gigabyte p35-ds3r - booting issue

[d_harry]

Hello guys,

my pc is made by a gigabyte p35-ds3r, intel e6550 CPU, 8gb RAM (4 2gb sticks by crucial), 2 western digital ATA 320 gb hard drives, cd-dvd, sound card and graphic card, WIN 7.
In the last month I have this problem: sometimes the booting doesn't start... it stops at the end of the device listing, just a moment before the "windows is starting" image should appear. When this happens, I can hear the master hard drive motor stopping and starting again, in a loop.
Sometimes it sticks like that, and the only thing I can do is turn the power off and retry... sometimes the booting starts immediately, sometimes it sticks, then unsticks by itself and boots... in either case, once it boots, the pc works perfectly all day long.
This thing is driving me mad, I tried to open the case, take everything apart and clean all the dust trapped inside, with no result.

Do you have any idea?

thanks in advance!

DH

 

[snowctrl]

Have u tried unplugging all USB devices bar mouse n keyboard? Does this fix it?

Then next step, provided u hav run full antivirus n antimalware scans, will b to check disk your drives... Do u hav all critical data backed up?

 

[d_harry]

no, I'm going to try... even mouse and keyboard, I didn't know.
I've already backed up all my data.
I checked the drives with win7 and they are reported to be good, but maybe is there a better way to check them?
If it were a bad hard disk, how could it boot the system and work all day long?

thanks,

DH

 

[snowctrl]

If a check disk finds nothing your drives are likely ok - sometimes drives fail suddenly, sometimes slowly bit by bit - but be aware that the reliable life of a drive is typically 4 years under normal use - they don't just go on forever.

I reckon u may hav a minor incompatibility with a USB device - for example I hav an external Raid array that will cause the sort of freezing you're seeing if it's on during boot

 

[d_harry]

I tried disconnecting stuff and see if the booting improved, and found this: if I disconnect the slave drive, everything goes all right again, 100% of the times the booting is perfect. So it would seem that my slave drive is at fail... but the question is: how is it possible that once windows starts, that drive works perfectly (it's currently at work backuping the data) and win7 finds no error on it? I thought that it could be the motherboard, then I connected it to another SATA port, but the result is the same.
Is there a better way to test a drive than running win 7 utility?
On the motherboard box I found a document that made me remind this: the day after I got the pc (in 2008), I've sent it back to the shop because it didn't detect the second drive, they somehow fixed it and it worked for years, until last month. Does this give you any other idea?

thank you very much,

DH

 

[snowctrl]

Well done for finding the source of the problem... I've really no idea why your second drive would behave as it is doing, however I will re-iterate that you're really doing yourself no favours relying on old drives - I would take this as an opportunity to upgrade (try an SSD!!! - Crucial MX100, Samsung 840 EVO etc)

 

[d_harry]

yesterday I ran an accurate test with the manufacturer's diagnostic tool... after 2 hours it told me that the drive was perfect, but the drive was no more detected by win 7. This morning I switched on the pc with the case still open, and... there we go! Still no booting, and a nice cloud of white smoke from the drive! Looks like it was dying, and the testing killed it definitively.
Alreay got a new one, after lunch I'm going to try it... I consider myself lucky as it was just the slave disk, and I had a double copy of all the data

thanks,

DH

 

[snowctrl]

Well sounds like you're handling old and failing hardware very well...