Mystery Diagnosis

[Noxmancer]

Hello people I am new to the forums. I haven't really had a chance to look around but needed to make a quick post since im leaving here soon so sorry if this is in the wrong place.

COMPUTER: Gateway FX6800-01e (stock)

PROBLEM: Computer freezes during start up at the screen where it says Microsoft Corporation and the green loading bar scrolls across. Sometimes taking multiple restarts to get past that point. Games that once played smoothly (CoD4 and Left 4 Dead) now lag spike during offline gameplay (haven't checked online but I'm sure if its doing it offline its doing it online ). Also the computer will not shut down entirely sometimes.

This problem started occuring after the power flickered in my house a few days ago while I was playing World of Warcraft. While the computer was restarting I unplugged my cable modem and plugged it back in letting it reset and all that mess then the computer froze at the loading screen.

I contacted Gateway Support and they think its a corrupt windows file. They're sending me a recovery disk since my computer is still under warranty. I'm here to get a second opinion and see what everyone else thinks. Thanks in advance.

 

[kmote]

TBH it sounds like they might be right on this one. If not it'll be the hard drive.

 

[SparkMonkeyHellion]

Could simply be bad boot sector, but it sounds more like some bad component to me, maybe memory.

Try the boot sector first. There are plenty of boot sector repair tools out there.

 

[Trotter]

Try running chkdsk to find and repair any errors on the hard drive. I am assuming you are running Vista. If you are using XP, the procedure is almost the same.

If you are getting to the green bar I doubt it is a boot sector problem.

If by chance you are using XP, you could do a repair installation (using a full XP installation disk) and not mess up the rest of your programs and data. If you are using Vista I would recommend you start backing up your files now.

 

[Noxmancer]

Thanks for the responses. Well I did the CHKDSK and it didn't find anything . So I guess I will just wait for the recovery disk to get here.

 

[Trotter]

If you are running Vista, be backing up everything you don't want to lose. The "recovery" will consist of erasing everything and putting it back on just like when you bought it.

 

[Noxmancer]

Alright, thanks .