Hello, this will be a bit of a long message, I'm hoping someone can help me with my ongoing pc problem.
The issue is blue screen crashes happening fairly often but seemingly at random, most of my searching suggests that the hard drive is the cause, however I have already replaced it twice and continue to have a similar problem. The pc is a home assembled job using some recycled parts one of which may be the problem, the 2 previous hard drives were used ones but the current one was brand new a few months ago, the mother board was also new, other parts all 2nd hand I think.
From the start (about 4 months ago) there were sometimes issues with the hard drive not being detected in BIOS and when installing Windows, mostly rebooting worked, and I think with the new drive I had to create a partition before it would show up in the Windows installer (I've done a clean install several times trying to solve the problem). With the current drive it has been running ok for 2 to 3 weeks before crashing, when it happens the pc will be ok after but will crash again within a day or two. I have been just checking the cables and sometimes switching the hard drive and dvd drive around on the motherboard, which fixes it for another few weeks (The times when the hard drive does not show in BIOS the DVD drive always does, whichever way round they are, have tried new SATA cable with no difference).
Here are some of the errors in detail, I don't have the blue screen error codes to hand, they were not always the same one, from researching myself they were all hard drive related. (I did write some down but can't find them right now, will try to add later)
In the event log from the last blue screen I have this
The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort0.
Using the manufacturer's help program I get an error doing the check (in windows, the dos version wouldn't read the drive)
Quick Test on drive1 did not complete!
Status code = 07 (Failed read test element), Failure Checkpoint = 97
(Unknown Test)
SMART self=test did not complete on drive1!
Since the last crashes after windows loads I get a message about being unable to connect to a winows service, sometimes
Group Policy Client Service
and sometimes
System Event Notification Service
Also I have to click on my profile to log in to windows, which I did not have to before as I don't have a password on startup and I'm the only user of the machine. When these come up windows is slower to start.
I have tried:
replacing hard drive and SATA cables\connecting to other port
various disk checking and other programs, usually finding no errors
fresh windows install
changing RAM
updating BIOS - went from version 28 to 35 I think (the smallest update I could do), there are several newer versions available, around 110 was the most recent
none of this seems to have made a difference.
After the last crash the windows startup repair ran for about 7 hours, windows started but then crashed again, startup repair for a while again and I think a disk check at some point, it is now seeming stable though quite slow to start windows.
So my questions are:
What is the likely issue beyond the hard drive? (motherboard, RAM, PSU, or maybe I have been very unlucky and had 3 bad drives in a row)
Also how can I best check the different components? I don't have a spare desktop to try different parts in, but do have a laptop.
Is it possible that the current drive is now damaged due to repeated crashing?
Thank you for reading and I hope that all makes sense and that somebody knows what is going on. My PC specs are below and I'll try to get any other info that people need to answer, assuming I can get them before it crashes.
OS Windows 7 Professional N 64-bit SP1
CPU Intel Core i5 2400 3.10GHz, Sandy Brige 32nm
RAM 8GB DDR3
Motherboard Intel DH61CR (LGA1155 CPU1)
HD Western Digitial WDC WD5000AVDS-63U7B1 SATA 500GB
Graphics Nvidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti (ASUStek)
The issue is blue screen crashes happening fairly often but seemingly at random, most of my searching suggests that the hard drive is the cause, however I have already replaced it twice and continue to have a similar problem. The pc is a home assembled job using some recycled parts one of which may be the problem, the 2 previous hard drives were used ones but the current one was brand new a few months ago, the mother board was also new, other parts all 2nd hand I think.
From the start (about 4 months ago) there were sometimes issues with the hard drive not being detected in BIOS and when installing Windows, mostly rebooting worked, and I think with the new drive I had to create a partition before it would show up in the Windows installer (I've done a clean install several times trying to solve the problem). With the current drive it has been running ok for 2 to 3 weeks before crashing, when it happens the pc will be ok after but will crash again within a day or two. I have been just checking the cables and sometimes switching the hard drive and dvd drive around on the motherboard, which fixes it for another few weeks (The times when the hard drive does not show in BIOS the DVD drive always does, whichever way round they are, have tried new SATA cable with no difference).
Here are some of the errors in detail, I don't have the blue screen error codes to hand, they were not always the same one, from researching myself they were all hard drive related. (I did write some down but can't find them right now, will try to add later)
In the event log from the last blue screen I have this
The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort0.
Using the manufacturer's help program I get an error doing the check (in windows, the dos version wouldn't read the drive)
Quick Test on drive1 did not complete!
Status code = 07 (Failed read test element), Failure Checkpoint = 97
(Unknown Test)
SMART self=test did not complete on drive1!
Since the last crashes after windows loads I get a message about being unable to connect to a winows service, sometimes
Group Policy Client Service
and sometimes
System Event Notification Service
Also I have to click on my profile to log in to windows, which I did not have to before as I don't have a password on startup and I'm the only user of the machine. When these come up windows is slower to start.
I have tried:
replacing hard drive and SATA cables\connecting to other port
various disk checking and other programs, usually finding no errors
fresh windows install
changing RAM
updating BIOS - went from version 28 to 35 I think (the smallest update I could do), there are several newer versions available, around 110 was the most recent
none of this seems to have made a difference.
After the last crash the windows startup repair ran for about 7 hours, windows started but then crashed again, startup repair for a while again and I think a disk check at some point, it is now seeming stable though quite slow to start windows.
So my questions are:
What is the likely issue beyond the hard drive? (motherboard, RAM, PSU, or maybe I have been very unlucky and had 3 bad drives in a row)
Also how can I best check the different components? I don't have a spare desktop to try different parts in, but do have a laptop.
Is it possible that the current drive is now damaged due to repeated crashing?
Thank you for reading and I hope that all makes sense and that somebody knows what is going on. My PC specs are below and I'll try to get any other info that people need to answer, assuming I can get them before it crashes.
OS Windows 7 Professional N 64-bit SP1
CPU Intel Core i5 2400 3.10GHz, Sandy Brige 32nm
RAM 8GB DDR3
Motherboard Intel DH61CR (LGA1155 CPU1)
HD Western Digitial WDC WD5000AVDS-63U7B1 SATA 500GB
Graphics Nvidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti (ASUStek)
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