Just a note to anyone looking for me.

My recent problems with Nvidia Drivers, I believe, caused a BSOD/Reboot loop on my Machine.

I couldn't get into Safe Mode, Nor Could I access Chkdsk or other tools on my Win7DVD.  BSOD would always find it's way into my life.

Well, I finally got the Install Disk to come up and I had it reinstall Win7 on my computer.

Without asking, ceremony, or anything, Win7 formatted my C Drive rather than overwrite the os and leave my stuff intact. 

I lost my runtimes, a disheartening problem but not the kicker.

The Kicker is, I had my pc apart during the diagnosis stage, and in putting it back together I decided to take off my CPU fan so I could load drives into the drive bays in my very small case. 

Reassembling the PC has been frustrating, as now every time I have it back together, it won't start...no Bios screen, no video.  I belive that the cpu is now "Loose" and the only way I'm writing this now is having the c drive on my desktop and nothing else in the machine.

These two factors together - I hate everything, and everything I enjoy doing on the computer is out of my grasp indefinately and frankly, I'm thinking maybe it's all for the best. 

I'll be here and there but having this half computer is a bit like trying to run a marathon with crutches. 

Farewell, for now

-Greg B. aka WTB

WTB, IIRC, you live not too far from me, so if you need help with your PC, shoot me a line, and I'll see if either I or my husband can fix it. 

Hope you get this resolved soon.  You're a good bloke and I'll miss seeing you around here.

William_the_Bloody, my brother in arms I hope it gets sorted out!

gosh awful!  well enjoy some exercise and real life for awhile.

I will miss seeing all your posts and little things you make here.

Love esther

The best thing to do is partition the disk, create the C driver with only 30 GB and then create all other drivers you want and never install programs in driver C.

For luck, for Microsoft only exist driver C, so anything put in another drivers is safe and don't touched by Windows, all the mess is done is driver C and what a mess!!

Did you clean the old thermal paste/pad from the CPU and apply new?

This is one of the main reasons I have nothing of importance on my C drive, I have all my runtimes and work files on my D, E, and F drives. I'm a total nerd and have gone thru this hassle a few times in the past, thankfully before I got into 3D modeling and had nothing of much imortance to replace, only music and pics.

Quote - Did you clean the old thermal paste/pad from the CPU and apply new?

I was gonna ask that as well when I read the post, but refrained when i saw you asked the good question. I build all my PC's from the ground up, so I know what to do and what not to do, learned the hard way in a few cases. But those years are way behind me. But, my "golden rule" is to always have your important stuff on separate drives/partitions other than your C drive, which when all hell breaks loose, you have to reformat. And also, backing up your stuff when you can doesn't hurt either :o)

I am sorry it happened to you and I totally sympathize.

How about a data recovery program?

If you manage to keep the content of drive C small, you can create a drive image once your Windows is working OK and save the image in another drive or DVD.

When your Windows get crazy,  infected by a virus or installed something that screwed Window you don't need to re-install Windows, format the disk, install all the drivers and apps again, you only need to restore the saved image booting from a CD and in 5 minutes your latest stable Windows is back again.

You can use TodoBackup from Easeus to create the images and is free !

The other problem with Windows 7 is the folder Document and Settings that has the access forbiden and you even can't know what is inside. All the trash is inside this folder and this folder grows for ever. I don't know how to make this folder have the access open to clean all the trash inside.

The CPU fan is pretty important to keep.

Quote -  

The other problem with Windows 7 is the folder Document and Settings that has the access forbiden and you even can't know what is inside. All the trash is inside this folder and this folder grows for ever. I don't know how to make this folder have the access open to clean all the trash inside.

i too was puzzled about these folders. on asking a couple of code jockeys, they told me that they are nothing but 'placeholders' that redirect queries etc to the new folder setup in W7. access is totally locked because nothing is actually inside them except a little bit of OS coding. my thoughts are that they are needed for older legacy bits of the OS to work properly.

Odd I just got into that loop myself this morning...

Quote - The best thing to do is partition the disk, create the C driver with only 30 GB and then create all other drivers you want and never install programs in driver C.

AMEN to that!  I also copy my runtime periodically to an external drive-you can get a 2TB for around $100 these day. 

I do the same, only that my Cdisk is 120 GB. Still it takes only 20 min to restore with Acronis True Image.

Then I have everthing back with all programs installed and fresh as a virgin.

Runtimes and anything else important is on the Ddisk and backed up on external hard disks.

Still all is not perfect, if the house burns down everything goes! I must/have to arrange some space "in the clouds."

I have had to build my PC over again, so I ask you, did you re-seat the CPU? Is it locked in? Then install your fan. Check all wires to the motherboard and make sure they are connected. YOu might have a diagram that came with your PC. Check you hard drive cables. ARe they seated. You say you cannot boot into the bios, that sounds like a CPU problem. You might have unseated it when you messed with the fan. Try re-seating it with fresh thermal paste as mentioned above. Hope you get it fixed. IF you do, I would recommend getting a Radeon graphics card. I had nothing but problems with the Nvidia, especially in Vue.

Agree with the above, it could be one of those little things..

Hi all, thanks for the well-wishing, suggestions, etc.

I did not repaste.  I didn't think I had to for the cpu fan?  I'm going later to acquire paste and will do that.  I'm also buying a new g-d case that can actually fit things properly.  I'm running a file recovery thingy now, it's taking forever, but I hope I can get some stuff back.  I know I won't get everything, but if I can just get a few custom-modified files to open my Pz3s, which were on another drive, I'll be happy-ish.

The endless configuring is a nightmare.  I like a bare-bones OS and turning off all the bells and whistles and trying to make it look like Windows 95 is a challenge, since MS likes to hide all that stuff now. 

Last time I tried an ATI card it created big problems with, if memory serves, Poser. 

I think the big emotional impact of this whole thing is:  1.  I HATE that I'm faced with just how dependant on this box I am.  2.  I don't have the free time I used to, with Daughter, Wife and new Job.  3.  I've been very frustrated with Poser lately anyway, and it makes it very hard to care like I used to. 

I sort of feel like I could probably leave Poser behind for a few years and come back when it all works the way I want it to, but that will never happen.

At any rate, it's all going on a different drive now, and that drive will be backed up regularly, and if this happens to me again for failure to follow through with any of that, well, shame on me.

Don't let this get you down. Due to viruses and hardware problems, I have been through this several times. In your folder options, you can check that you want to see hidden files and system files if that's what you want. Luckily, my husband does not care how much time I spend with the PC because he loves TV sports, LOL!

Quote - 1.  I HATE that I'm faced with just how dependant on this box I am. 

It's called technology! 

I haven't been in Poser for well over a year. The reasons are not important to this thread. However, despite not using Poser or any graphics for that matter, when my computer goes on the fritz, I truly miss it!

I use my computer to search for topics of interest to read and learn about, for recipes, for my banking, correspondence, and also to socialize.

The computer somehow made itself one of those things in my home that I cannot live without.

I know I'm probably ging to be labeled an ignorant Luddite git for saying this, but this is the reason I've stayed with XP Pro.

Vista and Seven have taken away some measures of user control, and often do things you neither expect or want them to. The result is that you find yourself gob smacked with no idea what the hell happened. I deal with this all the time when helping family and friends' maintain their PC's.

A lot of manufacturers don't even include a stand alone system restore disc any more, and force the user rely on a backup image on the hard drive. It's hard cheese if the C drive buys the farm and you lose all of your O.S. resources.

Good Luck, William. I hope it's somthing that can be fixed without costing more money and frustration.

So tell me what new paste is going to do to fix a blue screen. It is for filling in the cracks and uneveness for better contact with the cpu and heatsink. So even old or even none as some I know do, it should still keep the cpu cool. At least to boot up.

It sounds to me, as a guess, more like the cpu has been un-seated from the motherboard. It is a common problem when removing the heatsink. That old paste can be a pain to break the seal. I have read many threads on this happening.

Maybe try pulling the cpu out and resetting it back in. Check for bent or broken pins. You can set the heatsink on without paste for a test. To see if you can get it to boot up.

As for the nvidia card, I just picked up a gtx460 1gb for $150 on sale and with the latest drivers it works great on both my xp64 and my win7 64. I had to decide which computer to drop it in. I finally decided the little extra and faster ram was better in my main machine, xp64. Vue infinity loves it and so does my Modo. That left me with my gtx260 to drop in my win 7 64 for my DAW and video editing software.

Sorry to hear you have problems and it is caused by the new graphic card. Sometimes things just don't work in some systems. Hope you can find and correct the problems.

The gfx card wasn't new, I've been using it for a year or two.

The card was fine, it was the mother-fing drivers.  I haven't had a driver I could use since April of 2010.  On a whim, I tried the most recent and had problems, so I rolled back to the previous driver I had installed.

That seemed to be fine until a day or so later when I thought it might be nice to give my computer some rest and shut it down, since I'd be gone for the day.  (It's now official, I have complete shut-down phobia and my box will now run 24/7.)

Powering it back up became impossible, BSOD before kicking into Windows, restart, endless loop.  No Safe Mode, (BSOD) No Scans (Endless Hang) No Install Disc (BSOD)

I could even git a Hiram's Boot CD to run chkdsk on it.  Kept crashing in Dos!

I finally got the install disc to work by going into ITS safe mode.  If there was a repair console, I missed it and thought that reinstall would work fine, as in the past reinstall always overwrote unless you told it to format first.

Well, it formatted without asking me.  On the bright side, the Drive seems to be just fine now.  :p

About the paste:  Right?  You don't need paste between the cpu and the fan, right?

I'm moving the motherboard from a mATX tower into a mid tower for more room, this should avoid further jostling of the cpu/fan.

It is better to have paste. Those that don't usually have very highly polished/ very level heatsinks and can get away with it. I only said that you don't need it for a test to get things going. A very thin layer of paste would be best for you. Don't run intensive cpu software without it. Such as rendering, playing games, anything that will increase the cpu heat.

"I could even git a Hiram's Boot CD to run chkdsk on it.  Kept crashing in Dos!"

then it wasn't the Nvidia drivers. that CD does not even look at them... same for Safemode (it uses Generic MS VGA, the idea is to avoid bad drivers loading...) and for the Install Disk BSODing from the Nvidia drivers? can't happen. again it uses it's own MS ones.

Forgot, buy a small tube of paste because you only need a drop of it and spread it from the center of cpu out close to edge of cpu. You will need to turn your system off every so often for the paste to cure properly. Recommended by most manufacturers.

edit for spelling, maybe.

"There, but for the grace of God, goes I."

Greg, I am sure that your horrible story has served as a wake-up call for many. I for once am taking precautions and have ordered extra storage space with my internet provider and allready put there the photos from my China trip for instance and other things and have double checked all backup routiines. Sometimes you need an eye opener. By posting it to the forum you gave us all a much needed a kick in the ass!

Well thanks, always glad to turn tragedy into something positive lol.

Okay, smeared paste...fearful...things got sloppy.  Got a new case so I have more room to put everything.  Somehow in the process of moving everything over my Power Supply took a shit.  Fortunately, I actually was sitting on a better one.

Now here's the strangest thing of all:  I can't clamp down the cpu fan with the lever.  If I do, no boot.  If I just leave it hanging there, no problemo.  Unsure how this will affect the whole cooling process?  I mean, it's there, it's blowing, but it's not levered down.

I had 1/2 a mind to go new motherboard and cpu today, but it would have involved more subterfuge to the  Mrs. than I cared to risk, and the guy at the store talked me down from grabbing the latest six-core cpu since "no software exists that will use it right now."

(Is that even true?)

Hopefully I can get six more months out of this pile of crap, and hopefully my sloppy paste job and lack of clipped cpu fan won't start a fire.

" Unsure how this will affect the whole cooling process?  I mean, it's there, it's blowing, but it's not levered down."

then it's not cooling properly. you need good contact between the CPU and the heatsink block.

as to the "the latest six-core cpu since "no software exists that will use it right now.""

yeah right. poser 8 will use all those cores....

Scrap the paste off staring from the edge working towards the center on both the cpu and heatsink. Make sure they are clean. I just use a kleenex. soft enough to not damage anything, big enough to do the job.

Then unclip your cpu and with your finger press down and make sure it is seated right and re clip it down.

Then add a small dollop of paste in the center of the cpu and using a matchbook cover cut at half width or something simular and spread the paste. Don't go over the edges.Stop just before them. You only need it on the cpu or the sinkheat not both. Cpu is better because the heat sink is quite often bigger than the cpu.

Then clamp the heat sink down and they can be a pain to clamp but it has to be done. Rememeber you only want a very thin layer. The thinner the better.

As for 6 cores. Most everything I use takes advantage of as many cores as I can throw at them. Vue, Modo, Poser, Carrara, video editing, etc. Makes me wonder if the sales person is a gamer as I don't think they take advantage of multicores like our cgi does. 99% of the sales people I have delt with are gamers and don't know much about cgi.

Thanks you two. 

It just won't run with the fan clipped.  I'm going to have to hope for the best and worst case scenario, now that I know about the cores (I thought so!) I'll just have to get the Phenom 6-core super-awesome cpu and a MB to match.  I might've done it but I kept thinking I should go ATX instead of current mATX which gave me pause, due to the price jump.

You will fry your cpu if it does not have a heat sink properly installed.

The good thing is that AMD cpu boards are usually a bit cheeper than intel cpu boards. There are really only 2 AM3 boards that are SLI. So your not going to have any problem with finding the board you want in a amd/ati graphic.

You could try a new cooler. They usually have adaptors/brackets to fit different boards. So if your old board still does not work right with a new cooler bolted on, you could still use it for your new build. Still strange that it does not work if heat sink is clamped on. Something is loose.

Good luck.

I bought a full-size chassis when I built my current system, because I've got big hands and was sick and tired (after three self-builds) of scraping my knuckles on sharp edges and having to remove components such as the CPU fan just to get other ones in or out.  I have to say, having all that room to work in is an absolute luxury.  I got the self-build bug, particularly when it came to CPU coolers, thermal paste and operating temperatures. 

If you can make use of any advice: the stock coolers that Intel supply work just fine, and are quiet, but they can be an absolute pig to seat properly and to lock down; Zalman do a good range, and I currently have a CoolerMaster one.  All of these have far simpler, and more effective and secure mounting systems than the CPU manufacturer's versions I've seen.  Also, it's easy to get obsessed with thermal paste!  The best tip I could pass on is to realise that you're not icing a cake - drop a small blob of it in the centre of your CPU, and it will spread out just fine under the pressure of the fan mounting clamps/screws/whatever.

My systems that I have built have all been Socket 775/Intel setups; I would never again buy a ready-made system from a retailer. 

I feel your pain William. Ive had a data transfer issue with my PC since I got it. thought it was Vista (Ive had this PC for 2 years) , Basically any large compressed files get corrupted when they tranfer from temp memory to the HD, Probally need a a new controller but ive just been too poor to get one ( you know about Michigan economy).

Anyway with tax time coming around this year I MIGHT buy a new Motherboard/processor if i have money left over after laying new living room floor and carpet in the bedroom (have to make the wife happy first)

Anyway to save my self form lost runtime I have 2 HD. Poser is installed basically on its OWN HD , amazing how full one can get a 500GB HD on just Poser/Daz data!!!

I hope you get it all figured out William-as a Mac person I can offer no advice-but it sounds like you are getting good advice from others.

I too have enjoyed your posts over the years.You also remind me it is time to back up my runtime! I lost a lot of 3d art when an external drive broke- ironically- it failed AS I was backing it up!

I would like to throttle Microsoft.

I'm having endless nightmares simply updating and trying to get WMP to work.

WMP just won't work.  I've uninstalled it and reinstalled it from control panel, but some error always comes up and it just won't work.  There's nowhere to download an installer from their website anymore...and really the whole thing can suck it.

WMP?

Windows Media Player

Apparently, I have bigger problems than this.  There are like dozens and dozens of wrong or corrupted Windows files on the install I just did!

It's a wonder I'm in Windows at all at this point.

oh

win 7 has it built in.

ok it's sounding more and more like you could have a bad HD. the BSOD's, the trouble with Hirams crashing, now corrupted files...

Attached Link: WMP 12

Does this link work? Or is it you can't use that. It is win7 your using IIRC.

OK, posted to late.

Pick up a new drive. Try it with that. If nothing else it's one less part to buy for a new build.

Can't download wmp for windows7 with the American build, because it's already included on the disk, which you can't acess to reinstall without redoing everything.

So, the drive eh?  I let it check the drive and everything came back either fixed or totally cool.

try this

Start > Control Panel > Programs > Programs and Features > Turn Windows Features on and Off

you'll find media player under Media. if it's ticked, it's installed.

Magnus, I did that a million times, but I checked all 3 items.

I just did it a while ago with only WMP and now I have wmp...the rest of it?  Who cares..silly Microsoft bloatware

MS does like throwing a wrench at us as often as possible. If the disk check fine then I probably is. So you have it all working now?

Something useful about fans.

To change the fan assenble is not an easy task, but unless you change the motherboard or the CPU there is no need to remove and change it.

If the fan gets old and dirty and doesn't work properly and doesn't cool the CPU you only need to change the fan and not the whole assembly. The heatsink never gets old, only the fan does it.

The fan is fixed to the heatsink with two or four screws. If you are able to find and buy the fan alone, buy it, if not buy the full package and remove the screws and then you have the fan alone. Then remove the screws from the fan in your CPU, remove the fan, put the new fan in its place and screw it to the heatsink. In few minutes without any headache you have a fresh and new cooling system.

Everything seems to be cool at the moment.  I think I even have the latest Nvidia drivers now with no problems (although I haven't tried poser or Marv yet...haven't even installed them yet.)

Just barebones internet, mp3, movies and Pics for now.  Hobbies get reinstalled later.

Quote - bought a full-size chassis when I built my current system, because I've got big hands and was sick and tired (after three self-builds) of scraping my knuckles on sharp edges and having to remove components such as the CPU fan just to get other ones in or out.

I agree except now most newer cases are designed better for that. My DAW/video editing/part render farm quad is in a little micro case. Velocity IW-z583. everything is toolless except the hardrive mountings but the cage itself swivesl out so you can just slide the drives straight in. 3 mounting screws and then swivel it back into place. No sharp edges anywhere. The drive cage also allows for space underneath which means I can install big cards with room to spare. The image is with the GTX 260 and you can see I have lots of room for even a bigger card and that 260 is no small card. LOL.

Quote - I would never again buy a ready-made system from a retailer.

Same here never again. Except the laptop.

OK, not as nice to play in as my CM690 Advance but does the job very well. All these newer cases are so much better than the old touch and bleed cases of old. 

I was looking at a six core for this one. I can get the T1090 for $210. Can't go wrong with that price. The board can take one but then I'm stuck with a spare quad cpu laying around again. Boards for this quad are not easy to come by now as it is the older 140w cpu.

Nice Rig!  And here I was exited I have screwless drive bays.  I have Zero swivel  :(

Asshats at MicroCenter are not very keen on sitting there selling you cases and they've got them all screwed shut so nobody steals parts or, God forbid, examine them for usefulness.

My main machine is on a dolly I built so it's easy to move in and out from under my desk.