Hey there,
In advance, i apologize for the lengthy post:
I recently got a second-hand MSI Z77A-G43 motherboard and an Intel i7 3770k processor from work, they said they had "Problems" booting up and proceeded to replace it.
What was supposed to be a routine component upgrade/swap, soon turned into a tedious troubleshooting nightmare.
After replacing the PC with the new parts, i found that it didn't POST (For some reason, neither the motherboard or the case comes with the POST "speaker", so i tend to look at whether the mouse, keyboard and screen come on.)
So, i decided to breadboard the problem, i removed every component and connection, then followed these steps:
1) Removed CMOS battery for 10 minutes and reset it.
2) Connected Motherboard power cables and Front panel case connections (Audio, Power Reset etc.).
3) Inserted a single 2GB DDR3 1333MHz RAM stick in one of the black DIMM slots. (For this particular motherboard, the channels were color-coded as Black-Blue-Black-Blue)
4) Powered up the PC and it successfully booted to BIOS.
5) Powered down the PC and inserted another 2GB Ram Slot into the first blue channel.
6) Powered up the PC and it failed to boot, swapped it to the second black slot and it booted to BIOS successfully. (At this point i started suspecting a faulty DIMM channel)
7) Inserted the final RAM stick i had, a 4GB 1600MHz into the last blue slot and it booted successfully. (So i ruled out a fault DIMM slot)
8) Slotted in the GPU (MSI GTX 650 Ti Boost) and attached the power connector.
9) Powered up the PC and it successfully booted up to BIOS.
Now for the second main problem:
10) Connected the main HDD (Seagate Barracuda 1TB; Model no: ST1000DM003, Loaded with Windows 7 64-bit)
11) Reached the Windows loading screen (Specifically, the part where the orbs appear and are about to "Fuse"), before, for a split-second, it BSODs (Error code: STOP: 0x0000007B), restarts and loops the process.
At this point, i realized i should start saving some data (In hindsight, i should have done it from the beginning, but i was complacent.) I had a separate PC (Henceforth know as PC#2) that serves as a troubleshooter for when my PC does go on the fritz.
12) I connected that same HDD to PC#2 as a secondary drive, only to find now, the main HDD in PC#2 had a Disk Read Error.
13) I disconnected the secondary drive and left it one side.
14) I connected a new HDD (Another Seagate, 80GB, specs not important), which was blank, to PC#1 and installed Windows 7 64-Bit.
15) Booted successfully to Windows with no error messages.
16) Restarted the PC, and connected the problematic drive (The 1TB) to PC#1 and ran the Start-up repair, with no errors (Not surprising, that program never solves my issues.)
17) Ran the /fixmbr and /fixboot codes with the CMD console that came with the Windows DVD, to no avail.
Gave the same issue as before with the BSOD.
18) Disconnected the HDD and reconnected it to PC#2 and booted up with it's main drive as the primary and the 1TB booted last in the sequence.
19) Successfully booted to Windows with no errors.
At this point, i was relieved. Progress, no matter how minimal, is progress. However (Isn't there always a but), I found that when entering the problematic drive, the entire PC freezes up to a crawl, the indexing bar seems to reach some asymptotic limit as it gets closer to the red cancel button (Simply put: The Search bar thing).
20) Powered down PC#2 and disconnected the problem HDD.
21) Powered up PC#1 with Hot-Plug enabled on all of the SATA ports via BIOS.
22) Once booted to windows (With the 80GB mentioned above as the main drive), i connected the problem drive and it registered without problem.
However the same problem occurred as on PC#2, Slow loading times when opening folders and windows.
23) Connected another external HDD to serve as the 'Backup' drive and proceeded to manually place every file in the Elder Scrolls Online Folder onto the External.
By now, the most important thing i needed to save was that game, it took me approximately 2 weeks to download that on and off as i wasn't prepared to re-download it. Eventually after manually dragging a small bit of files at a time, for any copy operation larger than 20 GB stalled the copying process.
24) Disconnected the External and powered down the PC.
25) Removed the main drive from PC#1 (The 80GB), and proceeded to reformat the 1TB.
26) The reformatting seemed to repair the booting problem, however the slow loading times and general sluggish-ness still remain.
tl;dr:
Orignally the hard drive was performing acceptably, after changing the motherboard and CPU and performing a reformatting, it's slowed down to a crawl.
I know it was a bit lengthy, okay, a lot. But i only wish to clearly express the steps i followed to avoid confusion.
I'd very much appreciate any input and advice you can provide, and i'm standing by to supply any information you might need regarding troubleshooting.
PS: At the moment i'm currently performing a CHKDSK, and it's on Stage 5 of 5 without any problems (At least to my knowledge).
In advance, i apologize for the lengthy post:
I recently got a second-hand MSI Z77A-G43 motherboard and an Intel i7 3770k processor from work, they said they had "Problems" booting up and proceeded to replace it.
What was supposed to be a routine component upgrade/swap, soon turned into a tedious troubleshooting nightmare.
After replacing the PC with the new parts, i found that it didn't POST (For some reason, neither the motherboard or the case comes with the POST "speaker", so i tend to look at whether the mouse, keyboard and screen come on.)
So, i decided to breadboard the problem, i removed every component and connection, then followed these steps:
1) Removed CMOS battery for 10 minutes and reset it.
2) Connected Motherboard power cables and Front panel case connections (Audio, Power Reset etc.).
3) Inserted a single 2GB DDR3 1333MHz RAM stick in one of the black DIMM slots. (For this particular motherboard, the channels were color-coded as Black-Blue-Black-Blue)
4) Powered up the PC and it successfully booted to BIOS.
5) Powered down the PC and inserted another 2GB Ram Slot into the first blue channel.
6) Powered up the PC and it failed to boot, swapped it to the second black slot and it booted to BIOS successfully. (At this point i started suspecting a faulty DIMM channel)
7) Inserted the final RAM stick i had, a 4GB 1600MHz into the last blue slot and it booted successfully. (So i ruled out a fault DIMM slot)
8) Slotted in the GPU (MSI GTX 650 Ti Boost) and attached the power connector.
9) Powered up the PC and it successfully booted up to BIOS.
Now for the second main problem:
10) Connected the main HDD (Seagate Barracuda 1TB; Model no: ST1000DM003, Loaded with Windows 7 64-bit)
11) Reached the Windows loading screen (Specifically, the part where the orbs appear and are about to "Fuse"), before, for a split-second, it BSODs (Error code: STOP: 0x0000007B), restarts and loops the process.
At this point, i realized i should start saving some data (In hindsight, i should have done it from the beginning, but i was complacent.) I had a separate PC (Henceforth know as PC#2) that serves as a troubleshooter for when my PC does go on the fritz.
12) I connected that same HDD to PC#2 as a secondary drive, only to find now, the main HDD in PC#2 had a Disk Read Error.
13) I disconnected the secondary drive and left it one side.
14) I connected a new HDD (Another Seagate, 80GB, specs not important), which was blank, to PC#1 and installed Windows 7 64-Bit.
15) Booted successfully to Windows with no error messages.
16) Restarted the PC, and connected the problematic drive (The 1TB) to PC#1 and ran the Start-up repair, with no errors (Not surprising, that program never solves my issues.)
17) Ran the /fixmbr and /fixboot codes with the CMD console that came with the Windows DVD, to no avail.
Gave the same issue as before with the BSOD.
18) Disconnected the HDD and reconnected it to PC#2 and booted up with it's main drive as the primary and the 1TB booted last in the sequence.
19) Successfully booted to Windows with no errors.
At this point, i was relieved. Progress, no matter how minimal, is progress. However (Isn't there always a but), I found that when entering the problematic drive, the entire PC freezes up to a crawl, the indexing bar seems to reach some asymptotic limit as it gets closer to the red cancel button (Simply put: The Search bar thing).
20) Powered down PC#2 and disconnected the problem HDD.
21) Powered up PC#1 with Hot-Plug enabled on all of the SATA ports via BIOS.
22) Once booted to windows (With the 80GB mentioned above as the main drive), i connected the problem drive and it registered without problem.
However the same problem occurred as on PC#2, Slow loading times when opening folders and windows.
23) Connected another external HDD to serve as the 'Backup' drive and proceeded to manually place every file in the Elder Scrolls Online Folder onto the External.
By now, the most important thing i needed to save was that game, it took me approximately 2 weeks to download that on and off as i wasn't prepared to re-download it. Eventually after manually dragging a small bit of files at a time, for any copy operation larger than 20 GB stalled the copying process.
24) Disconnected the External and powered down the PC.
25) Removed the main drive from PC#1 (The 80GB), and proceeded to reformat the 1TB.
26) The reformatting seemed to repair the booting problem, however the slow loading times and general sluggish-ness still remain.
tl;dr:
Orignally the hard drive was performing acceptably, after changing the motherboard and CPU and performing a reformatting, it's slowed down to a crawl.
I know it was a bit lengthy, okay, a lot. But i only wish to clearly express the steps i followed to avoid confusion.
I'd very much appreciate any input and advice you can provide, and i'm standing by to supply any information you might need regarding troubleshooting.
PS: At the moment i'm currently performing a CHKDSK, and it's on Stage 5 of 5 without any problems (At least to my knowledge).
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