Computer crashing during boot.

Ricx94 · October 31, 2014

I'm working with my dad's machine running an AMD Athlon 64 X2 at 3.0GHz.

Recently the graphics card in the machine that allowed him to mirror his screen to the TV via HDMI had it's fan quit and cause some stuttering issues since it was running about 95 C which a card like the 8400GS is not designed to do. I ordered a new graphics card (XFX AMD Radeon 5450 1GB) for the machine, put it in and had the machine boot fine. after installing the drivers i got a BSOD with error 0x124 which, from my research, is some kind of hardware issue causing windows to crash. My dad indicated that the machine had Blue-Screened a few times in the past couple weeks but rebooting it seemed to allow it to boot fine.

I immediately assumed it was the new graphics card and i removed it, but the issue persisted even with integrated graphics. i booted up to Hiren's Boot CD and i ran memtest 86+ which revealed no issues with the RAM. i also tried re-seating the RAM, with no luck.

I removed the heatsink from the CPU and used some isopropyl alcohol to clean off the thermal paste and then i applied some new (just in case the CPU was overheating or something).

I wasn't able to find a good hard drive diagnostic tool. most seemed to be for specific branded hard drives. not sure if I'm looking in the wrong place...I did however try UBCD's hard drive diagnostic tools but i never managed to get to the diagnostic. the computer would simply shut off, so i used clonezilla to clone the hard drive to another hard drive so as to avoid any possible hard drive issue. the same error kept happening after that with only the new drive in the machine.

Next i went to the PSU. I pulled the PSU from my personal system and hooked it into his build to find out if that was the issue. at first it booted fine, but quickly returned to what had been happening.

I have no idea what else it could be other than the motherboard or CPU, and i am not sure how to test either of those things to see if they are failing. any help/ suggestions would be appreciated. Let me know if i am lacking any information that would be helpful.

Additional Information:

- running Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

- cannot boot into Safe Mode

Altecice · October 31, 2014

Did you fully remove the old GPU driver before installing the new GPU:?

Ricx94 · October 31, 2014

Did you fully remove the old GPU driver before installing the new GPU:?

No i didn't. i probably should have, but i cant get in now to remove either of the GPU drivers (i can't get the machine into Safe Mode, it just shuts down)