PC Issues

Alright. I now have two problems. 1) I got a bad virus on my computer that I have been unable to get rid of. What I need to do is reformat. However, when I try to... here's the situation. My CD-RW Drive isn't working for some odd reason, does not read any dics I put in it. So I put it in my DVD burner. Here's the problem. We set up the computer to boot up from that DVD, however, it does not because it reads the Hard drive first, I believe. So my friend and I disabled the HDD. Reboot, and it says it cannot install the OS because there is no hard drive attached. Reenable the HDD, then a new error occurs (I do not know what it is saying). Pretty much, my damn PC isn't letting me reformat itself.

Second problem is new today. Happened several times just today. It randomly shuts itself off. No reason whatsoever, just kills itself. What I do is turn off the power button (on the PSU), then turn it back on. It boots back up, BUT it'll shut off. Here's my hypothesis. The PSU and probablythe other parts of the PC (CPU, Vid card, HDD) are overheating. I opened up the case, and when a CPU (and energy) intensive began to run (on autorun), I stopped it, shut it off and here we go. That could also explain why the PC shut down at first: I was playing COD with 20+ other players so overheating from that could be the reason. Any ideas on how to deal with both?

My PC System includes:
P180 Case, with three 120mm fans on the tri-cool fan system.
one 80mm fan blowing directly over the video card
120 GB Seagate Hard Drive
Asus A8V-Deluxe Motherboard
A64 3000+ CPU
Two optical drives- DVD-/+RW and CD-RW
Antec NeoPower 480 Watt PSU
MSI 6600GT Video Card, 128-MB.

Conditions in my room: case is situated underneath my desk. No easy access to air. Room is UNCONDITIONED, though we do have two fans blowing air from outside (which is usually cool compared to the air inside our room) in. Does this sound likea case of overheating? Any recommendatioons on a temperature program as well?

Well for your first problem try to go into the bios and have the system boot from the cd-rom instead of the hdd. I really don't think your computer should be overheating with that case or those parts. Sorry but for now i'm stomped on your second problem.

We think that the 2nd issue may, or may not be, indirectly related to the former problem now. No temperature problems now- we installed a temp scanner on the PC and the temps were acceptabe (33-39 degrees C.), especially due to the heat in the room, and lack of AC. Now if we could only get the hard drive to be reformated. WE think the BIOS is corrupted, or is the problem, but we're also not sure how to exactly reformat a SATA hard drive (120 GB, Seagate). Any help?

Well, first thing is to make sure that cd-rom is the first boot device in the bios. Once that's the case, plop your windows xp cd in the dvd burner and restart the computer.

Since you're using a SATA hard drive, you're going to need a copy of your motherboard's SATA drivers on a floppy drive. When windows is booting off of the cd, it'll prompt you on the bottom of the screen to press F6 if 3rd party drivers are needed. Press F6 and load the drivers off the floppy drive. Now you can reformat/install windows.

THe DVD drive is the first to boot in BIOS. A problem with the floppy drive idea is that the floppy drive does not read the floppy disk at all. We've been trying to upload the floppy into the system, but it just does not read it at all. BTW, I'm still getting random powerdowns by the computer. To restart it, I have to turn off and on the power for the PSU. Do you think the BIOS or hard drive could be responsible for this?

Go to Seagate and download thier hd tool to a floppy disk. Go into bios and set the floppy to first boot device and enable floppy read on boot. The system should boot to disk. You can run the format utility from there.

:confused: Here's an update:
We discovered that the floppy drive died somehow. Kaput, dead. After figuring that one out, it was an easy job of putting the setup files on a floppy, using someone else's, and reformatted the hard drive and everything perfectly fine. Now, I gotta take the PC back to them to figure out the second problem. The 2nd problem, reminder, is that the PC shuts down by itself after appr. 15 minutes of use or so, give or take 5 minutes. I would have thought that this was caused by the HDD, hence a reformat being necessary. Since it still continues, I do not know, any ideas? Mobo, optical drives, HDD, video card, PSU?

Does it matter what they're doing when the comp shuts down? Are there any messages beforehand? Have you scanned the hard drive for physical errors? Are the power supply rails within check? Is the comp overheating? Is the OS up to date with and have you checked for any trojans/viruses? When you reformatted, did you install just the OS (no other programs) and see if it still shut off?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AverageJoe

Does it matter what they're doing when the comp shuts down? Are there any messages beforehand? Have you scanned the hard drive for physical errors? Are the power supply rails within check? Is the comp overheating? Is the OS up to date with and have you checked for any trojans/viruses? When you reformatted, did you install just the OS (no other programs) and see if it still shut off?

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1) IT doesn't matter. It could be sitting there idle and it will still shut down.
2) No messages whatsoever. Just shuts itself off immediately without any warning.
3) Yup
4) Yessir
5) From what we can tell, no. We tested it before reformatting and the CPU was not overheating. I am unable to figure out how to test the PSU, however.
6) Fresh reformat- no viruses or trojans. Insalled SP2 and all the updates and such.
7) No. I installed 2, 3 programs (programs that I had before any of this happened), thinking it was alright. My guess is that the motherboard or PSU just went bad on me. Should I take out the PSU and try another one, and if it still shuts down, try a different mobo?

try a new PSU, new as in borrowed if need be, how old is the one you have in there now?

Whats the total watts, 360W,450w, 475W?

How old is the board?

you clean it out often? vaccum does wonders to a computer, as long as you are careful.

It's practically a brand new PSU. It's an Antec NeoPower 480 watt PSU that I got back in early August. So it's barely 2 months old. The board was purchased around Christmas last year, so approximately 10 months old. I do clean it out, not that often, but it shouldn't matter. The case is an Antec P180 Case. This case uses a reversed PSU setup- the PSU is on the bottom of the case. Also, it is set up upside down to fit correctly. But again, it shouldn't really affect the computer like that. I'm at the PC shop right now and they're taking a look at it- going to test a different PSU.

What kind of ram do you have in it? I'd swap out the sticks and see if it changes anything.

I've had some crazy errors with finicky sticks before. Granted, if this thing was running for months, this seems like a stretch.