Hey everyone.
I've been having issues with my older HP pavilion desktop (D4650e). It has all the original specs on it aside from new coolant for the fan. It was still booting until this morning when my kids decided to get on to start a school project, and now it won't boot at all. Specs that i can remember:
250 Gig HDD
2048 mem (2x 1024 sticks)
Nvidia... i forget the type
Running windows 7
Lately it would just run slow as a snail even when only running chrome for my work. I'd open a few browser tabs and it would instantly slow it down. I also had problems installing some programs so instead I just used my laptop for it. Basically, the installer would try to install but never make it/freeze up midway.
When this started happening, i did a clean (ccleaner/malware remover/adware/ran my virus protection/cleaned out all the old stuff i didnt need/blew it out with some air, etc etc etc) still slower than molasses with the installer issues. Figuring it was either old corrupt files, or just something (Like memory/hdd/motherboard) going, i decided to do a clean re-install of windows 7, still with no luck and THIS time it wouldn't recognize my speakers anymore (Logitech setup, older model).
Anyway, I was going to start searching how to test memory, motherboard, HDD, etc later today actually. And my kids just came in to let me know the computer was frozen, they restarted and it popped up with an error. When i go in I see a prompt with it checking windows:
'Windows cannot repair this computer automatically'
It then goes through an auto repair but prompts again that its not repairable and asks me to send a report to microsoft/then finish. When i finish it just shuts the pc off.
I can't get it to boot into safemode, and going to setup repair from bootscreen only gives me the same error as i posted before (Cannot repair).
I had intended to run hijack this to get help if i couldn't find the problem after my testing but obviously i can't now. From the background here, do you have any suggestions at all? Would it most likely be one thing or the other? Example, does it sound more like a HDD issue than a memory/motherboard issue? If so, would it be a good idea to just grab a new HDD (etc) and interchange to see if that fixes the issue?
Also, before i forget. Somewhere on the prompt it says something like 'If you have installed a new device please remove the device and restart' but there hasn't been anything new installed in quite a while.
Not sure if these details help at all, or if i need more. But thank you for the help!