Computer won't restart after pluggin in new monitor!

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Organground

Active member
Please help!

I've had my PC around 6 months (order number 359534). Tonight I connected it to a couple of extra monitors (I have twin graphics cards) as I wanted to configure to main (central) monitor and one monitor either side, rotated to portrait. Main monitor was connected via DVI, the other two via VGA.

One of the side monitors was detected correctly (came up as an HP), it rotated properly and had the correct resolution.

The other side monitor was only detected as "generic monitor" and resolution would only go up to something like 1024xsomethning. Both the side panels are 1080x1920.It wouldn't rotate, and the image just occupied the central part of the screen. So I rebooted and changed the cables in case there was a problem with the cable.

That's when the party really got going. First off, the first thing that comes up after the blue/grey ASUS thingy is white text on black saying

RAID ID normal, (in green)
port 0 - ...(disk details)....disk error (in red)
port 2 - ...(disk details).... member disc (0) (in green)

If I try to boot up, I get to the Windows logon page with the blue sky and flowery things but there is no white box to enter login details and cont/alt/del does nothing.

If I try entering safe mode, after a while of going through the command prompts etc, there is a brief blue screen then the computer stops and restarts. I can't see what the blue screen says as it flashes for an instant before stopping.

I was given the option of doing a restart repair but that cycled for several attempts before it said Windows couldn't repair the PC.

I tried booting up and doing a repair with the Win7 DVD but the same thing happened.

Finally I took the cover off, jiggled the video card and put them back in case something had dislodged when plugging in the other two monitors. Still no joy.

I'm at my wit's end and have some important documents that aren't backed up so reinstalling Windows isn't an option yet....especially if it turns out to be down to a hardware issue. Please help!

Here's the spec of my PC:

Case
COOLERMASTER SILEO 500 QUIET MID TOWER CASE

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Six Core Processor i7-970 (3.20GHz) 6.4GTs/12MB Cache

Motherboard
ASUS® P6X58D-E: DDR3, USB 3.0, SATA 6.0GB/s, 3-Way SLI

Memory (RAM)
24GB SAMSUNG DDR3 TRI-DDR3 1333MHz (6 X 4GB)

Graphics Card
512MB NVIDIA GEFORCE 210 PCI EXPRESS

2nd Graphics Card
512MB NVIDIA GEFORCE 210 PCI EXPRESS

3rd Graphics Card
NONE

Memory - 1st Hard Disk
1TB WD CAVIAR GREEN WD10EARS, SATA 3 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE

2nd Hard Disk
1TB WD CAVIAR GREEN WD10EARS, SATA 3 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE

RAID
RAID 0 (STRIPED VOLUME - 2 x same size & model HDD / SSD)

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM

Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT

Power Supply
600W Quiet 80 PLUS Quad Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan

Processor Cooling
SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE CPU COOLER

Sound Card
ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)

Network Facilities
ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT

USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD

Firewire & Video Editing
1 x IEEE 1394a FIREWIRE PORT ONBOARD

Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence
 
MrShteeeve

MrShteeeve

Well-known member
Unfortunately I have no expertise in this sort of thing, more so not enough to confidently say what the problem is. Although trying to run 3 1080p screens off of one graphics card (or is it split over two?) may be a bit demanding. Hopefully someone a little more knowledgeable than I will be able to troubleshoot this better :).
 
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Organground

Active member
Shouldn't have been a problem. I bought the PC with two graphics cards, each of which is able to drive three monitors up to 1920x1200. Plus I've done it before on this computer successfully. I had disconnected the monitors for a while, and brought them back into use yesterday.

Main monitor (an iiyama) runs off DVI (from the same video card that wasn't recognising my HP monitor off the VGA). I tried switching the Iiyama to the DVI off the other graphics card but at the moment there is no output from that card.

I don't understand if this is a Windows issue (as it won't log me in), a graphics card issue (as one of the two cards was apparently not recognising one of my monitors immediately before the crash) or a disk issue (because on bootup it tells me there is a disk error on one of the disks. But it gets as far as the Windows login screen (minus the login box) so if there was a RAID issue I'd have thought it wouldn't have been able to even start Windows.

I need to get the PC sorted ASAP - am off traveling next week, my travel documents all came since the last backup and are on the machine and the person who sent me them is on holiday until after I leave...
 
MrShteeeve

MrShteeeve

Well-known member
Have you tried making sure that both Graphics Cards are seated properly? The case hasn't received any knocks lately or anything? Until you figure out what it is (unless you already are) just boot up using the IIyama monitor via DVI. Again, I'm not massively hot on this... If you want to PM someone like Gorman a link to this thread, he'll most likely get back to you tomorrow sometime (unless he's on today). Him being the smartass he is he'll likely be able to sort it :p :). Sorry I couldn't be of more help to you :(
 
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Organground

Active member
I did move the computer from one side of the room to the other (carefully, and no I didn't knock anything) to connect it to the additional monitors. But even with only one monitor attached (via DVI) it won't get past the Windows login (without login box) screen. Attaching the monitor to any of the other possible monitor outputs (VGA or DVI on both cards) gives a blank screen.

EDIT - just tried swapping the two video cards. Absolutely no difference - only output from one of the sockets (DVI of the upper card, as before), bootup says there is a disk error on one disk, boots up as far as the windows login (minus login box - and is some sort of funny low resolution with a bigger than usual mouse pointer as before). If I try safe mode it gets about 10 seconds then blue screens. I caught on the blue screen the message 000000ED but it flashed very quickly before attempting to restart.

Suggestions? Graphics card problem? Disk problem? Windows problem? I don't want to reinstall Win7 and wipe all my data if there's an underlying hardware issue that remains unfixed and I certainly don't want to wipe the disk until I've got some vital data off it....
 
Last edited:
Fear

Fear

Prolific Poster
You could try taking 1 GPU card out and trying to boot with just 1 and if that does not work then try the other on it's own and see what happens there.
 
MrShteeeve

MrShteeeve

Well-known member
Yeah if it's in a low resolution it's usually a Graphics card problem, try Fear's advice see how it goes :)
 
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Organground

Active member
Already tried that mate - same thing happens regardless of whether I boot with both video cards in, or one or the the other in.

So questions - is it likely to be a graphics card problem if the last known good configuration suggested a possible problem with the card (as one of the cards wouldn't allow a previously-detected monitor to be detected and perform at its native 1920x1080 resolution)

- is it a disk problem, since the first thing that comes up after the initial Asus splash screen is something saying RAID normal, port 0 disk error, port 2 member disk. Incidentally somewhere there was a message saying something like D drive, but normally my main disk is C drive and I haven't got any USB sticks or anything in the machine. Also during the repair, there is a command prompt that refers to X:windows....... - again, no known X drive.

- is it a Windows problem - presumably the RAID can't have failed if it gets as far as the windows login page, but then why is there no white rectangle where I can type in my password? When Windows repair tries and fails to repair things, it asks if I want to send the problem to Microsoft, abnd the message contains the error message "startup repair offline" whether I use Win7 repair disk or not.

Any more idea why I can't get into my PC?
 
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Organground

Active member
That's too bad, your call hours are exactly the same as the hours I have to be in work and I can't bring my PC into the office to fix over the phone and I can't be without it until the weekend either....solutions?
 
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Organground

Active member
Well, sort of a solution. I spoke to a friend who's an IT guru. Took even him a good while to figure out what was going on but in the end we booted up the PC using the Win DVD, and the MSDOS prompt option. Ran chkdsk - found around a dozen indexing errors. Ran chkdsk D:f or some such command. This time it fixed the errors and reported no bad sectors etc. Took the DVD out, tried booting Windows normally without the repair option, worked a dream at correct resolution. But on getting past my login screen (yeeha!) a notification came up saying one of my RAID disks is failing and I should do an urgent backup (which of course I'm doing right now).

I must say, I'm getting more than a bit fed up of this RAID0 melarky, this is the second or third time I've had problems relating to it. When I told my IT friend that I was using Green Caviars in RAID0 his instant reaction was, totally bad idea, anything but green Caviar. So there we go, and it looks like I'm going to need a new hard drive or RAID configuration pretty soon (the whole reason for having RAID0 was I am running specialist software that takes ages to load into RAM so needed the fastest possible read speed and couldn't afford SSD). Suggestions please for what next?
 
Fear

Fear

Prolific Poster
Erm i am just a member on here ;) anyway if you can't phone during the day you can log into your account on the main forums and send them a message.
 
Fear

Fear

Prolific Poster
I used to have Raid 0 myself and the boost it gives is minimal anyway so what i would do is contact PCS about the failing drive and either ask if you can pay the extra to get a caviar black or just get your caviar green replaced and buy a caviar black aswell and leave out the connection for the Raid 0 format your discs and get the OS installed on the black.

The Green drives are energy saving they spin between 5400-7200rpm so are good for storage the Black drives spin at 7200rpm and are better for you primary drive.
 
LinearHD

LinearHD

Rising Star
Fear said:
The Green drives are energy saving they spin between 5400-7200rpm so are good for storage the Black drives spin at 7200rpm and are better for you primary drive.
Click to expand...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought their max speed was 5400?
 
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PCRepair

Guest
Yes Fear is correct, the Green drives do run between 5400 and 7200 but I would be suprised to see them get above 6600. Organground, please check your email as I have sent some suggestions.
 
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