Desktops gone crazy

[Greco101]

Top CD drive quit reading randomly a few days ago...

The first symptoms were random strange errors when trying to play bf2...

then it eventually started telling me I needed to insert the CD.......that was already in there.



To add to the fun, yesterday, music started to stick while listening on itunes. (broken record) and would momentarily freeze. Then it eventually did lock up later when I wasn't listening to music... when it came back, parts of my start bar were black. and wouldn't go away. Restarted and it sent me to that "start windows normally? start windows w/last known config, etc... screen. Took a while to boot but ran fine (including games) after.

Tonight, I restarted because my pc was spazzing and it sat at the check-off list on IDE components (none btw) for a few minutes and only reading one cd drive of course... it then sat at the windows logo for a few more minutes... once again, once it started up it ran fine.

While crossing my fingers it's not hardware, I decided to do a swipe... so now I'm waiting. Something either obviously got corrupted (possibly a virus?) or some hardware went south. Motherboard perhaps? Although that black sticking in my start bar sounds like memory?

Merry effin' christmas to me lol

[IndyRacer27]

My first thought was security hole. Google brought me to this (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=5898). Do you have all the updates for both windows and bf2? Virus scan, etc?

[Scotty]

Black in the start bar and games not running could all be down to the graphics card.

[Greco101]

Almost forgot... About the same time things started going crazy, I got that blue and white box in the right bottom corner telling me _____ has been updated.

I can't think of the name but I'm sure most of you know what I'm talking about. It just randomly tells you it's updated, then you suddenly have it running in your task manager.

It always seems to find it's way on to my computer and it pisses me off... I have all auto updates turned off yet something from microsoft is being installed and "updated." I searched the .exe and it says it's harmless despite the fact that problems always seem to arise soon after that "blah blah has been updated."

If anyone knows, or think they know what I'm talking about, please post... I'd like to do a little more reading up on it.


Also, to answer your suggestions/questions... I had all updates for bf2 and windows. The game not running was definitely because the cd wasn't reading because once I popped it in my other cd tray, auto run worked fine, which is the error I was getting... I screen shotted them but deleted them 2 days later because the issue seemed to had disappeared. Figures... but lesson learned.

[Greco101]

After reformat, main cd drive popped up in post :o)

Everything is running smoothly.

[jdbnsn]

I've has somewhat similar troubles for a while, at times my DVD drive just seems to vanish. No rhyme or reason, and doesn't happen too often. The only remedy to the problem is to power off and turn the PSU off for about a minute, then it works fine for a while. I've swapped out the drive with two other's and it happens to all of them. Anyone have a clue what this is?

[Cannibal23]

JDBNSN may be onto something here. personaly it sounds like a memory issue or a cpu or gpu overheating issue so check that your fans are working. however like i was saying about JDBNSN's comment, power supplies with unstable voltages can cause all kinds of random system wide wackyness if you have a spare one to swap it out with for a little while that might help at least eliminate that as an issue. lastly if your data cables for your drives are not firmly seated it can cause slowdowns and errors in the post process. just like you mentioned when it seemed to sag detecting ide devices. make sure all connections are seated properly. better then that.. reseat them.

[Greco101]

Ya, I opened it up and checked all of the sata cables, power cables, all of the cards and everything was seated properly. Barely any dust since I blow it out pretty often.

After format everything was fixed so I'm pretty sure I got ahold of a virus or something. I'll update here if the problems or any symptoms come back.