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Ultimate Boot CD?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
100 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
Just sell the whole laptop as-is on Ebay/craigslist and state that things are broken. Some one will buy it. Probably not for top dollar though.
You can probably get slightly more if you sell parts of the laptop separately as working parts. RAM, laptop DVD, battery, charger, etc. but that's more work.
The one thing I would caution you is to make sure the hard drives have been wiped first. You may need to pull them out of the laptop, mount them in an enclosure or in a desktop and overwrite everything. I use the http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ for this. Let me know if you need more details on how to do this.
The quickest way to "de-rate" a hard drive is to punch holes in it. I like to do that with a 30.06 myself, but that option isn't available to everyone. Also, when taking it apart, you get these really cool super magnets.
When I go "curb shopping", the first thing I do is try to wipe the hard drive. Who knows if the computer you pick up off the curb on trash day is infested with viruses or even if it contains kiddie pr0n. I'm not willing to take the risk, so it all gets wiped ASAP. I have a low end PC which I boot Parted Magic or DBAN or "secure erase" on (all included on the UBCD http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ ) for the older PATA IDA drives, but I have to use my desktop for the newer SATA drives.
Just hard drives and SSDs.
However if you want to sell them, you can, there are ways to wipe your data so you can safely do that.
For HDDs, you'll want to use a program called DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke) to wipe it. It's included in the Ultimate Boot CD, and you can make that a bootable USB instead by using Rufus
For SSDs, you'll want to use the manufacturer's secure erase tool. If they don't offer one, you'll want to encrypt the entire drive, then format it. For encryption, a lot of SSD manufacturers have an option built into their driver, if you're on a pro version of windows, you can use BitLocker, otherwise, use VeraCrypt
Just make a bootable USB of Konboot.
Here's a tutorial: https://youtu.be/qZ9xansj5_g
It'll let you bypass logon-screen on Linux/Windows. Probably easier & faster than watching potentially hours of videos for a simple phrase.
It's included in Ultimate BootCD (Free) which you can get from here so you won't have to buy that software alone (cost 16$).
What are you using to burn the iso?
ImgBurn should work if your not using something to burn iso's. CDBurner XP will also work.
Make sure you burn from image, not a data cd or something.
Also, the Ultimate Boot CD has DBAN and some other useful utilities.
Good luck!
First thing, of course, is not to panic. This type of problem is something almost everyone who's built a custom machine has experienced, and almost every time, it's something pretty basic in the end. You have a faulty part or a bad connection, most likely. You need to systematically eliminate each possible bad part.
Since the machine at least tries to boot, the first thing I would do is grab a linux-based recovery live-cd, like this one: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
Use it to test things, see if that narrows it down. You'll probably be able to crash the machine using the CD.
Starting from any knowledge you gained from the recovery CD, isolate the problem by swapping out each part from another machine. If it crashes during RAM test, start there, etc...
I suggest, as others have, to not take the machine apart if possible -- test things in situ (in place).
Here's my rough list of things to do, restarting and trying to crash the machine between each step.
- Bring the system to bare-bones first: remove video card and use on-board video, remove all other peripherals, including the SSD (boot from USB stick as mentioned). If you're unable to make the machine crash from linux, you can use booting into windows as your diagnostic.
- Remove all but one RAM stick (if you can)
- Try each RAM stick in different slots
- Bring in a known good RAM stick from another machine
- Swap out PSU (just hook another one up without removing the current one)
- Swap out CPU if you can
Best of luck to you, and it may be cold comfort now, but you'll probably feel pretty good once you get this figured out :)
Also I believe you could have used those CD/USB Bootdisk software where it creates a mini-os in RAM. Then you could have accessed your HDD and moved all your important files off before it got wiped.
Not to dissuade you, but multiple failures might indicate a hardware or disk problem with the device. You should probably run some diagnostics on it, otherwise you might be in the same boat after switching to Linux. Here's a diagnostic disk that has a ton of utilities. http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
PS - my vote is for Fedora.
I would test your hard drive. I use Parted Magic Linux distribution off the UBCD. If it checks out OK, then do a clean install of Windows.
UBCD ISO download---> http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html
Use this guide if you want to mount the iso on a USB rather than burning a DVD ---> http://wiki.ultimatebootcd.com/?title=Tutorials:USB_Installation
Boot the USB or DVD and select Parted Magic (about 2/3 down the list). I almost always use Failsafe Mode. Occasionally default will work better if failsafe doesnt work)
When you get a Parted Magic desktop, double click "gsmartcontrol". At the 1:00 mark in the video shows you how it will look ---> https://youtu.be/NJYNEOLxAfM
Check the attributes tab and see if any are Failed (not-prefailure). See if there are any critical errors reported. Finally, execute the Short Self Test and ensure it passes without error. If all of those are in good order, the drive is usually good. If you are unsure, run the Extended test (3-4+ hours).
Now test your RAM. Reboot the UBCD and goto "memory". Select memtest86 (highest version available in the list). Start the test. There will be a pass/fail message at the bottom and the test will start over when complete.
Clean install will fix your issues if the hard drive and ram checks out.
It would probably be best to test the hard drive in another machine, that means taking the HDD out of the laptop, and putting it into a desktop PC with a spare SATA port. Once that is done, run a full Malwarebytes scan and remove anything.
If that doesn't fix anything, it could be the possibility of a failing drive if response times are being that bad.
EDIT: you can also burn or place UBCD onto a USB flash drive / CD and run a hard drive diagnostic.
I use a 16GB drive, and I create a multi-bootable rescue disk.
First, I use yumi to multi-boot these tools.
Then, I load up with windows ISOs (I do a lot of machine building).
Hiren's Boot CD has saved me on many occasion.
Sometimes I use the tools contained within ultimate boot cd
Just a starting point! Cheers!
I don't know if I can condone inflicting fear on personal electronics, but nuking the drive is simple enough, and a painless operation.
Top-secret-clearance route: remove the drive; put it through an industrial shredder; replace it with a new one.
The way that's probably good enough so long as the feds aren't involved: burn yourself a copy of the Ultimate Boot CD. Any of the disk wiping tools on there will do the trick, but 'Derik's Boot and Nuke' has a handy automatic mode which will securely wipe every hard disk connected to the computer; that's probably the easiest one to get going. It'll probably take a couple hours.
If you're talking about Windows at all, then no, we are not talking about the same thing. That's kind of the point, in fact; you don't need Windows just to test hardware. For instance, when I worked in IT, we used this; I still use it for personal stuff. It has tests for everything I would want to test, plus a bunch of neat utilities for partitioning and such. It's completely self-contained, and it runs either Linux or DOS. No Windows anywhere in sight. And it takes several seconds for me to put this on a flash drive.
If you're wanting to sell the PC, I'd highly highly recommend doing a separate full wipe procedure, and then reinstalling Windows from scratch instead. As long as you don't change any hardware, W10 will re-activate as soon as it's connected to the internet again, or you can manually type the product key in too.
For HDDs, you'll want to use a program called DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke) to wipe it. It's included in the Ultimate Boot CD, and you can make that a bootable USB instead by using Rufus
For SSDs, you'll want to use the manufacturer's secure erase tool. If they don't offer one, you'll want to encrypt the entire drive, then format it. You can use VeraCrypt to encrypt the drive.
For HDDs, you'll want to use a program called DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke) to wipe it. It's included in the Ultimate Boot CD, and you can make that a bootable USB instead by using Rufus
For SSDs, you'll want to use the manufacturer's secure erase tool. If they don't offer one, you'll want to encrypt the entire drive, then format it. For encryption, a lot of SSD manufacturers have an option built into their driver, if you're on a pro version of windows, you can use BitLocker, otherwise, use VeraCrypt
Looks like your video device could be borked. If it is a laptop then it would be the chip itself.
You could try booting from something like The Ultimate Boot CD (use Rufus to put it on a thumbdrive), or even a Windows 7/8/10 installer thumbdrive to see if the display corruption appears there too.
It is doesn't look like this then you know there is probably an issue with your display driver. If it does appear then you know the problem is not isolated to your Windows 10 install.
I would start off by downloading the Ultimate Boot CD. It has a number of different free utilities that can test things like hard drives, processors, and yes MemTest is on there too.
It also has utilities for exploring the file system and wiping the hard drive and such, so it's a nice all-in-one utility to have (and easier than making your own)
UBCD is a great tool. I keep that with me at all times. Also customization is possible you want. That with Unetbootin to make it boot USB is perfect for keeping on the ol' key chain.
Go to library, friend, family house with a pendrive.
Download UBUNTU on it and boot your PC from it.
Find any linux program that formats drives.
Format your drive.
Malware dead.
You can also use something like http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
Maandag gaf ineens de harde schijf van mijn PC de geest. Eén van de partities was niet meer benaderbaar in Windows. In Schijfbeheer was 'ie nog wel zichtbaar, maar er kon geen schijfletter meer aan gekoppeld worden. En natuurlijk was het de partitie waar al mijn documenten en afbeeldingen op staan...
Gelukkig kon ik 'm nog wel benaderen met UltimateBootCD, een op Debian gebaseerde Linuxdistro, zodat ik alles naar mijn externe harde schijf heb kunnen kopiëren. Maar de oude schijf is natuurlijk niet meer te vertrouwen, dus die moet vervangen worden. Heel handig wanneer je financieel krap zit :-\
Can you boot into something like a live Linux or even just the Windows Setup? If it also crashes than you can pretty much rule out faulty drivers or other software problems and it's most likely faulty hardware.
You could try to use the Ultimate Boot CD to try other memory tests or stress test the CPU (let both run for a couple of hours).
Temporary remove hardware you don't need to boot, like card readers, Soundcards, additional GPUs (if you have an integrated one) until you pin down the faulty device.
/u/frobnox and /u/superman81 are both right, run the repair tools either from the windows disc (disc is optical media, disk is magnetic) or from a boot menu if it is available. personally i would suggest the windows disc as i've had better luck this way. if that doesn't work then try running sfc /scannow at a command prompt (can also be reached through the windows repair disc if you can't get to it another way) this very very rarely fixes anything but it will check the critical system files and registry keys for errors. after this if the problem persists i would run hardware diagnostics starting with your hard disks and then ram (your computer may have built in diagnostics for this, if not i suggest memtest86+ for the ram and for the hard drive i like parted magic. ultimate boot cd will have all you'll need for this step)
let us know what's up after all this malarkey.
Burn a copy of this. http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ and run the memory tests. It should help you determine if the RAM is bad.
It could also be a bad slot. Take out your RAM, blow the slots with compressed air, and look for any damaged contacts.
Are you looking for a list of tools or parts? If you're going to pack around some parts, I'd go with a basic video card, ethernet card, IDE & SATA hard drives, a couple of the more common types of RAM, a DVD burner, case fan, ATX power supplies, and maybe spare power jacks for popular laptop models and a handful of capacitors - though those last two can both be pretty specific in terms of models and voltages.
As for tools, in addition to what you've listed:
needle-nose pliers
small light/magnifier
power supply testers are handy
If you're taking a soldering iron, don't forget desoldering stuffs.
tubes of heatsink compound
Soft-bristled 1in paintbrush and cans of air
USB wireless dongle might come in handy
get a pill box with multiple comparements - handy when taking apart laptops with 37,000 screws of various lengths
Something similar happened to me with a damaged partition once. For some reason, it worked with Parted Magic. Download the Ultimate Boot CD, which has it as well as many other tools included just in case.
The lesson you should have learned is, always have a complete backup of any file you don't want to lose. You need at least two backups to be 99% safe:
- One on another hard drive, so you can backup and retrieve instantaneously.
- One backed up off-site, that is, somewhere not in your house and preferably not in your region, in case of earthquake/tornado/fire/theft. This could be as simple as making a weekly backup onto a CD and mailing it to your mom's house, or you can upload to the internet, like in Dropbox or Crashplan.
I mean, come on! An external hard drive as your primary storage? Those are the easiest things to lose/break/steal!
I've had to change ownership on my files numerous times and while annoying, I've never had it come back with files completely unrecognizable. Sounds like the hard drive itself might be dead or dying. I suggest you get it checked out with a hard drive testing utility (there are many available on the UBCD) before you put anything else on it, or you might lose it all again.
For HDDs, you'll want to use a program called DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke) to wipe it. It's included in the Ultimate Boot CD, and you can make that a bootable USB instead by using Rufus
For SSDs, you'll want to use the manufacturer's secure erase tool. If they don't offer one, you'll want to encrypt the entire drive, then format it. You can use VeraCrypt to encrypt the drive.
I once had 2 GPUs break because of a faulty RAM module. I recommend checking the memory, VRAM, CPU cache, hard drive and any other storage in your PC for faults. You can use the Ultimate Boot CD, which includes different utilities for all of this and does not require any installation.
Burn Memtest86+ to a disc and boot from it. Run it for about 7 passes. If you get errors then the RAM is bad but if it can do 5-7 passes with no errors you are good.
It can also be found as part of UBCD:
No, dual booting is fine.
Just be aware that Windows sometimes wants to overwrite your bootloader on updates, so it is a good habit to have an emergency USB-stick with something like UBCD ready.
Increasing order of escalation:
- use the drive's built in "secure wipe"
- Darik's Boot & Nuke (packed inside the UBCD.)
- Physical destruction, usually done by me with disassembly and then sanding down the disk platters. If you're in a hurry, I would recommend an oxyfuel torch.
try looking in your event viewer for the error it may give you more details.
you can also try booting from a live cd/usb navigating to the directory and deleting it there. I like UBCD just because of all the tools it has on it.
1) windows activation may have a shit-fit at the new cpu and motherboard, IF it boots.
2) will the motherboard detect the hdd? yes. Will windows boot? maybe, maybe not.
3) yes, you can either use an alternative OS like linux to wipe your disk through (boot from usb/cd/dvd) or you can use a tool (which also boots from usb/cd/dvd). Which tool? There are lots, you may like http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
IMHO, manufacturer diagnostics on Ultimate Boot CD are the best bet. Most manufacturers have their own software for testing drives they make. If you're RMA'ing a drive, you'll usually need to run them so you can provide an error code on the RMA request. They also have diagnostics software for windows, but using it to test OS drives is not an option.
Generally what you want to do is hook the drive up, then boot of a CD or USB drive into something like this. This prevents any data on the drive itself from being overwritten while the machine boots. The boot CD I linked includes a utility called TestDisk you can use to recover data, if there is any to be found. You won't get everything, and may have to go scraping around to actually find the bits of data that are there. This can be a handy resource for getting an idea where to look.
This. I have UBCD on a usb stick at work, so I can check the files on the machine itself, before pulling it onto an external drive, before rebooting and firing up DBAN from the same stick :)
I would do diagnostics on your RAM and your hard drive to be sure they are healthy before trying to install an OS, especially since your old one went belly up on you.
Here is a good utility for checking both.
Having a Live distro on a jumpdrive is an incredibly valuable tool for PC maintenance.
Some good ones are:
gparted, which allows very easy partition management.
Ultimate Boot CD, a powerful hardware diagnostic tool that includes Partedmagic (I prefer gparted).
Hirens Boot CD Haven't used this one in a while, but it has so many things on it, you just have to check it out for yourself.
But for nearly all uses, a Live CD setup with a persistent partition will be all you need. I'm not sure if it is still around, but Ubuntu used to have the "Wubi installer", which allowed you to install Ubuntu from inside windows, just to try it out. You still boot into a Wubi install like normal, but this allows you to just delete Ubuntu, rather than wiping and mucking with partitions. Give it a go, I bet you will be surprised how far it has come.
That is odd.
I suggest you try the self-check off the menu to see if you have a good CD burn.
If that works, try to use the "Try Linux Mint without installing" option, and see if you can get the system to boot.
(After that, I'd try a tool like the http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ to see if I could boot FreeDos or Super Gurb Disk. There are also CPU Burn-in and CPUinfo tools that might tell me what is going on)
The Stop: 0x124 BSOD is hardware related. Have you tried just one stick of RAM and then the other in different slots? Have you tried the SSD in different SATA slots? Hardware related issues can be a pain if you don't have other hardware to test it with. It might be worth trying something like Ultimate Boot CD to test the RAM and CPU. Unfortunately, what you've said so far makes it hard to diagnose. It could be the RAM, mobo, or even the CPU if it keeps doing that with onboard video.
I'd crosspost this to /r/techsupport. They have a ton of people who are friendly and willing to help who are more knowledgeable about that side of things than people in here. A lot of people here are more hardware oriented and have a harder time when it comes to troubleshooting.
I seriously doubt this has anything to do with the tool being used and more with a bad file system or bad drive.
Run
chkdsk /f c:
chkdsk /f g:
and if it finds problems and repair them then run your defrag tool again. It should make it though the defrag.
However if it doesn't find problems then run a diagnostic on the hard drive. You'll want to do a full test on the disk. I'd recommend using the manufactures tool. In lieu of that you could use another one like DFT or something off of the UBCD.
Something that I noticed from your screen show is it looks like you're running windows on a Mac? I'm not sure how bootcamp / parallels works, but in general if you have windows running on a virutal hard drive check the host's drive before you do all of the above.
Use UBCD. No questions, nothing even comes close to the utility. I've used UBCD for over 8 years in the tech industry, including the repair bench at major PC repair centers (even circuit city).
I don't have any exerience with Ultimate Boot CD (I think that's what you're referring to).
But if it's just the MBR, there is a simple way to fix that. If you have the installation disc, run that and choose Repair when it loads. I think something runs automatically to try to fix the problem. That might work, but I doubt it.
However, after that, you're given the option to see Advanced Tools. Choose the command line and you should be able to just type:
bootrec /fixmbr
If you don't have the installation disc, you can download one of these and burn it to a disc.
Did you run combofix and/or Malwarebytes? Now that you're stuck in safe mode I would try combofix. If you can't run them or they don't find anything the next step would be to run a bootable CD/USB with antivirus. I haven't gotten to that point yet. Usually rkill, combofix and malwarebytes will get rid of the nasties I've had to remove of on clients PCs.
You will want to boot into the Windows Recovery Console. This is one way to get it if you don't have a standard XP installation disk, just recovery disks.
I might also recommend the Ultimate Boot CD. This will allow you to run DiskCheck, and also check the drive itself for errors using the hard drive manufacturer check utility. If you are not sure what brand it is, you can also just run IBM's Drive Fitness Test which will give you an error code if there is a physical issue). If there is a physical issue with the hard drive, you may have difficulty clearing the checkdisk flag on the the disk.
EDIT: If you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7, you can get ISOs for the respective recovery console from here. Once you are in the recovery console you can manually initiate a full check disk and see what is happening. use the command chkdsk C: /R
I'd check it with a hard drive diagnostic utility. Try Ultimate Boot CD. I don't know if the utilities would work on an external hard drive, but you can take the drive out of the housing an mount it in a desktop computer to do the check.
Ultimate Boot CD, for example, is pretty decent. If you get it booted, use the arrow keys and enter to select the "Parted Magic" option, then go with the defaults for the most part. Should give you a mouse-driven graphical user interface from there.
You will have to figure out what tool to run, but many will warn you before doing anything fatal :)
I generally don't recommend cloning from HDD to SSD, I've seen it cause issues too often.
CloneZilla is generally the one I use though when I do need to clone anything. It's included in the Ultimate Boot CD, and you can make that a bootable USB instead by using Rufus
Samsung's migration software is pretty good too, but limited to samsung destination drives.
Additionally Acronis is solid, technically not free, but most of the time, it's included with HDDs, Mobos, etc.
Macrium Reflect will do it too as part of their backup software, you can have it generalize the image. Might be a paid feature though, can't remember. It does have a free trial though.
Most modern linux distros boot without installing (ubuntu, mint, etc) and will run straight from the USB stick.
Alternatively, something like http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ has a ton of included tools as well.
Reinstalling Windows or simply formatting a drive is not enough to protect the data on your drives if you go to sell them. It may look deleted but it's extremely easy to recover a lot of data with free software.
For HDDs, you'll want to use a program called DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke) to wipe it. It's included in the Ultimate Boot CD, and you can make that a bootable USB instead by using Rufus
For SSDs, you'll want to use the manufacturer's secure erase tool. If they don't offer one, you'll want to encrypt the entire drive, then format it. You can use VeraCrypt to encrypt the drive.
Don't change computers. Try using all your USB ports first to see if any other can read the drive, and if not, get a linux disk repair LiveCD and attempt to image the drives.
I can't give a knowledgeable referral to any specific tool, but here's two I've heard of in the past.
System Rescue CD http://www.sysresccd.org/Download
Ultimate Boot CD http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html -Windows specific version http://www.ubcd4win.org/
Read up on imaging a disk as this will let you copy all the data so you can store it on a safe drive. Using another computer might modify your drive through bios communication. Just to be safe. If the rescue software can't read the drives via USB, then add them to a SATA line and you should be ok, but try all available USB ports first as the problem can genuinely just be a USB driver error.
Well I have no idea, unfortunately. But you could clearly distinguish between a software and a hardware problem by running e.g. a Linux version bootable from USB or DVD, and see what happens. If it still crashes, it must be a hardware problem. It's unfortunate of course that it takes several days for the problem to show up.
Hardware-wise, you could also try checking your RAM, e.g. with UBCD (http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/). Try burning it to disk and boot from it. It has a whole bunch of benchmarks you can run (the SSD / HHD tests are mostly vendor-specific).
An even simpler test is to remove any hardware not absolutely needed (GPU board, other boards, all RAM modules but one) and see if that fixes it.
I had no trouble doing this using Ultimate Boot CD. I put the ISO on a thumbdrive, made sure only the WD Blue was connected, changing the controller in the BIOS from ACHII to IDE and booted from the thumbdrive. Once I changed to 300 seconds I switched the PC off, later booted to verify if changes were permanent.
WD Blue 6TB (nov 2017)
Firmware: 80.00A80
Image screenshot
To make sure your data isn't recoverable, you're going to need to follow the proper procedures to wipe the drives, then reinstall windows. Up Until now, you've only gotten partial answers to your issue.
For HDDs, you'll want to use a program called DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke) to wipe it. It's included in the Ultimate Boot CD, and you can make that a bootable USB instead by using Rufus
For SSDs, you'll want to use the manufacturer's secure erase tool. If they don't offer one, you'll want to encrypt the entire drive, then format it. For encryption, a lot of SSD manufacturers have an option built into their driver, if you're on a pro version of windows, you can use BitLocker, otherwise, use VeraCrypt
Once all drives are wiped, you'll need to reinstall windows.
There's hardly any risk of physical damage to your system - the larger danger is infection form virus.
What you ought to do, is make a USB boot drive, with some tools on it (I suggest Ultimate Boot CD), disconnect your other harddrives, and connect the one you want to test.
That way, nothing can get to your existing harddrives, while you determine if the new harddrive is quite allright.
Many crashes are blamed on ntoskrnl.exe even though it is not the cause. It's the Windows kernel and is typically what calls the dump file creation routines. If the automated analysis can't come up with a more likely culprit ntoskrnl.exe will get the blame instead so unfortunately it doesn't narrow the possibilities down much.
The SMART test will only show a problem if it has managed to detect a problem which last I heard is about 40 percent of the time when a drive is failing. I'd recommend running the quick test and long test but I'm not sure the Windows version can check the area of the drive containing the pagefile when Windows is running. I prefer booting from a UBCD disc/drive and running the DOS based version. Do you have a working CD burner you can use to make a UBCD diagnostic disc?
edit: UBCD also has a version of memtest86 which is the next thing I would suggest running after testing the HDD. It needs to have 0 errors after running at least 8 full passes to be confident that the memory is okay. It can take quite a while and best run overnight if possible.
We need to do some more process of elimination then.
ELIMINATE HDD / SSD: Download CrystalDiskInfo from here:https://crystalmark.info/en/download/#CrystalDiskInfo. Select Standard ZIP. Extract, save to USB, run on the computer. This will show if the HDD / SSD is in good health. If it shows Good in the box on the left, continue on. If it shows Caution, this indicates your HDD or SSD is the likely culprit here.
ELIMINATE RAM: Burn a DVD of UBCD (http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html) and run MemTest86+. Make sure you select the + version. Let the RAM test run for a good 3 hours. If you get any errors, immediately stop the test, power off PC, remove one stick, restart test, and run until 3 hours or another error. If you get errors again, remove stick and pop in the other one. We should be able to eliminate which stick of RAM using this method.
ELIMINATE UNNECESSARY COMPONENTS: If the test runs 3 hours without a problem, then the next step, disconnect everything except what's needed to boot into Windows. Remove all add-on cards, sounds cards, all but one stick of RAM, disconnect sound and USB cables from motherboard, disconnect DVD drive, all fans except CPU fan.
Motherboard, CPU, or PSU: If it still BSODs, then you are left with these 3 components. Unfortunately, there are no sure fire ways of testing these aside from process of elimination. There have been many times at my shop that I have had to order a board, test, if no go, order CPU, test. I doubt you'll get to this point, as I have a suspicion it's the RAM.
For HDDs, you'll want to use a program called DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke) to wipe it. It's included in the Ultimate Boot CD, and you can make that a bootable USB instead by using Rufus. The default settings of DBAN are absolutely more then enough.
For SSDs, you'll want to use the manufacturer's secure erase tool. If they don't offer one, you'll want to encrypt the entire drive, then format it. For encryption, a lot of SSD manufacturers have an option built into their driver, if you're on a pro version of windows, you can use BitLocker, otherwise, use VeraCrypt. Do not use DBAN on SSDs, it will not wipe them properly.
This sounded like a HDD issue before you mentioned it's literally clicking. If you want certainty, I'd suggest running a HDD test with UBCD or something.
But given the symptoms, if it were me, I wouldn't bother with further troubleshooting and just replace the drive.
Unplug your main drive, connect the new (used) drive, use a bootable flash drive that has something like the UltimatebootCD installed on it, and low-level format the drive. It's not going to infect any of the hardware, so your main Operating System install will be unaffected.
Of course, this is the ultra-paranoid way to do it. It's highly unlikely your machine will be infected from anything by connecting the new drive and wiping it.
I usually will use some proprietary Dell software (I was a Dell hardware tech in a prior life) and if it doesn't run on the hardware I will use the different tests contained in the Ultimate Boot CD
Download Ultimate Boot CD and either make a CD or USB of it then try testing your memory with at least one pass of Memtest86+ (under Memory) and if everything is OK there then boot into Parted Magic and load up GSmartControl and take a look at the S.M.A.R.T. status of your drives, then do at least a short test: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html
Download Ultimate Boot CD and either make a CD or USB of it then try testing your memory with at least one pass of Memtest86+ (under Memory) and if everything is OK there then boot into Parted Magic and load up GSmartMonControl and the S.M.A.R.T. status of your drives and do at least a short test: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html
Ah, derp, here, http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
Load that sucker onto an E2B drive, boot it, run the CPUstress. It's a combination of a bunch of different stress tests and benchmarks that abuse the CPU in different ways.
Get http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ and run Parted Magic to see if you can retrieve any of the files on your computer. Then use https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 Create Windows instillation media.
I guess? Honestly I wouldn't worry too much. If I was worried about it I would boot up something like partedmagic (you can run that from another USB or disc) - unmount the windows drives so it can't possibly infect it and then format the usb drive if you don't need anything from it.
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ (Has partedmagic on it, you would use gparted to format the drive be sure to format into ntfs or fat so Windows can read it)
Personally, I'd just pop in my USB drive with UBCD on (http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ ) but you don't need all those tools just to do a memory test. Memtest86 seems to be the traditionally option, but apparently there is a windows tool.
Have a read of this https://www.howtogeek.com/260813/how-to-test-your-computers-ram-for-problems/
Have you run hardware diagnostics? HPs typically have them available on the boot menu (when you first start the computer hit ESC or possibly F9). I'd run them before trying anything else.
edit: If they aren't available I'd run SeaTools from a bootable disc. Hiren's might have it but if not I know UBCD does.
Linux is the way to go. Ultimate Boot CD has Parted Magic, a Linux Live CD Distribution with preinststalled tools for formatting hard drives/SSDs. Burn a CD/USB Drive with it, run Parted Magic, open GParted (should be on Parted Magic's desktop), select your drive from the /dev/sda dropdown, go to Device > Create Partition Table and click Apply for an MBR partition table. If you want a GPT partition table, click advanced and select GPT from the dropdown menu.
WARNING!!! I can't stress this enough! Make sure you have your desired drive selected! Creating a new Partition Table will WIPE ALL PARTITION INFO FROM THE DRIVE, likely leading to DATA LOSS on that drive! If you have multiple drives, check and double-check each one from the dropdown menu to make sure you have the right one selected.
skip dban and use secure erase, there is a nice tool built into parted magic.
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
https://www.raymond.cc/blog/wipe-your-hard-disk-before-lending-or-giving-away/
number 3
There is also CMRR HDDErase (also on the the ubcd iso) but I have had less luck with that.
maybe your disk is failing - would be a miracle if it still boots now.
i can't stress this enough: back up everything
and then use a live DVD or USB like this to check for hardware defects.
HDDscan gives some false positives (never the same LBA), so if possible, run the DOS version, MHDD, which is one of the HDD diagnostics available on THE ULTIMATE BOOT CD (can be booted from USB flash drives, not just CDs).
Here's what I got from a 1TB Seagate ST1000DM003-1CH162:
< 3ms: 7,643,000
<10ms: 16,835
<50ms: 44
<150ms: 725
<500ms: 0
>500ms: 0
A 2TB Samsung HD204UI green (5400 RPM):
<3ms: 14,951,778
<10ms: 368,563
<50ms: 1,293
<150ms: 48
<500ms: 2
>500ms: 0
The LBAs that take longer than 150ms will be listed. The important thing is that the same LBAs aren't reported on each pass.
Ok man we are going to need that USB you have. I would recommend backing up the contents of it to your working machine so we can restore them later. We will need to wipe that USB.
First up download UBCD and extract the contents to a folder on your hard disk like C:\UBCD-extracted
Let me know when you get this far.
To my knowledge, Hiren's hasn't been updated in a long long time. But you can find it here: http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/
Ultimate Boot CD is still being actively maintained and the tools updated regularly, it is typically what I recommend to people. It can be found here: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html
If you want to burn it to a flash drive instead of a CD, you can use Rufus to do so which can be found here: https://rufus.akeo.ie/
Well if you can't get much running in Windows you might have to try a lower level boot scan. It kind of depends on the manufacturer but many offer a hard drive test from either the BIOS or an alternate special boot menu.
For example here are the instructions for a Dell model computer: http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/04/SLN115162/en
If you can't get that to work you'll need a bootable edition. This boot disc can run a bunch of hard drive diagnostics: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
Note this is for semi-advanced users. If you don't feel comfortable making a boot CD or boot Flash drive, or entering the BIOS to make configuration changes, or searching forums for how to use DOS based diagnostic tools then you might want to consider taking this computer to an expert.
Find out who makes your hard drive. It'll probably be easiest to remove it from your laptop to figure that out, given how slowly your computer is running due to this bug.
If it's Seagate, you'll want Seatools. If it's Western Digital, you'll want Data Lifeguard.
It may be easier to download and burn a copy of the Ultimate Boot CD, which will contain most (if not all) of these tools. Once you've got a copy burned, boot your laptop from it and select the test.
Assuming your drive passes the diagnostic check, then your problem is most likely this Windows 10 bug. Beyond that, I'm afraid I really can't be much help... I was working on the last machine with this issue for a few hours trying everything that came back in a google search. Try as I might, I just can't remember what I had to do to resolve it.
EDIT: I just saw your SMART read out screen shot. It's a Seagate, based on the model number. But, yeah... Your drive is failing. Screw testing it, just replace it... Your 100% disk usage might still be related to Windows 10 and not the drive failing, but it needs to be replaced regardless.
I've attached disks to Windows machines in the past and explorer stopped responding. The exact same disk attached to a Mac produced much better results. /u/grelphy is heading in the same direction with the Ubuntu suggestion. Ultimate Boot CD is another option, lots of data recovery tools on there - you can boot it from a USB if you have a spare one. Try as many different operating systems as you can get hold of.
I have that same laptop, great machine. If your hard drive seems to be the issue, it's easily user replaceable.
Since the computer supports legacy boot I would recommend to use UBCD. http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ It has a couple of hdd error checking and repair utilities. But before using one of those do a back up as the other guy has suggested.
My Lenovo Y580 had a 1 TB Samsung hard drive. (Samsung doesn't make hard drives anymore. They sold their division to Seagate.) Switched it out for 2 ssds one in the msata slot and one in the sata III slot. I'd reckon it's an better option for you to either install a msata ssd and try to repair your hdd using software and install your OS onto that msata ssd or switch out your old hard drive for a new sata III ssd. The latter option is a bit cheaper since sata III ssds have come down in price so much. The first option leaves you with more storage. Also sata III ssds tend to have better write speeds in general.
Good luck :) You may also want to run the manufacturer's diagnostic tool, those can pick up faults that you won't otherwise. The Ultimate Boot CD is quite useful for that kind of thing.
And be careful with dd - it's nicknamed "data destroyer" for a good reason :)
Hmm lader ikke til den er en af dem der har problemer desværre. Men det lyder lidt som om din ssd har lidt problemer. Specielt når du siger du har kørt en diskpart clean som egentlig burde wipe partitionstabellen og at du så stadig ser data på disken.
Evt lav en Bootable usb med ultimate boot cd (http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/) og kør nogle tests på den. Mener også kingston har sin egen software du kan lave self-tests med.
you could try booting from CD. Here's a couple of reputable ones, complete with some repair tools. You'll need a functional machine to download and burn one. If you can see the files on the disk once booted, copy the ones you want off to somewhere safe before trying any tinkering.
Well that is interesting news. When you changed it over to legacy boot, did it show you your HDD make and model?
If you can Windows fully boots up, I would recommend downloading the Ultimate Boot CD http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ and burn it to a CD and then reboot your computer with the CD in it. Get back in your bios and make sure that your legacy boot is still selected and then make sure that your DVD is made the first bootable device and save and close out of the bios and then boot from the CD. Once it boots up, like usually 5 seconds, go to the HDD section and then Diagnostics and then select the Seagate test from the list and let that run on the drive as well just to double check it. :)
since you appear to have another pc around..
get UBCD install it to a thumbdrive or cd. Boot your laptop off it it.
under the menu find the one that says PCloginnow (or something similar) it will allow you to set your admin password to blank.
you should then be able to run what ever safe mode stuff you want with a blank password.
You can also get any files you need off of the pc using this. Boot drive.
once you got what you need off there you can try resetting to factory defaults? ASUS might be able to give you a hand but i haven't had much luck with their support staff in a while
Live CD lol, but I think we all know what you meant. I came here to say Hirens and Kali lol since thats all you really need. I also keep a knoppix disc and the latest version of (insert favorite linux distro) lying around just in case. Also some people like Ultimate boot CD as an alternative to Hirens.
If you have a large USB stick,
Ultimate Boot CD lets you boot multiple other boot "CD" images.
Scroll down to the "Adding ISO images" sextion...
I am not affiliated with UBCD in any way, just find their solution damn sexy.
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ is a good tool to have around regardless, but the specific tool you're looking for on there is Darik's Boot and Nuke (also available at http://www.dban.org/ ). It should go without saying to not have any drives connected to the computer that have any data you want to keep on them. You then boot directly off the CD and nuke them completely.
I think it's definitely worth running a hard drive test too. I always have a boot disk with UBCD on for running all sorts of tests. All the hard drive testing programs for the different brands and all the iterations of memtest plus many more boot programs.
Definitely looks like we might be on to something. I'd try a bootable version next. Ultimate boot CD contains a bootable DOS version of seatools (and about 200 other useful utilities) so you don't have to mess around with trying to make a boot disc.
Yes.
You can use a live distibution such as mumky says. This is probably the best option to safely get data off.
I use ubcd to attempt to fix borked disks. No promises, but maybe worth a shot after you back everything up.
Hmm, I was not expecting that... Ive seen Windows report less than BIOS but not the other way around. Assuming you have no other compatible machine to test the memory in, I'd look for a BIOS update and check to see if the change log mentions anything with RAM. Dell's BIOS updates are generally fool proof nowadays, I was always hesitant to flash the BIOS in my early days for fear of bricking. Or something like UBCD could be used to run tests on the RAM. /u/commentninja's idea would be worth looking into as well, somewhere in BIOS could be an option to turn off integrated graphics and use just the geforce. I imagine it should be on Auto already but never know.
Does it POST? Can you select a different boot option?
If so you can run diags on the computer and get a much better idea on what is going on.
You will need a 2nd computer to make this work, but here are your tools:
YUMI will create our bootable media.
UBCD is our diag software.
Run HDD diags (depends on what kind of HDD you have: WD, Seagate, etc) and Memtests to see if they are causing problems.
Ok, sorry for taking much longer than I said I would. Job had me out of town for the last few days with very little internets. Here is what you will need.
This will let you create a bootable flash drive or cd to run the next tool.
That is the Ultimate Boot CD. That has a bunch of HDD diags that can be run to determine if teh HDD is the problem. Save both things to your desktop. Yumi is straight forward, select what to device to make bootable and then select UBCD from the drop down menu. After it is created you will boot to either the FD/DVD, which ever you used, and run the HDD diags. Depending on what HDD you have will determine which HDD diag to run. So for your samsung HDD you will run the samsung daigs.
After that runs let me know what happens. If it fails then we know exactly what is wrong, if it doesn't we can go from there.
Ok, list of stuff to follow:
This is so we can create boot media. I use DVD's for this, but a USB works just as well.
That is what will be put on the USB or DVD for us to run diags.
Yumi is easy to use; download and run. UBCD will be a zip folder that you will need to extract the .ISO from, easiest way is to put it on the desktop so you can find it with Yumi.
After you have UBCD on media you will boot to said media, USB or DVD, and select diags. Under there we can run some HDD diags that will point is in the right direction. Here is where it gets hard; if the SSD is not a samsung, hitachi, western digital, or seagate we cant test it with UBCD. It only has the diags for the listed manufacturers there. You can download a tool you need from the manufacturer of the SSD though.
Sounds like your HDD is gone. It a fairly common problem on laptops. Run a live cd and backup all your data. Then use something like UBCD or seatools for dos to check your HDD.
Download from another computer and create a disc with The Ultimate Boot CD http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html
Insert the disk and boot your laptop to start the cd.
Run ram tests and hard drive tests.
Of course there's a chance that there is a hardware issue, but you can't tell you for sure unless you test your hardware. UBCD has tools to test your RAM and HDD which are the most common issues. You can test your GPU with something like FurMark to see how stable it is. If all goes well, then it looks to be software and then you will need to backup and reformat.
A partitioned off bootable install of Ultimate Boot CD is always handy to have. Also, portable versions of Speccy, Defraggler (to run on Vista machines, with their terrible version of defrag built in), CCleaner to clear up temp files before running virus scans, which will cut down on scan time significantly if it's never been cleared. Hijackthis! to catch misc. startup crap which can be causing issues. AVZ Antiviral toolkit. Oh man, there's so many good things to have, it's hard to say.
Download UBCD, burn it to a cd and run memory and HDD tests. It could be either one failing, which would provide incorrect information to the GPU hence the issues with on board video. If they come up clean I would suspect a faulty motherboard.
Is you machine making any noises? A slow computer is a symptom of a failing hard drive. Any time a hard drive is moved when it is on you risk damaging the drive, and causing early failure. I'd make sure everything's backed up and use a utility like seatools to check the hard drive. It's included in the UBCD http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html Or direct from seagate, http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/item/seatools-dos-master/. I would back everything up first. A test takes a while depending on drive size (1TB ~6 - 8 hours).