- Sep 28, 2014
- 25
- 2
- 18,545
Hello, as of today I've been dealing with a very sporadic issue but the general basis of it is this: my PC is having some kind of trouble reading my hard drives, and because of this I can't really use it at all.
This issue is very messy and will take a bit of explaining. If you don't want to read a wall of text, there's a brief summary with bullet points at the bottom of this post. But if you're willing to figure this out with me, here's the full story:
I'm a college student and today I moved back into my apartment. My PC was in the back of a car for two hours on the highway, and I'm guessing my issues are resulting from it being bumped or damaged on the ride down. It was working perfectly fine/normal before the move.
For some background, here are the hard drives I have in: a 3.0 TB, a 1.0 TB, and a 4.0 TB external hard drive. The 3TB has Windows 10 on it, and the other two are just for misc file storage.
It seems like my PC is having some kind of trouble reading my hard drives... I can't really tell if it's only having a problem reading just one of them, or all of them. It seems like every time I boot, I get a random assortment of which drives are actually being read. Sometimes it's all of them, sometimes only one is missing, and sometimes all are missing except one (I know this because I go into the BIOS to see the boot order, and notice the changes each time). The one consistency seems to be that my 4.0 TB external always shows up without a problem. When the HDD with Windows on it shows up and I try to boot into it now, I get a flashing cursor, which I'm pretty sure means that no OS is being detected.
Here's the confusing, more sporadic part of this story: earlier today, I was able to boot into Windows a few times whenever the correct HDD showed up in the BIOS. However, when it did boot and I was able to use my computer, it was VERY slow and hard to do anything. It actually even blue screened once, with the following stop code: "CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED." Once I rebooted again into Windows I ran a SFC scan, which found nothing, and then chkdsk /f to scan and repair, which didn't seem to change anything.
This is where it gets weird again. I started removing components and rebooting to see what would happen. It was still pretty random about which hard drives would actually show up on the PC, but once I removed my 5TB external HD, my 1TB, and three of my four RAM sticks, my PC booted into Windows like normal and everything was very fast, as if I was using it normally. I was even able to play Wolfenstein: The New Order and it seemed to run just fine. I am having a hard time deducing if this was all a random occurrence, or if it actually was due to disconnecting all that stuff. I used this opportunity to check the Event Monitor and found nothing weird. I ran an SFC scan again and found nothing, and ran chkdsk /f again and found nothing. I then put all of the components of my PC back in and rebooted and started having problems again, except this time something new appeared: on startup, my BIOS said the following unprompted, about my 1.0 TB hard drive: "S.M.A.R.T. Status Bad, Backup and Replace."
The current status of my PC is this: all of the peripherals/components are plugged in, and when I boot it up and try to boot into my HDD with Windows on it, I get a flashing white cursor (no OS). One consistency to note is that my 1.0 TB hard drive seems to be missing every time now. This falls in line with the aforementioned fact that my motherboard thinks it's "bad."
Sorry for the wall of text. I really have no idea where to go with this issue because it just feels so all over the place. Thanks in advance for your help.
This issue is very messy and will take a bit of explaining. If you don't want to read a wall of text, there's a brief summary with bullet points at the bottom of this post. But if you're willing to figure this out with me, here's the full story:
I'm a college student and today I moved back into my apartment. My PC was in the back of a car for two hours on the highway, and I'm guessing my issues are resulting from it being bumped or damaged on the ride down. It was working perfectly fine/normal before the move.
For some background, here are the hard drives I have in: a 3.0 TB, a 1.0 TB, and a 4.0 TB external hard drive. The 3TB has Windows 10 on it, and the other two are just for misc file storage.
It seems like my PC is having some kind of trouble reading my hard drives... I can't really tell if it's only having a problem reading just one of them, or all of them. It seems like every time I boot, I get a random assortment of which drives are actually being read. Sometimes it's all of them, sometimes only one is missing, and sometimes all are missing except one (I know this because I go into the BIOS to see the boot order, and notice the changes each time). The one consistency seems to be that my 4.0 TB external always shows up without a problem. When the HDD with Windows on it shows up and I try to boot into it now, I get a flashing cursor, which I'm pretty sure means that no OS is being detected.
Here's the confusing, more sporadic part of this story: earlier today, I was able to boot into Windows a few times whenever the correct HDD showed up in the BIOS. However, when it did boot and I was able to use my computer, it was VERY slow and hard to do anything. It actually even blue screened once, with the following stop code: "CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED." Once I rebooted again into Windows I ran a SFC scan, which found nothing, and then chkdsk /f to scan and repair, which didn't seem to change anything.
This is where it gets weird again. I started removing components and rebooting to see what would happen. It was still pretty random about which hard drives would actually show up on the PC, but once I removed my 5TB external HD, my 1TB, and three of my four RAM sticks, my PC booted into Windows like normal and everything was very fast, as if I was using it normally. I was even able to play Wolfenstein: The New Order and it seemed to run just fine. I am having a hard time deducing if this was all a random occurrence, or if it actually was due to disconnecting all that stuff. I used this opportunity to check the Event Monitor and found nothing weird. I ran an SFC scan again and found nothing, and ran chkdsk /f again and found nothing. I then put all of the components of my PC back in and rebooted and started having problems again, except this time something new appeared: on startup, my BIOS said the following unprompted, about my 1.0 TB hard drive: "S.M.A.R.T. Status Bad, Backup and Replace."
The current status of my PC is this: all of the peripherals/components are plugged in, and when I boot it up and try to boot into my HDD with Windows on it, I get a flashing white cursor (no OS). One consistency to note is that my 1.0 TB hard drive seems to be missing every time now. This falls in line with the aforementioned fact that my motherboard thinks it's "bad."
Sorry for the wall of text. I really have no idea where to go with this issue because it just feels so all over the place. Thanks in advance for your help.
- Hard facts:
■ At the base level, my PC is having trouble reading the hard drives
■ Blue screened once, stop code: "CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED"
■ Motherboard says it thinks my 1.0 TB hard drive is bad
- A summary of what I have tried:
■ SFC scan. No problems detected
■ Chkdsk /f scan and repair. No changes noticed
■ Checked Event Monitor. Nothing alarming.
■ Disconnected most hard drives and RAM. PC worked! But I can't tell if this was a random occurrence or actual progress.
- My PC specs:
■ CPU: Intel i5 4690
■ Motherboard: ASUS Z-87 A
■ RAM: 12.0 GB
■ GPU: MSI Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 OCV1
■ PSU: EVGA 650w BQ
■ Hard drives: 3.0 TB Western Digital HDD (has Windows 10 on it), 1.0 TB Western Digital HDD, 4.0 TB Seagate Expansion external drive
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