So yesterday my computer had probably about 5 BSOD's (Blue Screen of Death) and i didnt know what was causing the problem. I checked my drivers for all my hardware and they were all up to date and it was crashing while just simply browsing the web. By the end of the day my computer wouldn't even boot up anymore and Windows would just tell me my computer didn't boot properly and asked if i wanted to try again. I needed to be somewhere last night so i shut off the computer and decided to deal with it the next day.
So today comes around and my computer boots up just fine now but once i log into my computer, it takes about a whole minute to pull up the desktop and when the desktop does finally pop up its just my desktop background and nothing else. All my icons/shortcuts are missing and the tool bar at the bottom of the screen is empty except for the windows emblem which i can't even click anyways. I can run task manager though. After waiting about 5 minutes my icons finally appear and i can surf the web freely but i still cant click the start menu. Ive checked for updates for windows and that didnt work either.
My fear is that it may be a hardware issue though if it isnt a software one because my brother the night before all the problems started happening was playing the battlefront beta when got home from being out for the night, which is fine and i dont care. But i dont know if he opened up the software for my GPU and Corsair Link for my CPU cooler before he started playing because my computer is set to run the game on ultra. When ever i play intense games that take alot of power i have both the software for my GPU and CPU cooler up and have the fans spinning at a fairly high speed to keep it cool. I just dont know if my brother remembered to do that before he started playing, because if not im afraid the CPU might have gotten fried and its slowing the computer down immensely. Is there any possible way to test my hardware to see if it performing like it should? Or do you guys think it is a software or virus issue?
I did do a whole computer scan with my antivirus software but twice in the middle of the scan the screen went black and then fully restarted the computer. I then just scanned my hard drive where all my recent downloads end up going to see if any threats appeared there but the antivirus didn't detect anything.
I'm not sure what your pc specs are but just about any modern CPU or GPU should throttle itself when it hits it's thermal limit or completely shut down, not just give a blue screen, as long has you aren't forcing tons of extra voltage through the processors for overclocking. So I doubt just playing an intensive game would kill your CPU. Try booting into safe mode with as few programs running as possible. Then run some stability tests and put everything back to stock clocks and voltages if you are overclocking.
everything is at stock clack speeds. Ive always had problems with my computer whenever i tried overclocking so that is set. Even in safe mode it still takes a while to get to the desktop and for everything to load. how do a run stability tests?
Sounds like you may have a filing hard drive to be honest. Taking a long time to boot up seems more characteristically of a failing drive. I'd say download CrystalDiskInfo and see what it say's about your drive.
Another thing to consider too is that when my icons finally do show up and i can go on the internet and run everything else, i can't run the start menu. It doesnt even let me click on it and the charms on the right side of the screen wont appear when i put my mouse at the upper right. I have to go to task manager and log out then click the power button to turn of the computer. So is it possible that the Windows 8.1 might be acting up? I think all this stuff started happening once i downloaded some window updates too.
I'd suggest taking the PC apart, cleaning all components and replacing thermal compound. I personally like Arctic MX4, or Noctua NT-H1. Then see how it goes after that. If you are still having issues. Do a fresh install of Windows 8, or upgrade to 10 and see if your issues go away.