Startup issues

[KeyboardDemon]

I was testing out a GTX580 and playing around with driver settings when my PC froze during a startup, I tried shutting down and restarting but it wouldn't boot so I tried to do a system repair and this was unsuccessful. So I tried to repair with the Windows DVD but this can't see my drive even though it is present in the BIOS. I think that this might be an issue with the GPT format and I'm hoping that a simple repair will fix the issue but I don't know how to get my PC to check the drive as a GPT volume, can anyone help?

[KeyboardDemon]

Any ideas? I could really use some help with this.

[Zak33]

ok, lets begin at the start

BIOS boots, yes? ie the board is fine?

where does it stop booting? What's on the screen at the point it fails?

[KeyboardDemon]

I get full post with no errors, I can see the drive in the BIOS but it's not booting and when booting from the Windows 7 Disc the system doesn't recognise the hard drive and I don't want to risk taking any actions that might destroy data on the drive.

I had the similar issues with GPT when installing Windows and had to convert the drive to a GPT volume first. With an MBR drive a simple repair would usually work but that doesn't seem to be the way it's done using GPT drives.

I'm not near the PC at the moment but will give you any error messages when I can get to it.

[technodean]

Has this only happened when you installed the gtx580. Have you tried clearing the cmos by jumping the pins?

[KeyboardDemon]

Ok, I got back to my PC and noticed a few things, I'll try and bullet point this as I have a feel the post would be too long otherwise:

• Went into BIOS, Boot Order and had Optical drive listed twice, once as a UEFI device and my Cache drive
• Went into the Advanced Menu, Sata Configuration where I could see P1 - Main HDD, P2 - Cache drive, P4 - Optical drive
• Looked back at boot order and no P1 drive showing
• Tried rebooting and was given the option to disable the cache drive, so disabled cache drive and tried to boot up again
• Started up with no problems and on startup initialised the cache drive again, I think!

I'm about to reboot to see what happens now. Will post back in due course, hopefully from this PC and not the iPad.

[KeyboardDemon]

Has this only happened when you installed the gtx580. Have you tried clearing the cmos by jumping the pins?

I have two GTX580s, when I tried both together I was getting some corruption on screen, but only certain screens, the main one being the loading screen for 3dMark even though the benchmark itself seemed OK but to be sure I stopped trying to benchmark in SLI and started testing the cards and the PCI-e slots one at a time. I was testing the cards with furmark, the first completed a Benchmark at 1920x1080 in both slots with no issues, the second completed in the first slot fine but when I tried it in the second slot the system froze during startup and that's when I was having issues restarting.

It looks like a crash caused my cache drive to hang and then restarting the PC while it was in limbo probly led to some data corruption, it does seem that reinitialising the cache drive has resolved the issue, I just restarted and everything seems fine, at the moment.

I have a feeling it might be an issue with Dataplex not liking GPT, I might need to consider dropping Dataplex in favour of SRT but I'm not sure if I can run SRT without starting off with a fresh install. There's quite a lot that I don't really understand about using this cache drive, which I think has been made clear by today's events!

[Zak33]

don't go there yet....

this is prolly fixable

we really need Agent or someone of equal skill in here.

but right now.... what remedial stuff have you done? Have you booted from Windows DVD and used the repair tools in there?

[KeyboardDemon]

don't go there yet....

this is prolly fixable

we really need Agent or someone of equal skill in here.

but right now.... what remedial stuff have you done? Have you booted from Windows DVD and used the repair tools in there?

Yeah, Agent seems to be a great person to go to when you have storage issues, but so far I have it working after following through the steps I highlighted in post #6 above. Fortunately, I had to go out so I posted for help and ideas before leaving, if it wasn't for having to go out I would have started tinkering and might have made it worse.

Since I've managed to get it started I have run Advanced System Care and cleaned registry plus run general optimisation routines, Advanced System Care found 75 errors in total. I'll probably run a deep scan before I go to bed and then initiate a run of checkdisk in the morning to be sure that I have no issues on the drive.

I also ran Iobit Disk Doctor which found no errors.