Help troubleshooting what's wrong with my rig

[Gravemind]

About 2~ months ago it started acting up and I'm unsure if it's Windows being borked or some piece of hardware is dying. Specs first then I'll get into the examples.

FX-8300 cpu

16gb (4x4) G.Skill RAM

Asrock 970 ProM3(I think) motherboard

Sandisk 256gb SSD
2x 2TB HD's(1 Seagate, 1 Western Digital)

Asus ROG RX-480 8gb gpu
Corsair CX 450M psu

Nothing is more than 3 years old, was all new hardware at the time.

 

Now on to the problems. Keep in mind all these started very suddenly one day, it wasn't a gradual thing.

1. Rig fails to POST about 50% of the time it's turned on, will POST 100% of the time after hitting the reset switch.

2. Windows fails to launch multiple times and mobo asks "wat do", same frequency/success rate as #1

3. If it posts and I get into the BIOS asap then exit and continue the boot, for some reason it never fails if I do that specifically.
4. Programs will randomly just fail to open all the way. They'll sit in Task Manager with like 146k memory and not budge at all for up to 10 minutes sometimes. Most common in the first 30 minutes or so of use, but can randomly do it anytime.

5. Windows Update has failed 100% of the time, only installing firewall updates properly.

6. Programs/files on any drive take a good second of time extra to open than before.

7. Even right clicking on the Desktop to see the context menu there makes the cursor do its "I'm thinking super hard man, wait." animation 100% of the time.

 

Oddly, games still run perfectly fine. So many things are having issues here and there but the more-demanding titles I play sometimes run buttery smooth.

I'm not able to figure out though if it's software or hardware that's giving me the issues. Half of them seem to be Windows needing a reformat, but even failing a POST makes me think hardware.

I've already tried every easy quick-fix I could think of, like swapping the RAM around, re-seating everything, swapping cables around, etc.. None of my 3 drives' slowness is from them being too full either, I'm really anal about keeping them around 50%-60% capacity since I know speed quickly drops off around there if you keep going, and I'm OCD about keeping them defrag'd as well. I used Sandisk's SSD utility and other 3rd party programs to test all 3 of my drives and none spat out errors.

[Pot8rtot]

I have a bad version of you POST problem as well, just with way worse success rates... Ill let you know if I find a fix for that. Other than that I am of not much help.

[aDoomGuy]

Hooow about...... Clear CMOS and reinstall Winblows? If problem is still there after this then I'd worry (if all cables are seated properly). What is CPU temp in BIOS?

[Gravemind]

2 minutes ago, aDoomGuy said:

Hooow about...... Clear CMOS and reinstall Winblows? If problem is still there after this then I'd worry (if all cables are seated properly). What is CPU temp in BIOS?

I watch all my temps like a hawk. My cpu rarely goes over 130°F even under a moderate load, and even idling right now it's only 92°F with the fan speed at only 60%. It's air-cooled with one of those graphite pads Linus showed off in 2018(?) serving in place of the paste.
BIOS CPU temp though, I dunno, I don't look at it there but I doubt it'd be any different in the 25s it takes to get from off to logged in and Speccy running.

 

Not sure if it's relevant but I accidentally cleared the CMOS about a year ago. I was dusting it and the mobo's battery shot out of its' slot because of some spring-loaded crap that Asrock likes to do. When I did that, my rig was seriously unhappy and barely operable for about an hour and needed a couple restarts. Things like the clock and even email were essentially broken. I'd clear the CMOS but with my last experience I'm a bit hesitant. Or does that always happen?

[Gravemind]

bump

[aDoomGuy]

10 hours ago, Gravemind said:

I was dusting it 

Hmmmm... dusting it ..how?

[Gravemind]

5 hours ago, aDoomGuy said:

Hmmmm... dusting it ..how?

Was using one of those air cans made for dusting computers and such. I blew some dust off the top of it(from a safe distance) and it just shot out of the slot because it's essentially spring-loaded. I fail to see how out of my last post, that's the most relevant part.

[aDoomGuy]

3 hours ago, Gravemind said:

Was using one of those air cans made for dusting computers and such. I blew some dust off the top of it(from a safe distance) and it just shot out of the slot because it's essentially spring-loaded. I fail to see how out of my last post, that's the most relevant part.

I just wondered how you did it with the CMOS battery coming loose.. 

 

18 hours ago, Gravemind said:

about a year ago. I was dusting it and the mobo's battery shot out of its' slot because of some spring-loaded crap that Asrock likes to do. When I did that, my rig was seriously unhappy and barely operable for about an hour and needed a couple restarts.

Also because of what the bold text say.. I'm thinking maybe you need a replacement mobo. 

 

Lets try this and see what happens?

Open command prompt as admin and run command SFC /SCANNOW

It will scan your critical system files and download new ones if needed. It will not take very long on SSD. 

 

Next try running this command: DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth

 

Note if you want to try a more thorough scan replace checkhealth with ScanHealth (if you can't run them try in safe mode and if that didn't let you run them I think the installation of Windows is very badly screwed).

 

Did these commands have any complaints?

[Gravemind]

1 minute ago, aDoomGuy said:

I just wondered how you did it with the CMOS battery coming loose.. 

 

Also because of what the bold text say.. I'm thinking maybe you need a replacement mobo. 

 

Lets try this and see what happens?

Open command prompt as admin and run command SFC /SCANNOW

It will scan your critical system files and download new ones if needed. It will not take very long on SSD. 

 

Next try running this command: DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth

 

Note if you want to try a more thorough scan replace checkhealth with ScanHealth (if you can't run them try in safe mode and if that didn't let you run them I think the installation of Windows is very badly screwed).

 

Did these commands have any complaints?

Done all those already.

None spat out anything wrong.

And the CMOS battery coming out while the computer is A: Off, and B: Unplugged, is harmless, just annoying to deal with the computer needing to re-sync what time it is.

[aDoomGuy]

Yes yes it is removable I know. I just found it odd. Never had any ASR mobo though.

 

 

Maybe try messing a bit with the hardware? Try to POST with  just one of the hard drives or even with none of them installed and see if the system completes POST more easily? Can you get your hands on another video card just to try to see if that makes a difference (borrow or something)? Have you ever run Memtest?

You don't get any POST code beeps when it fails to POST?

[Gravemind]

1 minute ago, aDoomGuy said:

Try to POST with  just one of the hard drives or even with none of them installed and see if the system completes POST more easily?

I'll try later if I'm feeling brave.I have anomalously bad luck when it comes to something as simple as "Boot with no drives" and then the computer just dying or something. I know it boots with just my SSD in it though at least. My 2 2tb drives are for games and assorted media, they're just places to dump stuff.

 

2 minutes ago, aDoomGuy said:

Can you get your hands on another video card just to try to see if that makes a difference (borrow or something)?

Nope.

 

2 minutes ago, aDoomGuy said:

Have you ever run Memtest?

Yup. No problems. Did it when I upgraded to 16gb of RAM sometime in 2018.

 

3 minutes ago, aDoomGuy said:

You don't get any POST code beeps when it fails to POST?

No speaker for beeps or digital readout. Just blank screen, keyboard doesn't light up etc., but everything is spinning/lighting up fine.

[aDoomGuy]

4 minutes ago, Gravemind said:

I'll try later if I'm feeling brave.I have anomalously bad luck when it comes to something as simple as "Boot with no drives" and then the computer just dying or something. I know it boots with just my SSD in it though at least. My 2 2tb drives are for games and assorted media, they're just places to dump stuff.

 

Nope.

 

Yup. No problems. Did it when I upgraded to 16gb of RAM sometime in 2018.

 

No speaker for beeps or digital readout. Just blank screen, keyboard doesn't light up etc., but everything is spinning/lighting up fine.

I see.. Yesterday I sent my M.2 NVMe in for RMA because it went and borked itself randomly. With it installed in my PC it would freeze at the splash screen (where it say press del etc..). You are saying that the PC boots fine with just the SSD? Like all the time? Seems like there is something wrong with one of the 2TB drives then. So try one and switch over to the other one and see how it behaves, leave the SSD in if you are sure it will POST fine with it.

[Gravemind]

1 minute ago, aDoomGuy said:

You are saying that the PC boots fine with just the SSD? Like all the time?

No. I said in the beginning it'll fail to boot period(no splash screen, can't get into BIOS etc.) roughly 50% of the time unless I hit the reset button. Was just saying my 2 2TB drives wouldn't have any effect even if one was dying.

[aDoomGuy]

1 hour ago, Gravemind said:

 I know it boots with just my SSD in it though at least.

What you mean by this then? If you turn on your PC with only SSD will it fail 50% of the time?

[Pot8rtot]

1 hour ago, Gravemind said:

No. I said in the beginning it'll fail to boot period(no splash screen, can't get into BIOS etc.) roughly 50% of the time unless I hit the reset button. Was just saying my 2 2TB drives wouldn't have any effect even if one was dying.

Hey Bro. Id like you to try, if possible, moving your graphics card to another slot. As I mentioned I had trouble getting my system to POST at all. I tried moving my GPU to a different Slot on the Motherboard, and I have been able to consistently POST now. It doesn't fix the underlying issue, but it might help troubleshoot it.

 

[Gravemind]

58 minutes ago, Pot8rtot said:

Hey Bro. Id like you to try, if possible, moving your graphics card to another slot. As I mentioned I had trouble getting my system to POST at all. I tried moving my GPU to a different Slot on the Motherboard, and I have been able to consistently POST now. It doesn't fix the underlying issue, but it might help troubleshoot it.

 

Would but can't. Literally no other place to put it. My mobo is a mini-itx/micro-itx(I'll always get them mixed up.) so there's just nowhere to put it.

[Gravemind]

Ended up reinstalling Windows.

Solved 95% of the problems, GPU and CPU even run like 10°-15°F cooler which is... strange, but I won't complain.

Random browser pages freeze but I'm blaming that on Opera and Firefox now, at least they're less common.

Even fixed my failure-to-POST problems... somehow. Not sure how a borked Windows affects something like that but hey.

[Pot8rtot]

8 hours ago, Gravemind said:

Ended up reinstalling Windows.

Solved 95% of the problems, GPU and CPU even run like 10°-15°F cooler which is... strange, but I won't complain.

Random browser pages freeze but I'm blaming that on Opera and Firefox now, at least they're less common.

Even fixed my failure-to-POST problems... somehow. Not sure how a borked Windows affects something like that but hey.

Interesting. I might give it a try when I can be bothered. The only problem is I work on my system...