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icex
Premium Member
join:2004-05-22
USA

icex

Premium Member

Computer runs fine, then turns solid color and unresponsive.

Got a computer on the bench today and can't figure this out for the life of me. I booted into safe mode fine and started removing virus's and all of a sudden the screen turns blue. No errors or nothing, keyboard is unresponsive and I press numlock and it wont turn numlock off. Try to turn caps lock on and nothing. I restart and it's fine. I boot into it again, runs about 5 minutes and screen turns purple. Everytime it froze it was a differnt color.

I ran a graphics card tester, along with a cpu burn in and everything was normal. I am running memtest now but no errors so far. I noticed the PSU was very loud, I sprayed the bottom fan out and it stopped being loud.

I'm stumped. I ran ultimate boot cd and never had a problem the entire time (hard drive diagnostics, etc). I even tried to boot the hp recovery program, only to be faced with a solid color screen again.

What could be wrong?

aurgathor
join:2002-12-01
Lynnwood, WA

aurgathor

Member

First I'd take out the HD, put in another one, and install some OS from a known good source to rule out possibilities of malware/virus/rootkit/etc.

If it still does it, start swapping parts until you find the culprit. I'd start with the video card.

icex
Premium Member
join:2004-05-22
USA

icex

Premium Member

The video card is intergrated on the motherboard. I ran a test on it through a program recommended on tomshardware (cant remember the name of it though).

I also ran the seagate diagnostics and it passed. It does have malware but even on the recovery partition the screen still goes a solid color.
icex

icex

Premium Member

Any other thoughts?
Aranarth
join:2011-11-04
Stanwood, MI

Aranarth to icex

Member

to icex
How long did you run the cpu burn? I would run it for at least an hour to confirm this is not a heat related issue.

Is the length of time before it bombs fairly consistent?

The fact that it bombs to a different color every time makes me want to ask what brand of integrated graphics is it and how old?

Have you checked to see if any of the capacitors are popped on the mainboard?

I would definitely suspect a rootkit as someone suggested. The system restore still has to read the MBR table etc from the primary partition. The only way to know for sure is to get the system restore dvd's from the manufacturer, wipe the disk with zero's, and then use the restore dvd's and see if that solves the issue. (Or use a known good or clean HD.)
HarryH3
Premium Member
join:2005-02-21

HarryH3 to icex

Premium Member

to icex
This sounds like an issue that can possibly be resolved using a bootable AV tool from Kaspersky, BitDefender or even Microsoft (Windows Offline Defender??). This lets the system boot without loading code from the hard drive, so that the tool can do its work unimpeded.

icex
Premium Member
join:2004-05-22
USA

icex

Premium Member

No capacitors are busted. The length of time before it crashs isent steady. Sometimes its 5 minutes, sometimes 15. No errors on memtest86, ran it all night.

captokita
Premium Member
join:2005-02-22
Calabash, NC

captokita to icex

Premium Member

to icex
Remove the drive, and connect to another machine and scan it with AV software. Also, depending on what was initially wrong with it in regards to viruses, look for "added" partitions that are set as active, which could create what you're seeing.

If it were hardware related, the testing tools should make it fail, I would suspect some sort of rootkit causing the behavior.

icex
Premium Member
join:2004-05-22
USA

icex

Premium Member

said by captokita:

Remove the drive, and connect to another machine and scan it with AV software. Also, depending on what was initially wrong with it in regards to viruses, look for "added" partitions that are set as active, which could create what you're seeing.

If it were hardware related, the testing tools should make it fail, I would suspect some sort of rootkit causing the behavior.

I am running Kaspersky resuce disk right now. Hopefully it finds something! I left it running for about 30 minutes idle while I downloaded the kaspersky rescue disk and nothing happened.

aurgathor
join:2002-12-01
Lynnwood, WA

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I think you're just wasting time at this point with AV programs.

Do what I've told you: replace the HD and install OS from a known good source and/or disable video and add a video card as a first step.

icex
Premium Member
join:2004-05-22
USA

icex

Premium Member

I dont have a spare video card to test and the video card has no issues when running kaspersky rescue disk, unreal boot cd, etc.
icex

icex

Premium Member

Put in a new hard drive, same thing loading windows operating system installation. Motherboard?

aurgathor
join:2002-12-01
Lynnwood, WA

aurgathor

Member

said by icex:

Put in a new hard drive, same thing loading windows operating system installation.

As far as I concern, that would actually be indicative of a video card issue (even if it's on-board) and if you don't have a spare, just remove one from another PC for a test. (assuming it's not onboard there, too) Older video cards can be had for next to nothing, either from craigslist, or from stores selling used computer parts.

psafux
Premium Member
join:2005-11-10

psafux to icex

Premium Member

to icex
Video card issue, possibly video card memory issue. Memtest doesn't test the video ram unless that's changed in newer versions and some 3rd party testers don't test it very well (if at all) either.

Try to get your paws on a copy of QuickTech or QuickTech Pro. It has the ability to test a variety of things that many testing suites don't including video ram.

If you have a video card you can throw in, disable onboard video and see what happens that could help verify as well.

mmainprize
join:2001-12-06
Houghton Lake, MI

mmainprize to icex

Member

to icex
It could be bad connections at the Video plug on the motherboard, Look close at the mother board and see if when you move the plug at the end of the cable from the monitor if you can see any failure at the motherboard solder joints of the video connector.

icex
Premium Member
join:2004-05-22
USA

icex

Premium Member

Well, the thing is I ran memtest all night long, no problems. I ran kaspersky for 7 hours, no problems. Insert a new hard drive and start to install windows vista from a new cd and it does it. Could it be the motherboard or video card, or even power supply?

mmainprize
join:2001-12-06
Houghton Lake, MI

mmainprize

Member

said by icex:

Well, the thing is I ran memtest all night long, no problems. I ran kaspersky for 7 hours, no problems. Insert a new hard drive and start to install windows vista from a new cd and it does it. Could it be the motherboard or video card, or even power supply?

So you can run for 7 hours (memtest) but not run windows or install windows to a HDD.
I assume you ran Memtest from a CD boot disk ?
Was the HDD in the system at the time ?

Maybe you have an issue with the HDD controller chip, What motherboard do you have and does it have different controller chips for the CD and the HDD ?

icex
Premium Member
join:2004-05-22
USA

icex

Premium Member

I ran it from a boot disk.

The hdd was in the system at the time.

Its a pegatron motherboard for a hp computer, model # mzn7b-la has 4 sata ports
icex

icex

Premium Member

Plugged the hard drive into a differnt sata port on the motherboard and same thing happened. I think its the motherboard. I have a cheap video card due in Wensday and will test it further to rule out the video card.
Aranarth
join:2011-11-04
Stanwood, MI

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Member

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I would lay bet on it being the video portion of the mainboard at this point. You might be able to get away with using a cheap video card since it runs memtest etc. As soon as you stress the video card in any way it goes haywire. Going a bit deeper, I would say it probably points to a soldering issue with GPU since the keyboard stops responding as well. If it was an issue with the ramdac then I would expect the keyboard to keep working.

If you have the option to explicitly disable the onboard GPU in the bios when you have a second card plugged in do so. Otherwise just disable it in the device manager.

If it still does it, see if you can find a cheap replacement MB on ebay or amazon. (direct replacement). If not, see if the back port panel comes out (atx standard). If it does you can use any mainboard. HP does not use non-standard power supplies in their machines like dell does (or used to).