Interesting Problem

First, let me apologize for the title, as I have no idea what the problem is or really how to describe it, all I can say at the moment is that it's an interesting problem.

Second, apologies for posting this in the Software forum but all things considered it's as good a choice as any.

Now for the actual issue. Yesterday I turned on my PC, and it took about 5 minutes to load the OS (Win7 Ultimate x64). It was working fine the day before yesterday and generally only takes about 30 seconds to boot up.

After entering the OS, I realized that my secondary HDD (a WDC 1TB) shows up in My Computer, however is inaccessible. It says the parameter is incorrect, and the volume lable is not what it should be. It has reverted back to "Local Disk" when it used to be labeled "Storage".

Certain programs or functions of windows do not open or load. Or, conversely, they will open but not display any content. Example, control panel opens, but there is no content...about 5 minutes later it will load.

Other programs, for example IE, load up immediately and obviously I am using it now to write this post.

So the symptoms of whatever I'm suffering from include an extremely slow bootup, lack of access to one of my hard drives, and limited Win7 program functionality.

At first I thought one or both of the hard drives had failed. About 2 months ago I had two Raided 500G HDDs one of which failed and I lost all of my data and bought a 640G WDC Caviar Black for the OS, partitioned it into 3 drives, one for the OS, one for Apps, and one for random ISO files. I bought a 1TB WDC Caviar Green to store media. Anyway, after a while I was able to get into the device manager and confirmed that these two drives are working properly. I verified this in the BIOS. I don't think the HDDs are malfunctioning. I also do not want to install Win7 again, as I've done a full install on about 8 computers this week (for work) and it's not something I enjoy.

Then I suspected the RAM, but I don't think the RAM would cause me not to be able to access a hard drive, and be selective about which programs it allows me to run.

The only other thing I could think of is that recently I installed two critical Windows Updates. So I tried to access the system recovery feature and restore to an earlier point in time. After about 5 minutes the recovery feature loaded, I selected a restore point, and then waited for another 10 minutes for it to restart the computer to initiate the restore.

After restoring, it still took about 5 minutes to boot the system up, only this time I was left with just a black screen and a mouse. I hit CTRL+ALT+DEL and was able to enter the task manager and watched my programs all loading one at a time over the course of another 5 mins, then the OS appeared and I came back to write this post.

I have absolutely no idea what could be causing this kind of problem. It seems to both be a combination of software and hardware, and at the same time neither.

If anyone has come across a similar issue or has any suggestions or guidance about anything else I could check or any actions I might try in order to correct whatever issue this may be, I would be much appreciative.

Thanks!

 

I know you don't think it's a hard drive problem, but I would still check it anyway. Same with ram. you can use windows memory diagnostic tool, by either starting it from the control panel (it will reboot and run before windows starts) or you can start it from the boot manager by tapping F8 during bootup, when at the advance screen, hit escape and it will bring up an option below the OS selection under tools, windows memory diagnostic.
For the hard drive, you can use whatever drive utility you like, or one that comes either with the drive(s) or you can download them here (http://majorgeeks.com/downloads8.html) , or from the manufacturers site.

 

Thanks for the response. I actually ran the memory diagnostic under windows after the bios post screen before I posted this message, it checked out ok.

As for the HDD utility, I tried to run the one from the WD website but it wouldnt load. This time I gave it 10 minutes, it came on-screen and the 1TB drive said it failed the test.. then I guess after the tests were able to complete a few minutes later it changed to "pass".

In the "Disk Management" tool it shows my 1TB drive as Disk 0, and apparently the file system has disappeared as it is labeled as "Raw Data". Again I don't have any system files on or linked to that drive, it's just Mp3s, Videos, etc. I checked my motherboard and the HDDs are hooked up to the right sata slots.. the 640G with my OS on it is hooked up to SATA1 and the 1TB with media is hooked up to SATA2, so I'm not sure why the 1TB is displaying as Disk0 in the system. I switched the two SATA connectors and the 1TB still displays in the Disk0 slot, but now windows is claiming it cant find drivers for either of the disk drives now.

So from what I can tell it's not the RAM, and it's not the HDDs. I am going to try to "repair" my windows installation and do some virus scans, though I doubt that will do much either, and if all else fails I'll try to just reformat both drives and do a re-install of windows. If THAT doesn't do anything I'm really at a loss as to what else I can do.. short of buying a new motherboard, which means buying a new CPU and memory (I'm using a P45, so if I'm going to buy a new board I'll get a P55 or something that supports Core-i, which means I'll have to upgrade the CPU and memory accordingly). Don't really have that kind of cash though.

Anyone have any other suggestions?

Thanks