hardware [Solved] Which component is choking my setup - nothing is loading?

[KjellB]

Hey there LTT community! I am facing an rather strange issue with my game computer and I believe one of my component might be running out of its lifespan, I hope you guys can help me identify the problem!

 

Symptoms

After I boot it up and sign in onto my local profile I get a completely empty desktop with just the default Windows wallpaper; my shortcuts, folders as well as taskbar shortcuts does not seem to load in. Furthermore whenever I try to access context menu or the start menu I just get the mouse loading animation and nothing more. If I leave it running for 3+ hours Google Chrome icon appears in the taskbar, other than that you can't use the computer since nothing is willing to load.

 

Temporary solution

I can get around this "issue" by reinstalling latest Windows 10 with media creator USB (using my work laptop). I usually create a 120gb partition for Windows and I allocate rest for Steam, once the OS is ready I pop in Windows- and driver updates. I find that disabling Windows and all driver updates entirely in O&OO10 (Windows 10 shutup) gives me around 1 week extra before this issue occurs again (it happens at random in spans of 2 weeks). I just use this PC for gaming and the only programs that I use are:

• Steam (mostly for Rainbow Six Siege).
• Google Chrome.
• MSI Afterburner.

 

Computer specifications

Quote

Model: Predator G3-605 (AG3-605 / DT.SQYEQ.082) from 2013ish.

CPU: Intel® Core™ i5 i5-4460 (4c/4t @ 3.20GHz)

GPU: GeForce® GTX 760

Memory: 8 GB DDR3-1600

Storage: 1TB 7200 RPM (Serial ATA/300)

Motherboard: Manufacturer's*, version P11.B4.

OS: Windows 10 Pro (1709)

At times when this issue happens the Windows Automatic Repair pops up but it can't locate the issue.

 

Any suggestions what could be the issue here?

Thanks.

 

EDIT:

The storage was the issue, corrupted sectors on the disk caused the failures. The computer works fine with a new one, thanks for all the help!

[NMS]

Hello and welcome to the forums!

 

Can you get a hold of another drive and install Windows onto it? I'm fairly certain it's your drive.

Use this software to test it: CrystalDiskInfo.

[emosun]

4 minutes ago, NMS said:

I'm fairly certain it's your drive.

how the hell did you come to that conclusion did you actually read his post at all? lol

it seems pretty obvious that windows update is crippling the machine after a certian point in time when it updates something. Does windows 8 work fine?

[Minotaur10]

This is definitely your HDD that's failing.

[DocSwag]

13 minutes ago, emosun said:

how the hell did you come to that conclusion did you actually read his post at all? lol

it seems pretty obvious that windows update is crippling the machine after a certian point in time when it updates something. Does windows 8 work fine?

Anything doing stuff to the HDD doesn't seem to work right. Perhaps windows is making the issue more noticeable but windows shouldn't be enough for the HDD to do THAT

[NMS]

15 minutes ago, emosun said:

how the hell did you come to that conclusion did you actually read his post at all? lol

I have experience.

[NinJake]

33 minutes ago, emosun said:

how the hell did you come to that conclusion did you actually read his post at all? lol

it seems pretty obvious that windows update is crippling the machine after a certian point in time when it updates something. Does windows 8 work fine?

Even if it is windows update, it's still accessing the drive and if the drive is failing it will slow windows update and everything else.

 

Checking a drive is much easier than reinstalling a different version of Windows for test purposes.

[IntMD]

It defo sounds like a problem with the drive from the description.

 

I use my old dual core 4 thread laptop (4200U) with inbuilt graphics with no problems on win 10 even doing windows updates. It does now have an old ssd I had lying around in it, but had an sshd in it before that which it worked fine with win 10 also.

[Guest]

Seems that you'r hard disk is about to die. It's time to get a new one and pull off any data that you consider important.

[emosun]

Even if it is windows update, it's still accessing the drive and if the drive is failing it will slow windows update and everything else.

 

Checking a drive is much easier than reinstalling a different version of Windows for test purposes.

 

Dear lord if he can reload windows and it works fine then it's not the drive you guys. If the drive was failing it wouldn't reload windows at all.

[NinJake]

1 minute ago, emosun said:

 

Dear lord if he can reload windows and it works fine then it's not the drive you guys. If the drive was failing it wouldn't reload windows at all.

Only if the drive is 100% toast will it not work. A drive can be bad and simply be starting to fail. By doing the disk check it will show how many failed sectors there currently are.

 

I've dealt with numerous bad drives that "still work" but not as they were intended to. By replacing the faulty drive the PC was fine.

 

My point still stands that running a simple test to check the health of the drive is a lot easier than replacing the OS.

[SimplePleasures]

yea, im going with the herd on this one. it sounds like a drive going bad.

[KjellB]

5 hours ago, NMS said:

Hello and welcome to the forums!

 

Can you get a hold of another drive and install Windows onto it? I'm fairly certain it's your drive.

Use this software to test it: CrystalDiskInfo.

Thanks! Unfortunately I would need to reinstall Windows 10 to get it working again (the temporary solution I mentioned), I was hoping you guys maybe could help me troubleshoot the PC at this stage to find roots of the issue. CMD is working if I boot with Repair Mode.

 

5 hours ago, emosun said:

it seems pretty obvious that windows update is crippling the machine after a certian point in time when it updates something. Does windows 8 work fine?

It came with Windows 7 preinstalled and about a year ago I upgraded to 10, it worked fine until January of this year. Windows Update and drivers updates are entirely(?) disabled in the registry (using O&OO10), maybe I'm missing something? Here's a screenshot of my O&OO10 settings:

5 hours ago, Minotaur10 said:

This is definitely your HDD that's failing.

5 hours ago, DocSwag said:

Anything doing stuff to the HDD doesn't seem to work right. Perhaps windows is making the issue more noticeable but windows shouldn't be enough for the HDD to do THAT

4 hours ago, NinJake said:

Even if it is windows update, it's still accessing the drive and if the drive is failing it will slow windows update and everything else.

 

Checking a drive is much easier than reinstalling a different version of Windows for test purposes.

4 hours ago, IntMD said:

It defo sounds like a problem with the drive from the description.

 

I use my old dual core 4 thread laptop (4200U) with inbuilt graphics with no problems on win 10 even doing windows updates. It does now have an old ssd I had lying around in it, but had an sshd in it before that which it worked fine with win 10 also.

4 hours ago, Konrad Kwasniewski said:

Seems that you'r hard disk is about to die. It's time to get a new one and pull off any data that you consider important.

3 hours ago, emosun said:

 

Dear lord if he can reload windows and it works fine then it's not the drive you guys. If the drive was failing it wouldn't reload windows at all.

3 hours ago, NinJake said:

Only if the drive is 100% toast will it not work. A drive can be bad and simply be starting to fail. By doing the disk check it will show how many failed sectors there currently are.

 

I've dealt with numerous bad drives that "still work" but not as they were intended to. By replacing the faulty drive the PC was fine.

 

My point still stands that running a simple test to check the health of the drive is a lot easier than replacing the OS.

3 hours ago, SimplePleasures said:

yea, im going with the herd on this one. it sounds like a drive going bad.

That's what I fear and I'd like to know if there is a way to troubleshoot this.

 

I booted into CMD using Repair Mode, I tried to check S.M.A.R.T status of my harddisk and got this:

X:\windows\system32> wmic diskdrive get status
STATUS
OK

Maybe there is a more advanced method for conducting a proper test, ie checking for bad sectors like @NinJake mentioned?

[NinJake]

You may have simply ran into issues if you did an "upgrade" from Windows 7 to Windows 10 instead of clean installing.

 

While you are in cmd prompt, try doing the command:

 

chkdsk /r

 

This will scan for any disk errors and bad sectors and automatically attempt to fix them. It may prompt you to do a restart during the process so you will have to type "y"

[NinJake]

I've always been able to use GUI tools to check for bad sectors using the SMART test so I'd try the command line chkdsk first.

[DocSwag]

21 minutes ago, KjellB said:

Thanks! Unfortunately I would need to reinstall Windows 10 to get it working again (the temporary solution I mentioned), I was hoping you guys maybe could help me troubleshoot the PC at this stage to find roots of the issue. CMD is working if I boot with Repair Mode.

 

It came with Windows 7 preinstalled and about a year ago I upgraded to 10, it worked fine until January of this year. Windows Update and drivers updates are entirely(?) disabled in the registry (using O&OO10), maybe I'm missing something? Here's a screenshot of my O&OO10 settings:

That's what I fear and I'd like to know if there is a way to troubleshoot this.

 

I booted into CMD using Repair Mode, I tried to check S.M.A.R.T status of my harddisk and got this:

X:\windows\system32> wmic diskdrive get status
STATUS
OK

Maybe there is a more advanced method for conducting a proper test, ie checking for bad sectors like @NinJake mentioned?

Could you try something like crystaldiskmark and see what the hdd reports when it comes to read/write speeds and whatnot?