Windows 10 desktop: Locks up quickly after startup. Blue screen and "Select Boot Device" screen as a result.

Nerotiic

Reputable
Feb 20, 2014
13
0
4,510
For the past week or so my PC has randomly been locking up, causing all programs to become unresponsive, forcing me to shut it down. It would sometimes go for 5 hours or longer, but now it never lasts past 1 hour.
I have gone to sleep after it freezing without turning it off, and when I wake up to check on it it is at a black screen with white text saying "Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key" and I have no idea what to do and just press the power button (no need to hold it in this case) and it shuts down then comes back on immediately (but sometimes it doesn't come back on afterwards, weird). It occasionally hits the blue screen after 5-10+ minutes (the one saying something went wrong we are collecting data), then it goes to the select proper boot device screen. But, sometimes it takes longer to reach the blue screen.
I've read countless posts about PC crashes and lock ups but nothing seems to be like mine. I can't keep it on long enough to run a malware scan (I'm pretty confident I don't have a virus) or CCleaner (it just got 29% through CCleaner then crashed again). For what it's worth, my hard drive seems slow and I believe it could be the problem but I have no way of knowing.
My specs are:
Intel i5 4670k
Radeon R9 270x
Gigabyte Motherboard (that's all I know)
8GB RAM
WDC WD something something 1tb hard drive
Power supply I'm not sure but I can probably check if it's really important.
I've hard powered my PC down more times than I'm comfortable admitting and assume this will eventually lead to a bigger issue. Please let me know what I can try. Thank you.
P.S. I don't feel comfortable messing with the parts of my computer, but if I have to I have no other options I suppose. I bought it on ibuypower over 3 years ago and all I've done is replace the GPU once (over 2 years ago).
 
Solution
Hard drive is failing. Back up all important data immediately. Don't run games or video programs that force large amounts of data to load, you don't want to stress the drive more than you have to. The more you stress it, the lower the chances of your data being intact after the copy.

Please back up to something local like a secondary drive or large flash drive. Don't use online backup methods because loading an internet browser causes a fair amount of disk activity, which is something you want to keep to a minimum right now.
Hard drive is failing. Back up all important data immediately. Don't run games or video programs that force large amounts of data to load, you don't want to stress the drive more than you have to. The more you stress it, the lower the chances of your data being intact after the copy.

Please back up to something local like a secondary drive or large flash drive. Don't use online backup methods because loading an internet browser causes a fair amount of disk activity, which is something you want to keep to a minimum right now.
 
Solution
I need to know the make and model of your power supply. Once I have this information, I can find out the quality of the unit.

If it's very poor quality, it's possible that unstable output power is what is killing your drive. If this is the case, then the power supply will just kill the replacement drive as well. This means that the power supply would have to be replaced before installing the new drive.
 


Backup before running the test. SMART tests create a large amount of drive activity. I can't guarantee that running the test won't further damage the drive if it's already beginning to fail.