What are the signs of a hard drive or a motherboard going bad? I had my computer custom built. It ran well at the shop. As soon as I got it home it started loaded in the black screen with BIOS and other text popping up. Sometimes the icons on my desktop would not work ( open ) other times they would. Other times to get to my desk top items I had to go through my start up and click on the icons there ( this issue seems to have corrected it's self for now ). The PC reboots it's self even when no one is beside it or using it. I have DSL and am getting thrown off line at the time now. ( that could just be a fluke of course and have nothing to do with this issue. It is not making any of the grinding or any other noises that I have read about online that are a warning something is wrong. All the sounds are normal... also all the stuff I explained above is hit and miss. Sometimes it will restart 40 times a day other times 0 times! The only thing that is consistent is when it does boot back up it does so with a black screen and goes to the option of starting my pc in normal mode, however I can not chose anything there either - it won't allow me to. Then it does a 30 second count down and windows XP opens.. I am taking it back in the shop but am quite curious ( so I don't get ripped off ) what others thing it is? Motherboard or Hard Drive? There are no virus or such I have checked many times. Thanks PS: It is a desktop and I don't know any thing else or any tech type stuff to tell you more info..
Also consider the way you bring the computer from shop to your home, because at some case the computer can not start because something are loose or not connected properly in the slot or card.
Check if it's still under warranty.. it could be an overheating issue. It is best that a computer technician or one with pc repair know-how should troubleshoot and repair your computer problem.
I am not a computer expert but I have build up my own pc at home. The most usual reason for this type of problem is wire. Yes for non technical person it may seems weird, but simply changing the wire that connects motherboard to hdd will solve the problem. No harm in trying.
Hi There Verify the HDD make / model from Device Manager then download the appropriate tools from the manufacturer's site. Then test your hard drive. All FREE PC Support tools are on my site. Also mobo testing tools there too. If you need help with their use just ask.
Hey, it is very possible that a fan or something has stopped working and your computer is overheating. A quick test for this is to open the box up and just feel the ambient air; it should be relatively cool and moving, not hot and stagnant. I had a Radeon 9800 Pro way back in the day constantly have its fan get stuck. My computer would hard shut down and restart constantly, sometimes so much that the video signal would get messed up completely. Check the cooling fans on your video card/processor/HDD. Make sure all power connections are nice and snug. Try using swapping out HDDs between a working computer and this one to get a sharper diagnosis on the problem.
A major sign of hard drive failure is the Click of Death (Search it up on Wikipedia, I'm not yet allowed to post links). There are tons of possibilities with motherboard failure, though, that can cause unpredictable things.
Thanks Trad. I was REALLY hoping you were right, as wow what an easy fix that would be - but nope I checked it and the fan is going strong. I am taking it back to the person who built it for me tomorrow. I was hoping to correct it myself, but I am done and am giving it. His problem, not mine now. Thanks everyone for trying to help
You should try and run a FSCK on your hard drive to make sure that isn't going back. MB can sometimes be tough to catch, normally it just goes out and you can't turn on your computer. Haven't really had a motherboard show "signs" of going out, since it's always been so sudden. With hard drives it shows signs all over, in Linux you can check the logs and see if/where it's failing. I had a server yesterday spitting out bad sector warnings all over in the logs. Sure enough, tried to reboot the server with fsck and it got stuck lol.