Computer freezes randomly or simply refuses to boot. How can I resolve this? [SOLVED]

Question

For a few days my computer is having massive issues.

Problems

• Sometimes when I push the open button, the screen remains black without receiving any signal. I know that this is not a graphics card problem since when it starts, the keyboard LEDs light up too, that doesn't happen when my screen is black.

• I have two hard drives (WD,SG) the one (SG) doesn't show up in BIOS and when it was showing up and I had my OS (Windows or mint) installed, my OS was freezing after 10 minutes. My second hard drive (WD 500GB) shows up in BIOS but when I try to format it via gparted it throws errors about input/output.

• Sometimes it freezes at the MSI logo screen (I suppose its doing the POST and freezes when is checking the SG harddrive).

Information

CPU:          AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+
MOTHERBOARD:  MSI MS-7250
MEMORY:       1GB KingSton

What I have tried

• Using only one stick of RAM in any possible slot
• Reseting BIOS via removing the battery for 10 min
• Unplug power cable and push power button for 30 sec
• Booting without any hard drive in (to see if I will have black screen, I had)

The previous didn't fixed any of the problems

Possible problems

• My PSU is dying (its one of the possibilities cause I get problems in many compoments of the computer)
• My MB is dying (same as above)

Is there any way to test MB and PSU without having another PSU or MB or PC?

My MB doesn't have speaker so I don't hear beeps at all. Now I am in via an Ubuntu live-cd and I dont see any freezing.

SOLVED:

Ok, yesterday i got my pc back from the service shop ... The problem? like i predicted it was PSU AND motherboard problem.The PSU went wrong and it burned(or whatever else is called) some of the capacitors in the motherboard.Both needed replace.

Answer 1

Freezing at the BIOS screen (the "MSI" screen as you call it) can be indicative of hard drive problems, or of plugged-in USB devices that are not responding. Most BIOS firmware is too primitive to "give up" (timeout) on USB devices that don't function correctly during the early bootup stages. To troubleshoot this, yank out all USB cables and see if the system proceeds past the BIOS screen.

The fact that you're not getting any freezes in Ubuntu tells me that it's more likely just a hard drive problem, especially the "input/output error" you got.

Try to sudo apt-get -y install gsmartcontrol; gsmartcontrol in the Ubuntu Terminal. This should open the gsmartcontrol program for you, which will objectively evaluate the health of your hard disks and determine (based on built-in diagnostic software/hardware within the hard drives themselves) whether they need to be replaced.