Vindictus freezing computer...

• TA wrote on 2011-03-02 01:00
  I've already told you guys that I have a 64-bit operating system. It's Windows Vista Ultimate x64. I have 5TB of HDDs, which I'm pretty sure you can't even do on 32-bit? And anyways, I know what I'm running on.
  
  I replaced the RAM, this one, yet again, only detects 2 of the 3 sticks. This time I got a 12GB kit, so it's only detecting 8GB of it.
  
  My motherboard can't actually boot with a card in just the first slot, but with two different brands and two different sets of RAM, it's pretty obvious I have a bad DIMM slot. In fact, only the black slots work. When I tried putting the RAM in the blue slots, it just put the computer into a permanent restart cycle, like a bad clock. Except, it never did come up. Once I'd switched them back to the black slots it even said there was a bad clock and reset all my timings, which is weird.
  
  And anyways, I'm pretty sure letting it do that for about 2 mins or so fried my HDD. It started clicking really loud not long after and I was 4 days without a computer while waiting for an Advanced RMA. I ended up getting a new one from Best Buy and cloning to it instead since it was going to take yet another 4 days because of some shipping delay. I actually just now got all the hdd crap sorted out...
  
  But yeah, it really looks like it's a motherboard problem. Even eVGA (my GPU's support) and Crucial (my RAM's support) have told me it's the motherboard. Unfortunately, MSI is just dicking me around.
  
  OC stable, tried unclocked too, problem persisted. Like I said, it's not the CPU. I've benchmarked that too and it doesn't overheat.
  
  GPU I've benchmark tested and it doesn't overheat, and it's not overclocked, no.
  
  Oh by the way, I guess I never posted this...
  
  Mobo: MSI X58 Platinum SLI
  GPU: eVGA GTX 280
  PSU: Kingwin MACH1 800W
  
  And uh, since I replaced my RAM now... this is it...
  RAM: Crucial 12GB kit (4GBx3), DDR3-1333
  
  I was doing DDR3-1600 before, this.
  
  This problem is getting pretty expensive at this point... $150 to get new RAM, $100 for another hdd since I couldn't stand another 4 days without my computer. So... $350 and nothing has been fixed. RAM still isn't all detected and I haven't tested yet, but I'm pretty sure it probably still freezes too.
• phresh wrote on 2011-03-02 18:01
  That sucks, but at least you've gotten to the bottom of it. Weird that a HDD died on you in troubleshooting. Seagate?
  
  Just FYI 32-bit doesn't limit storage capacity.
• TA wrote on 2011-03-04 21:54
  Western Digital.
• Taycat wrote on 2011-03-04 22:20
  Well that really sucks now.
  
  I just hope you can afford a new motherboard...
• Succ wrote on 2011-03-06 10:39
  On the plus side.. I hear gigabyte makes decent motherboards.
  I have an evga board+gfx, and it works well enough bot lately they have sucky bios support so I would avoid them for now.
  
  Honestly, it seems like everything has gotten sorted out. Not cpu, gfx, ram, hdds... all that is a crappy mobo that has faulty dimm slots.
  Sorry to hear that you've already put in 350 without getting anything actually fixed.
• careygold wrote on 2011-03-21 08:58
  Yeah its really a bad news...!!!
• TA wrote on 2011-03-31 14:49
  Well, it's just started to artifact and freeze during just normal operation now, not even in games. I guess I'm gonna have to break down and get on with getting a new motherboard. God, I hate putting in motherboards and connecting everything... I always miss something or do something wrong.
  
  :gloom2:
  
  edit: Okie, well... I ordered a Rampage III Formula, since apparently no stores near here carry it, or any decent motherboard for that matter. It's still processing though... I hope it gets here soon and fixes it because it's starting to artifact+freeze almost every time it's started now.
• TA wrote on 2011-04-14 04:55
  Goddd.... It took me 9 hours to label every cable on my mobo, take out the old mobo, clean off thermal paste, put cpu in new mobo, put new mobo in case, apply new thermal paste, reattach my liquid cooling and hook everything back up.
  
  And now, just something had to go wrong...
  
  

  Detecting drives
  No drives found
  
  Reboot and select proper Boot device or insert boot media in selected Boot device and press a key.

  
  
  And what's weird is that in BIOS it detects all the hdds and I set one of my hdds to the boot drive... grrr... Why is this happening... Everything is hooked up correctly, I checked all the connections to all the hdds... wth.
  
  Oh and an amusing aside... This mobo only detects 8GB of RAM in BIOS too.
• TA wrote on 2011-04-15 08:27
  Things went much much worse than I had ever imagined.
  
  The new motherboard did not fix the RAM issue, so I can assume it does not fix my problem so I'm going to send it back. Unfortunately, I learned that when installing a new motherboard one must reinstall windows.
  
  Worse still, my Windows Vista Ultimate x64 cd was scratched and hung at Expanding files 0% for hours before it finally got a BSOD before not completing.
  
  At which point, I decided I would just put the old motherboard back in and have my computer back while I sorted out what was really wrong (I'm going to flay my GPU for this at this point). And so, I put the old one back in with record time - I had already spent 9 hours carefully cateloging and detailing exactly where everything goes, so other than the ***** of a liquid cooling system for my CPU, I did it very quickly.
  
  Worse yet, my attempt to install Vista on the new motherboard had messed up any hope of not having to finish installing Windows on it. Oh yes, that meant that I still needed a Windows CD. F my life. Seriously. Wow.
  
  So, long story short... I get a new one and finally just moments ago finished installing Vista again.
  
  All I've managed to do so far is absolutely nothing. I'm actually worse off than I started, and -$600. Oh the joy.
  
  To top it all off, I've been so stressed and frustrated the past few days that I've felt sick and close to throwing up. Ah...
  
  Well, I guess I'll be getting my PC mostly back to how it was before I tried changing the motherboard for the next few hours. I suppose after I'm done doing that I'll have to work out sending back the new motherboard for a refund then getting a new GPU and new PSU - only two things left, and **** them **** them **** them, they can go to hell!
  
  I was almost ready to crawl up into a ball and cry not long ago... this has all been... such an ordeal. Nothing, absolutely nothing, went my way.
• Taycat wrote on 2011-04-15 08:42
  Aw!
  
  -hugs-
  
  At least it's sorta fixed, right? ;3;
• TA wrote on 2011-04-15 09:00
  Actually, it's more broken now than it was before.
  
  Also "wonderful" news... now it sounds like one of my hard drives is making weird noises. God...
• Taycat wrote on 2011-04-15 09:14

  Quote from Tiffany;410911:

  Actually, it's more broken now than it was before.
  
  Also "wonderful" news... now it sounds like one of my hard drives is making weird noises. God...

  
  
  I think your computer is out to kill you.
  
  Be careful.
• TA wrote on 2011-04-15 23:34
  So, I was trying to back up my important C files to my H drive (and then F as well), but it was going horrendously slow and then my computer artifacted and froze.
  
  I can see this being a problem.
  
  If just copying a couple gb's of files causes it to artifact and freeze then how on earth am I going to manage to clone my C drive? Ah god...
  
  :stress:
• Micho wrote on 2011-04-15 23:36

  Quote from Tiffany;411964:

  So, I was trying to back up my important C files to my H drive (and then F as well), but it was going horrendously slow and then my computer artifacted and froze.
  
  I can see this being a problem.
  
  If just copying a couple gb's of files causes it to artifact and freeze then how on earth am I going to manage to clone my C drive? Ah god...
  
  :stress:

  
  
  Hope it works out Tasha!
• Osayidan wrote on 2011-04-16 00:08
  For your drives, get an external enclosure that can hook up to another PC via usb.
  Or use a bootable OS CD like ubuntu or windows XP PE (bart PE is good). Even while a drive is starting to die or if a computer is dead, you can get your stuff from it that way unless the drive is totally trashed.
  
  Can't help much for the board, all I can suggest is listening for the beep codes during POST, if there are any. Then find out what they mean for your specific board model. Troubleshooting hardware is the most annoying the in the universe if you don't have it in front of you.