Computer Freezing

[darkprince]

My computer was going along fine for a while and then one day it froze in windows and when I rebooted it it stopped in the bios and came up with:

"AMD Duron (tm.......... Update Success)
DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER"

So now if it doesn't come up with that message on startup it either freezes in the bios or the very start of windows loading.

I'm guessing it's a problem with my processor but I need some advice on what to do and what the problem is.

Thanks in advance.

 

[stduc]

Well I'm guessing its a problem with your hard drive.

Open the case & check all cables. Especially the power and IDE cables to the drive. Give the PC a clean up if necessary as well while you're in there.

If reseating cables doesn't fix the problem then google for the hard drive manufacturers diagnostics and download and run those, or visit grc.com and buy spinrite. Most, include spinrite, run from self booting floppies or CD's. That way you can verify the health of your hard drive. If it can, spinrite will repair the drive for you, possibly well enough for you to get another drive and copy the data across.

Once a hard drive has failed like this it is likely it is on its last legs. So I wouldn't continue using it for long.

 

[darkprince]

I replaced the harddrive and it went allright for about a day and then it started freezing in bios again.

I replaced the processor and it started up okay so I don't know what's going on.

Like I assumed if the cpu was broken it just wouldn't work rather then work for a day before breaking again.

 

[mainegeek]

darkprince,
It may be a power issue. The symptoms are typical of bad capasitors. Inspect the capasitors on your motherboard for buldges,leaks or crowned tops. It could be from a faulty power supply or even a dead cmos battery.

 

[BadBigBen]

I had similar probs, awhile back... the drive recognition of the BIOS got messed up, and it told me I had a different HDD installed than there was... Drive checked out fine and so did the mobo and CPU ( I am typing on the beast right now)...

Never really came behind the issue...

Clearing the CMOS seemed to help for about 6 months, then same problem all over... I then went ahead and moved the HD in question off the mobo's IDE ports and placed it on a PCI IDE card I had laying around, since then no problem again...

In the meantime I have upped the PSU to a newer one with 550w (original was 350w), and have added 3 drives (2HDDs and one Optical)... now the only problem I seemed to have is that the system gains time every three days it is 5 secs ahead...


Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[dglienna]

Dell had that problem, and issued a hotfix for it. A client's computer had the wrong time each week for 3 weeks. Finally, I contacted them, and got a link to the fix.

-David
2006 Microsoft Valueable Professional (MVP)
2006 Dell Certified System Professional (CSP)

 

[lisek053]

I have a brand new dell computer and just a few days ago when ever i play the games Counter-Strike Source and World of Warcraft my computer is freezing. I can't alt tab out or even Ctrl alt delete. It dosent freeze in windows only in game.