake of installing autodesk inventor 2009 in 32bit on a 64 machine and it ran like a pair of old pants. uninstalled installed 64 wow show me the monies
These are 2 different things. The bios update will fix issue hardware issues and add compatibility fopr newer CPUs or enhance stability overclocking etc. You can usually get this from your mobo brand webiste. Not really included on mobo discs. Drivers are instruction for the OS on how to deal with pieces of hardware attached to your system. These are what come with your mobo CD usually consisting of chipset drivers audio drivers lan etc etc.
Thanks for the replies so far guys I've reinstalled vista on the first hard drive, and after first full restart, I checked device manager to check for conflicts. It said my sound card and vga adaptor have been stopped as these devices have problems. So I've inserted the driver disk that came with the mobo, and there are various drivers I get the option to install. There are chipset, vga, ethernet, raid, sound and one other in the bottom right corner, can't remember what it was but I know I didn't need it. So I click on the first icon, Chipset, and it starts ati catalyst saying its updating my display drivers. This setup runs and completes. I then try to click on the VGA Icon, and it's grayed out. So I figure maybe I clicked the wrong icon, and click on the chipset icon again. It starts up the ATI catalyst installer again I decide to move on, and install the ethernet drivers. These work fine, quickly followed by the mobo audio drivers (even though my new soundcard is still in the machine). It detects the realtek chips and installs these drivers fine too. But I still can't click on the greyed out VGA icon, and clicking on the chipset icon still starts up ATI catalyst. I give up, and let the computer reboot. Check device manager, the audio device is now working fine, but still the VGA adaptor has a warning sign saying the device has been stopped as it has problems. Anyway, I'm currently running windows update in the hopes that I can get all the windows updates done tonight and install the drivers for my 4890 tomorrow. Fingers crossed
OK, latest news. I've run windows update and 49 of 52 updates installed fine. I ran all the vista64 updates first, then the security updates and then any leftovers. 3 updates refused to install though. security update for internet explorer 7, realtek ethernet driver update and internet explorer 8 install. I then went and downloaded the latest catalyst and drivers for my 4890 gfx card, and this installed perfectly, I can now run on my 24" display at 1920x1200 Next I went to the micrsoft site and downloaded IE8. Ran it, but the install failed. I read the page from the shortcut ie8 installed on ym desktop and ran the fixit to reset security problems, then ran the installer again but still I can't get IE8 to install Anyone know what could be causing this? Tomorrow I'll be installing steam to see if I can get it to work this time round, wish me luck
ok the latest update is that Steam Apps and H.A.W.X. are running fine since the rebuild. So hat's good news However, I still can't get IE8 to install, and I can't see SP2 on the updates list, so I'm guessing IE8 and the IE7 security updates and the ethernet driver updates and the windows defender definitions update are blocking it from being available. Is there any way around this? I use firefox btw so I'm not overly fussed about IE
have you installed any of the custom updates from windows updates and this can contain some useful stuff. to be fair if you use FF then why install IE 8 ? Glad its all sorted ish now
Custom updates? I've installed everything that auto updates has offered me, including optional drivers. I can't seem to get my mic working either atm, but that might be because I disabled the onboard sound in favour of my X-Fi soundcard, I'm not sure if the front panel connectors running to the motherboard get detected by the X-Fi. I'll have a look at this another time. it's only in CS:S and TF2 that I miss this and I'll be playing CoD4 and CoD5 once I've installed them. I was trying to install IE8 because I read somewhere that windows update will only offer me SP2 once I have no updates waiting in my queue. As I can't get the IE7 security patch, the windows defender definitions update, the ethernet drivers patch or IE8 to install, I don't know what to try next to allow SP2 to download. Does anyone know a good visualisation plugin for media player 11 by the way? When I'm working at the desk I like to have the visualisations running, but they never seem particularly responsive to the music.
thanks for the post adam. I'll be looking into this when I get back from holiday in a couple of weeks, as I've disabled the onboard realtek so need to reroute the front panel connectors anyway
