Computer Shat Itself: Shitty HDD Edition

[Didzo]

Computer specs and shit:
Win 7 x64
AMD Phenom 2 x4 965 Black Edition
Radeon HD 5850
8GB RAM
750W PSU
ASUS M4A79XTD mobo
Main drive: Samsung 480 250GB SSD
Old drive: WB Caviar Black 1TB

Situation:
I restarted the computer earlier today. Loading Asus Express Gate showed up for much longer than usual and the BIOS screen took longer to go away. Instead of launching windows, the screens went black and displayed this instead:


I have done the following troubleshooting things with no change in results:

Reseat gfx card
Move gfx card to different pci slot
Reset CMOS
Reseat RAM
Checked to see if everything was plugged correctly

On one of the resets, I managed to get to the Windows launch repair option. I selected it, the default Win 7  background popped up, but nothing else happened for 5 minutes before I gave up and shut it down again. None of the usual pop up windows showed up.

I then launched Ubuntu from a USB, which sort of worked. It gave me this on screen before going to a perpetual Ubuntu loading screen:


I'm no expert, but I get a distinct "your SSD is fucked" vibe from it.

I was able to successfully launch Windows from my old hard drive. I can see the SSD in windows explorer and was able to copy some files back and forth over it.

So I ask you BRBU... what the heck is going on, what do I do next, and how can I try and make things work again?

[Didzo]

Update: Booting from the old HDD isn't working anymore for whatever reason. It just hangs on the Starting Windows screen forever.

[Mission Difficult]

I remember something similar happening to an old computer and the only thing that would fix it was turning off the PSU and unplugging the cord. Let it sit for a minute and then plug back in and boot up. Probably won't work, but it's something to try.

[Eightball]

Actually, do what mission said. I had a not dissimilar problem before with my last comp; it was only fixed by reseating the ram, and in doing so we finally disconnected it from power. This is a stretch and it was some years ago but that could have been a contributor.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

[Vandamguy]

in b4 hek fixes your computer remotely from winterpeg.



you can try MD's idea - sometimes the simplest solution is the best

if that doesnt work , pop out the CMOS battery for a minute, press power button (whilst unplugged) to discharge capacitors and whirly-gigs

reinsert CMOS battery and power cord , then power up for real.

from your description of the problem im 50/50 between it being motherboard or SSD. conflicting trial and error has me confused .. if it were SSD problem then you shouldnt/wouldnt be able to copy files to it on the other windows installation. and i thought you'd see something like this
...

but then the other thing is that with the Ubuntu you're isolating the SSD out of the equation and just leaving the MB in suspicion ...

so lets see where the tricks above get you

[Didzo]

I forgot to list it, but the "remove all powar" thing was one of the first things I did. CMOS was reset early on as well.

--------------

Now here's where shit gets weirder once I start testing the mobo/drive interactions:

Drive 1: SSD Primary
Drive 2: 1TB HDD for active storage. Still has my old windows install on it.
Drive 3: 1.5TB HDD for having a second copy of shit in Drives 1 and 2
Drive 4: 2TB HDD which I don't know what to do with. Currently all it stores is a single picture of my dog.

Drive 2 as boot drive + all the rest: It booted into windows 1/3 times. Other 2/3 times it got hung up on the Windows is Starting" screen. During the time it successfully booted, explorer.exe became completely unresponsive a few times without any consistency that I could detect.

Drive 1 alone: Super fast boot, though the black screen with blue bars appeared for a split second before windows did its thing.

Drives 1+2: Boots just fine.

Drives 1+3: Boots, but slowly.

Drives 1+4: No boot. Stuck at the black screen.

Drives 1+2+3: Boots, but slowly.

Drives 1+2+4: No boot. Stuck at black screen.

To control for possible sata port failure, I moved Drive 4's plug into other positions to see if that affected anything. it didn't.

Explanation for the blue bars: Idiot me had just realized this now. I had turned off the windows logo animation to make the SSD boot faster, so I think that they replace the Windows is Starting screen for whatever reason. Forgetting that you made a change to the windows registry may fool you into thinking that your graphics card is dead or something.

Herp.

Conclusion, maybe: Somehow, the 2TB drive suddenly became evil and toxic to the system.

???

Now the question is... can I replicate this failure using the same drive in a different computer? If not, what the hell is actually wrong with my computer?

[Mission Difficult]

You could try running something like SpinRite to make sure there's nothing wrong with the drive. Or you could just DBAN it and see if that does anything. Will probably take a while either way.

[HeK]

If ATA4 is the 2TB drive, in your Ubuntu pictures, it looks as if the drive controller (on the drive it's self) has failed.
There are a lot of IO errors there.

Your lack of booting is likely due to the OS attempting to retry communication with the drive (again and again! With more and longer timeouts!).

If you need the data on the drive, you can try a controller swap, otherwise RMA and be done with it.

[Didzo]

If ATA4 is the 2TB drive, in your Ubuntu pictures, it looks as if the drive controller (on the drive it's self) has failed.
There are a lot of IO errors there.

Your lack of booting is likely due to the OS attempting to retry communication with the drive (again and again! With more and longer timeouts!).

If you need the data on the drive, you can try a controller swap, otherwise RMA and be done with it.

This honestly doesn't surprise me. The 2TB drive came from an external WD drive enclosure (and therefore is from a shitty lot) that I cracked open after the thing was no longer detectable. I was able to reformat and use it once it was in my case.

Since it wasn't sold as an internal drive and since I did my own troubleshooting, I'm pretty sure all I have now is a heavy brick paperweight that I can give to my dad as proof of why he shouldn't be buying the external drive shit.

[FlyingMongoose]

http://lifehacker.com/5467758/move-the-u...-windows-7

Consider this if you intend to have an SSD and HDD in the same compy.