Help me revive this computer!

C

Calebsdesktop

New Member
Hello everyone! First, I am "okay" with computers. I have fought off trojans and I know the basic components of a computer how mostly how it works. Please avoid a bunch of technical terms and abbreviations it is much appreciated :)

I recently acquired a desktop from my cousin. It was given to him for free and it has been sitting in storage for a year or two. Being on a college budget I got the computer for free :D! Storage has taken a toll on it and I've had to replace the power supply with a brand new one. I've also installed 2 8gb sticks of Ballistic RAM along with a 2gb stick already installed. Bringing my total to 18GB of RAM.

Here's the specs:
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H

Graphics Card: none installed right now. we have tried even a new one and there is no monitor display when a graphics card is installed. The old graphics card is a Verto GE force 8600GT overclocked DDR3 512mb PCle, the new one came with my cousins computer and was replaced by a better one when he got it. it is an ASUS R7 240-2GD3/DP_CARD/VGA practically brand new.

CPU: unknown as we haven't been able to fully boot up the computer yet(further explanation below)

Power Supply: Corsair CX750M brand new

Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB

RAM: brand unknown- PCE 12800 gold series 2GB, new ones I bought are Crucial Ballistix Sport each 8GB.

Think that is everything?

Here's my problem: I believe the computer has a broken version of Windows 7. I have not been able to repair it so I have a BRAND NEW copy of Windows 10 on a USB along with product key. I tried to format the hard drive and it told me it was unable to format it. I went ahead anyway, and I get an error message during installation. "Windows could not format a partition on Disk 0(my hard drive). The error occured while preparing the partition selected for installation. Error Code: 0x80070057"

Where do I go from here? :confused: Do I just need a new hard drive altogether?
 
You most likely have a bad hard drive. That is what that error code means. You just said there was no monitor display even with a video card installed correct? How are you able to install windows and see this error code? What brand of hard drive is it? You should scan the drive with the drive makers disk diagnostic utility.
 
johnb35 said:
You most likely have a bad hard drive. That is what that error code means. You just said there was no monitor display even with a video card installed correct? How are you able to install windows and see this error code? What brand of hard drive is it? You should scan the drive with the drive makers disk diagnostic utility.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the fast reply! When a graphics card is installed, I have no monitor display. Without the g card, it displays fine. It is a Seagate hard drive. I have a class to go to and will be unable to respond for a little while. I will check back in tonight. Thank you for the help!
 
When you insert the graphics card then you need to change the port you are connected to. You need to connect the video cable to the connector on the video card instead of the video connector on the motherboard. Run seatools for dos on the drive to check for errors.

Download the iso file and burn the image to a cd and then boot to it and run the extended test.

http://www.seagate.com/files/www-co...tools/_shared/downloads/SeaToolsDOS223ALL.ISO
 
Does it boot to the cd? Boot to the bios and see if it detects the hard drive. A lot of times, if the hard drive is failing then the pc won't boot past the post screen. I would suggest trying a known good hard drive and then try installing windows on it. Sitting in storage isn't good for a system depending on where this storage is. If it was in a area where its damp, then thats not good.
 
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