Help me find the problem with my computer

[Dwood]

My computer has been acting erratically lately. It's had 2 problems: It turns on and the mouse/keyboard and the os itself is completely frozen. Restart is required. I turn it on and all the lights come on, but computer does not boot. Mouse lights, etc are on, but no video signal whatsoever.

I'm thinking it may be a dying hard disk drive - thoughts? Things I could do to test it?

I just sold my AMD 7970, replaced it with a 4850 - the video problem with the 4850 could be fixed by plugging in and unplugging the HDMI cable from the computer and now I've got an Sapphire R9 290, which the plug in and unplugging wouldn't work.

[InnerGoat]

Any overclock? Go back to stock for a while if so. Power supply or a loose connection somewhere could cause both of those problems. How are the temps?

For the hard drive, you could go download a diagnostic tool from WD/seagate/whoever made your drive and run that. They might make you run it anyways if you needed to RMA it.

About the HDMI blacking out - try a different cable and/or driver maybe? (ugh drivers)

[Dwood]

Just swapped the cable out for another one, so it's not that. I'll try to update drivers, but the display problem is only when i turn the computer on- once it runs, it runs great. when it doesn't it's terrible.

[Cojafoji]

You getting enough juice to the mobo? If that's not it, it sounds like the motherboard is fucked.

Try isolating components, etc.

If you want to test the disk, boot to your recovery, open the console, and run chkdsk. That'll check for bad sectors.

You can also check in your BIOS to see if there's a SMART readout you can use, if not, and it's not using weird proprietary smart readouts, *cough* WD, find a liveCD that'll run a reader and check with that, or download Speccy from Piriform.

[Dwood]

yeah it's not the hdd. I already removed a dying one (heh). I pulled out the GPU and it booted up just fine, but for whatever reason ASROCK was a moron and didn't put an hdmi port or dvi port on my Mobo (?????????????) so I can't test it without a gpu. So in went the 4850 and it booted up just fine. It's like the system needs to warm up a bit first before it can actually supply the power (how that works out i have no idea...). Once the system's been running for a few minutes (though not 'working') I reset it and it boots fine. (idgi, i know)

I'm going to order a new PSU (probably a 1 kW gold psu for~ 180 bucks) and save this old psu until I can use it for my coveted mineral oil project. I've gotta do it soon because I dont know anyone nearby who has a PSU I can just borrow and the warranty on this new radeon is only like 2 months.

[Cojafoji]

Definitely sounds like a juice problem. Good luck with the new PSU.

[Dwood]

Definitely sounds like a juice problem. Good luck with the new PSU.

Thanks! I actually managed to borrow one from work (:D) however, the problem persists. It's the Sapphire Radeon card- it has to 'warm up' before I can use it (idk why...) so not sure what to do.