System no longer booting...

I've got an interesting one for you, fellow computer geeks. Haven't run into this particular problem before, so am hoping someone out there has a clue as to what the issue might be. Here are my computer specs and the low-down on the situation:

SYSTEM SPECS:

MOTHERBOARD: Soltek SL-865Pro2-FGR
CPU: P4 3.2GHz Prescott
CPU HEATSINK/FAN: Thermaltake Big Typhoon
RAM: 2 GB Corsair Valueselect DDR 3200 in Dual Channel mode
O/S: Windows XP Home Edition w/Service Pack 2 and all updates since
VIDEO CARD: PowerColor ATI 9600XT
PSU: Aerocool Aeropower II+ UV 550-watt
SOUND CARD: Creative Labs Soundblaster Audigy I
HARD DRIVES: Western Digital 160 GB and 60 GB ATA-133
MONITOR: MAG 19-inch CRT
CASE: Thermaltake Shark
OTHER SOFTWARE RUNNING: SpySweeper (latest version w/updates)

PROBLEM DESCRIPTION:

I built this computer myself. Including others from the ground-up and major gutting upgrades, this is about the 11th one I've done. It's been rock-solid for months, except for two things:

1) For a period of time I was having some video issues while in FPS games. The recent ATI driver updates have fixed that and I've had nothing since then.

2) A couple of months ago during boot-ups I started getting messages that my slave drive did not pass the S.M.A.R.T. test. Since I had no other symptoms at any time I disabled that feature in the BIOS so that my boots would not constantly get interrupted. I knew there was a possibility of drive failure, but it was the slave drive and I wasn't worried about losing the data on it.

Yesterday while I was opening some .jpg files on the hard drive the computer display lost its signal and the hard drive light kept on like it was constantly accessing, though nothing else happened. The screen was totally black.

I rebooted and was able to get back in Windows with no problems. However, soon the system again crashed, except this time there was a blue screen with a long message saying something along the lines of "If this is the first time you have seen this message go ahead and reboot. If you've seen this message before there is a possible device problem and you should uninstall that device and reboot." That was somewhat the gist of it, though there was a lot more.

I was able to reboot again and get into Windows. I ran my registry cleaner, cleaning up left over pieces, ran Ad Aware and Spy Sweeper checks just to make sure there was nothing that had gotten on the computer, and continued to work. The system crashed again while in Battlefield 2 after only a couple of minutes and went to black with the hard drive light on and all appearing normal except for the display. Now, however, the system will not boot at all. The power supply seems to be good to go and is less than a year old. Power is getting to the all drives, but the hard drive does not appear to be actually booting--only the light coming on and it spinning. The screen remains black.

I thought maybe the second drive had failed and that was preventing boot-up, so I disconnected it, but no change. I can't even get to a BIOS set-up screen or any display for that matter, so it must be hard drive-related.

Sorry for the long-winded story, but wanted to give details that might key someone else's experience with this. Would appreciate any thoughts anyone has. Thanks in advance. I'm dead in the water until I figure this one out!

 

reset CMOS on the MB per their instructions. that should get u bootable again unless the MB is bad or some part maybe.

if u can't get bootable w/ CMOS reset, pull everything cept what's needed to boot the thing. i'd think about going w/ known/good RAM in a pinch as it might be the stick(s) u have that are bad or misconfigured.

if u'r OCing ... CMOS reset is common.

 

I'm fixed!

You are da man, Skeet! I should have thought of the CMOS myself. Cleared it as suggested and got into BIOS setup right away to get everything set again. Boot was clean and I'm now back in business.

I wasn't overclocking yesterday, though about a week ago I was doing a little experimenting with OCing. Thought I'd returned everything to normal, but perhaps there were some residual settings that didn't get back. At any rate, it appears I'm good to go for now. Thanks for the quick reply to my original post!

 

i hear ya. i don't OC much either hehe ... some MBs have some intricate 'resets' and it pays to read the docs since they can vary. anways ... glad u'r systems is back.