What the hell happened to my PC?

[SmackAHobo]

Hey guys,
Last night I was on my computer and at one point or another it started to really drag and slow down quite substantially. Opening files and even clicking on the start button made my computer freeze for about a minute or more; which it had never done previously.
I thought it might help if I restarted but as it booted up it switched itself off and on again a few times before finally booting up.

Then the windows loading logo came up and it loaded into windows.... well a black screen atleast; the only thing I could see was the mouse. I could open task manager and I tried running explorer but all that popped up was My Computer. Couldn't double click to open folders for some reason, so I had to type folder addresses in the address bar which didn't get me anywhere.

What has caused this? This just randomly started happening last night for no apparent reason. Does anyone know a fix for this and/or how to get my PC functioning normally again?

My PC specs:
i7 quad core
4gb corsair Ram
Nvidia 580
A Highend overclocking Mobo
(Sorry for lack of details and correct names but it was all bought about 3 months ago)

Thanks for the help.

 

[dma0991]

You're giving too little information to work with. Either you list down all the hardware with model name and number or use Speccy and do a screenshot and post it here. Then again it can be software related problems but list down all your hardware anyway.

 

[SmackAHobo]

Sorry about that, here are the details:
  Intel Core i7 2600K
  Corsair Vengeance CMZ8GX3M2A1600C8 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3
  Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD7-B3 Motherboard
  GeForce GTX 580 3GB Phantom
3x HDD - 2x 500gb WD & 1x TB WD

Thoughts?

 

[SmackAHobo]

Anyone have any ideas as to what the problem is?

 

[JorgeOlivera]

Relax man, its only been around 3 hours since your last post and here on the west coast its barely 6am. I'm sure someone with some help will post soon.

 

[Paperlantern]

Sounds honestly like software, or a software issue caused by a possible failing HDD, being that it was rather sudden. Ive also seen other file systems, and even external esata drives cause issues similar to this (hangs, bluescreens and the like). I'd try disconnecting all your unnecessary drives and seeing if it will boot normally that way to start with. If it still wont, run some sort of fitness test on your OS disk, see if there are any anomalies or problems.

 

[Ken g6]

Hm, how old is that motherboard? Did you get it after the whole 1155 SATA drive controller recall? Can you unplug spurious drives and plug the remaining drives into the 6GB SATA ports?

If that doesn't fix it, boot Windows into safe mode, scan the drives, then do a full virus/malware scan.

 

[dma0991]

This does not look like a SATA bug issue since it is the B3 revision motherboard. It could be more of a software problem than hardware. On my mind the problem has something to do with your RAID array or Windows 7 itself.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

If you got any spare parts lying around, another option would be for you to take out and replace each major part of the machine with a spare, and see if the problem persists.

Failing that, I'd take out everything out and start putting it back and trying to turn on the machine until the culprit can be narrowed down. The very first thing to do would be to unplug all the non-necessary storage (HDDs and optical drives), and accessories plugged into peripheral ports (USB, eSata etc.)

 

[Slammy1]

Can you get into BIOS?

I had something similar happen when I had a PCI card loose. I'm not a fan of the retention clips on this case, better to use a real screw, least it has the holes. The card still works, an old Creative X-Fi platinum.

 

[Spikesoldier]

disk failure

 

[mfenn]

Man, you really go all out don't you?

Yeah, I'm thinking that your disk is having issues. Download the WD Data Lifeguard ISO, burn it to a CD, boot your PC from it, and run the tests.

 

[Michael Meio]

Please, before you attempt to download/install/test anything, keep in mind that hard drives (the standard non solid state ones) have moving parts which are culprit of failure around 95% of times.

So, try to rescue any valuable data before anything else. Every second your computer is on, the disk is spinning and most possibly making the damage worse until it will be impossible for the controller to recognize or direct to any information.

Judging the symptoms you've explained, I agree that it's a disk failure.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Not to be repetitive, but I would guess hard drive failure too. These are very close to the symptoms I had when the hard drive failed, although in my case, the symptoms came on more gradually.

I seem to recall that I was able to run the comp temporarily from a Linux CD to be able to use the internet and recover some data.

 

[sangyup81]

run seatools

i suspect you have a hard drive issue

 

[SmackAHobo]

I tried removing 1 HDD and then another, both came up with boot errors. I then plugged them back in and the Windows Boot Manager came up with an error saying that Winload.exe failed to load because the application is missing or corrupt.?

Thoughts?

 

[JEDIYoda]

Thoughts?

I touched her hand.
Her hand touched her boob.
By the transitive property, I got some boob!
Algebra's awesome! - Her209

 

[AnitaPeterson]

1) Take both HDDs identified as defective from the computer.
2) Put a new HDD in, and load Windows on it.
3) Put the two HDDs in an external enclosure, dock, whatever.
4) Run CrystalDiskInfo - http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html - and see if it reports errors on the HDDs. If yes, save all the data from them and recycle them. If not, just format and reuse.

PS: Yes, as JEDIYoda suggests, your signature is infantile.

 

[mfenn]

I tried removing 1 HDD and then another, both came up with boot errors. I then plugged them back in and the Windows Boot Manager came up with an error saying that Winload.exe failed to load because the application is missing or corrupt.?

Thoughts?

Run the WD tools. At this point I'm betting that it will throw an error for one of the drives.