Ok, here it goes: a couple of days ago I come home and my computer is displaying a rather odd bluescreen - something about an unknown error and no address or anything. So I reboot, hoping it was just a random bluescreen but nope. First time booting the RAID manager thing that pops up had flashing red text (I don't remember what it said but presumably something about failing or whatever) for my primary drive is RAID0 (2x WD Raptors 75GB). Next reboot the RAID manager reported the RAID partition to be healthy again and the windows - do you want to boot into safe mode? - screen came up and I tried to boot normally but it didn't work (hung while showing the boot progress bar). Tried safe mode, no dice (stops loading crcdisk.sys).
At this point I figured that the filesystem was probably trashed, maybe one (or both) of the disks were faulty. Crap. A couple of weeks worth of programming work gone thanks to my somewhat lax backup strategy (i.e. backup whenever I feel like it). Anyway, so I order a new HDD and a few new fans (since at least one of my case fans was dying - stupid cheapo sleeve bearing fans).
Long story short, once everything arrives I pop it and boot up, getting ready to setup Vista on the new drive... but then while loading the Vista setup files from the DVD drive the computer just shuts down. I try to turn it back on but nothing. The power light blinks for a second and then it just shuts down again. If I wait for a while it will boot again (I presume there is some sort of protection built into the power supply) and I can get right to the start of the Vista install (where you choose the language) and then poof - it turns off again. I tried disconnecting the new HDD as well as the old Raptors, and also the new fans - but all to no avail.
Now I figure presumably either the powersupply is dying (500Watt Enermax, ~2 years old), or the motherboard maybe (although I'd expect beeping or no boot at all). Could dust shorting out the motherboard cause this? There is a bit of dust but not really a lot since the case has dust filters. Would bad RAM cause something like this? It feels like a power issue since the shutdown is so abrupt, but maybe someone here with more experience can venture a guess as to what is going on and how to fix it.
Cheers,
Goragoth
At this point I figured that the filesystem was probably trashed, maybe one (or both) of the disks were faulty. Crap. A couple of weeks worth of programming work gone thanks to my somewhat lax backup strategy (i.e. backup whenever I feel like it). Anyway, so I order a new HDD and a few new fans (since at least one of my case fans was dying - stupid cheapo sleeve bearing fans).
Long story short, once everything arrives I pop it and boot up, getting ready to setup Vista on the new drive... but then while loading the Vista setup files from the DVD drive the computer just shuts down. I try to turn it back on but nothing. The power light blinks for a second and then it just shuts down again. If I wait for a while it will boot again (I presume there is some sort of protection built into the power supply) and I can get right to the start of the Vista install (where you choose the language) and then poof - it turns off again. I tried disconnecting the new HDD as well as the old Raptors, and also the new fans - but all to no avail.
Now I figure presumably either the powersupply is dying (500Watt Enermax, ~2 years old), or the motherboard maybe (although I'd expect beeping or no boot at all). Could dust shorting out the motherboard cause this? There is a bit of dust but not really a lot since the case has dust filters. Would bad RAM cause something like this? It feels like a power issue since the shutdown is so abrupt, but maybe someone here with more experience can venture a guess as to what is going on and how to fix it.
Cheers,
Goragoth
