System has gone Haywire, help would be appreciated.

I know it's a bit long so if you just want to skip to my real question just read the last line, if you need more details read away!

So, yesterday morning and afternoon my 5box rig is working just fine and has been for awhile, then in the evening all of a sudden WoW starts crashing and just keeps on crashing no matter what I seem to do. So I try to use the repair utility that WoW has. It begins to run then part way through it it stops and says that the corruption to WoW is too extensive and that it needs to be completely reinstalled.

Biting the bullet I uninstall and start to reinstall, then part way through, it says it can't access some file or other and stops the install. So I try again with the same results. So I try 3 of the other copies to make sure its not the DVD with the same results, then I try switching dvd drives with the sames results. At this point I have no clue wtf is going on. Since I just barely bought this HDD 3 weeks ago I'm thinking possibly some kind of virus my antivirus programs arent picking up and since I didn't have anything WoW installed on it yet I just reformatted it and started to do a clean reinstall of vista 64. Half way through that it gives me an error saying it can't access this file or that and that several files did not delete when I reformatted to HDD.

So then I'm thinking maybe the HDD is crapping out on me so I switch it with my old HDD that worked properly and has everything the same since the last time it was installed. Same thing again with the old HDD, WoW and other programs are crashing left and right, and can't reinstall wow or anything else for that matter. So I'm thinking fried CPU or memory, so I switch things out one at a time with the same results everytime. By then it was late so I went to sleep.

This morning I wake up and the damn thing won't even boot or even try to boot. It just sits there with all the fans blowing and the HDD is running but its not doing a single other thing. So I go to Fry's electronic and pick up a new MOBO thinking wtf else could possibly be causing programs to be crashing and files to be getting corrupted and installs to not be working when everything was working just fine and had been without a single change to my system for weeks. So I take the new MoBo home and make the switch and at first everything seems to be doing better but not perfect, wow crashed a couple of times but not every 30 secs - 1min like it was last night. and I was able to reinstall vanilla wow on my newer HDD.

So at this point I'm thinking okay perhaps the old MoBo was going bad so just to be sure I switch out the old mobo again with all the same equipment that the newer MoBo just had when it was working better. Once I did this the computer would again start up all the fans and HDD and not even try to boot but now it loses power after about 30 seconds and cuts off then regains power again and cuts off again back and forth.

So Okay it must be something with the old mobo right? Nope, I swap out the old MoBo with the new MoBo again and now it's doing the exact same thing again with the new MoBO just running for 30 seconds and cutting off power and so and so forth.

SOOOO...I'm guessing my power supply probably is crapping out or not enough power to power my machine and since that's the one thing I don't have an extra of I guess I will have to head back to Fry's electronic but would a bad power supply or a power supply not supplying enough power cause files to become corrupted and not allow programs to become installed properly?

The red flag here (pun intended) is heat. With this sort of thing happening, I would check the HSF on the CPU and all the fans. 30 minutes is pretty long for the cpu to cause the problem, but since it came on with out changing parts. Look for dirt and all, blocking the fans, 30 minutes might point to GPUs, any thing show on screen before the fail?

Not sure where you're getting 30 min.s from, but as far as dust and heat goes I doubt that's the problem since I dust it regularly and the heatsink even after several hours of 5 box pvping is only warm to the touch with 3 fans on it. I just got back from fry's with a 950 watt power supply, on sale for $109 :thumbsup: , and it started up just fine. So I'm going to try to reinstall wow and what not and see what happens. Wish me luck!!!

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Originally Posted by 'Tdog',index.php?page=Thread&postID=208174#post208 174

would a bad power supply or a power supply not supplying enough power cause files to become corrupted and not allow programs to become installed properly?

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I guess so, since you've tried everything else.

Almost sounds like RAM issue, I probably would run a memory test (google for mem86) before buying a power supply or something else.

Well I already bought the Power Supply and it is booting up just fine and WoW is no longer crashing on my older HDD. However when I tried to reinstall wow on my newer HDD it is getting stuck again on different files saying something to the effect that it isn't able to access this or that file or this or that file is unable to be deleted.

As far as Ram goes I've already switched the Ram out with my older but known to be good ram with the same results so :(

I am trying to reformat the newer HDD atm and hopefully it goes through this time around.

Well in case anyone was wondering after I had installed the new power supply, I was able to sucessfully format my newer HDD and reinstall vista 64. I was then able to sucessfully reinstall all my drivers and reinstall vanilla wow thus far. So far everything looks hunky dory and apparently after a full day of headaches it was just a simple matter of the PS not supplying my system with enough power and probably just crapping out on me last night. As far as the files becoming corrupted and unable to install and whatnot last night, I'm assuming that the cpu/memory or whatever was just not getting enough power to do their job properly and it was causing errors. That's all I can really think of for that.

Nonetheless in about 8 hours of patch updates :thumbdown: T-dog will be smashing faces in once again :thumbup: . Thanks guys for your thoughts and advice!