M4A78T-E BIOS Updated now Windows Freezing

Hello,

So I updated my BIOS yesterday to try to bring everything up to date on my PC, the BIOS update went fine using EZFLASH-2 to bring my version up to 3409 (I think, the latest one anyway).

Following the update I configured my RAID array and other settings again in BIOS and all seemed well.

On the next boot Windows 7 froze about 30 secs after loading up, couldn't move the mouse or do anything at all but there was no flickering or weird sounds either, just a completely frozen picture.

After that I tried rebooting and the same thing happens every time, sometimes during loading Windows and sometimes after loading but always exactly the same, dead freeze.

I continued to troubleshoot by reinstalling Windows, got it up and running and managed to salvage my pictures and personal data but then as soon as I tried to go to device manager it happened again.

Since then I've reinstalled Windows about 10 times changing various things along the way, I've got rid of the RAID array completely and formatted the disks as standard (2 x 1Tb and 1 x 500Gb), I've installed lower versions of BIOS and am now running 3303 (also discovered I can no longer go below ver 3xxx any longer). None of this has had an effect so far, every install either freezes during install or after loading Windows.

So I'm pretty clueless as to what the issue is, all I know is that it started after I updated the BIOS, the weird thing is that most of the time everything works fine until the point Windows is loaded, it seems to indicate a HDD issue to me but can't be the harddrives themselves as there are three and they all report healthy in BIOS, however the issue does seem to occur once the harddrives are accessed.

Can anyone offer any advice on figuring out this issue?

Thanks,

James

Edit 0605 11:44

I've tried disconnecting everything, disabling onboard sound and any other non essential devices, latest installation hangs upon restart on 'Starting Windows' screen

Just tried and still the same issues, I'm at the point where I'm going to start dismantling my computer to identify the issue.