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Help! Hard Drive won't register with random hang ups and crashes.

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My computer has been randomly hanging up during install of Windows. I have also been unable to see my second hard drive under my computer. Finally I have expericed a very odd crash.

I pieced the computer together over the night and attempted to format and install Windows. I started with switching to AHCI and changing my RAM timings to what the Manufactures said. It was during this time in the BIOS that I experienced my first hang up and what would happen is the screen would go black because there was no signal and after a while I got a long beep with three short. According to the Asus manual it is a problem with the video card. With that being said when the hang up occurred a red light on the video card would go off. The video card was getting extremely hot to the point where it was hard to handle. After some research I switched from PCI-E 1 to 2 and back, tried 3 different PCI-E 6-2 Connectors, and finally just let it sit for a while. After letting it cool I went straight to try and install Win 7 and got it installed on the 3rd try. So now I can finally access Windows but I was still experiencing the random hang ups after about 20 minutes of use. I was able to get the lastest ATI drivers installed and the hang ups seemed to of subsided for the time being. That problem will come back later but now on to the hard drive. I have two hard drives in SATA III a SSD for the OS and a 7200 RPM. Both of them showed up in not only BIOS but also in device manager. When I viewed the 7200 RPM in Device manager it showed it was working fine with up to date drivers yet when I tried to partition it, it would not register. This is when I tried to boot Windows 7 from DVD in an attempt to partition that way. Well it went straight to the install screen along with the return of the hang ups. I restarted a few times tried to do the repair feature which also resulted in the same hang ups. I decided to give it some time again and when I came back I was able to get into Windows and remain for a good two hours until suddenly my computer started to go extremely slow to the point it would take roughly 3 or 4 minutes just to load up My Computer. During this time I had a crash where the screen went multicolored in a bunch of little lines to a loading screen for Asus Express gate which is a something of a pre-loading screen to the BIOS. After the crash the computer was very sluggish and would now only register the 7200 HD and not the SSD. It was slow throughout the entire boot process up until the point it said it could not find a suitable boot location. I once again let it sit and when I came back the SSD was registering again but the boot process was still EXTREMELY slow. Which leads me to here I apologize for the wall of text and that I am requesting help in the form of a story. I would GREATLY appreciate any input or insight into any of my problems. Even if it is a referral to another site so that I could ask there as well. I thank you for your time!


The specs

CPU - Intel Core i7-950 Bloomfield 3.06GHz
Motherboard - ASUS P6X58D Premium LGA 1366
RAM - Mushkin Enhanced Redline 6GB (3 x 2GB) 12 Gigs total All timings are set to the advertised.
CPU cooler - Prolimatech Megahalems and (Push/Pull) 2x Noctua NF-P12-1300
Video Card - SAPPHIRE 100280SR Radeon HD 5970 (Hemlock) 2GB
Power Supply - CORSAIR HX Series CMPSU-1000HX 1000W
Hard drive - Crucial RealSSD C300 CTFDDAC064MAG-1G1 2.5" 64GB SATA III and Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s
Operating System - Win 7 Home Premium 64bit
Case - COOLER MASTER HAF 932 RC-932-KKN1-GP Black Steel
Logitech G15, Logitech Mic, and Logitech MX518

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Homebuilt system Expert

You should monitor your temps. It seems like you may have some sort of overheating issue but can't be too sure. The problem could also be a bad drive or drive controllers (mobo). It could also be a defective/failing GPU causing all the trouble.

like kureme said it might be an overheating problem did you oc you gpu at all via bios and or is there thermal paste on the gpu still good.i would suggest buying some artic silver and laping it with that.and also try resetting the bios and also updating them if not already done.

Thank you for your responses.

*update* The HD issue is resolved and I took your advice on the monitoring the temperatures and I noticed my I7 is running extremely hot at idle. It is running about 70C Idle with my video card at about 76 C idle. I checked to make sure all my fans are working and they are. I tired to run prime95 but couldn't get the blend stress test to actually start.

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Homebuilt system Expert

Those temps aren't normal unless you are overclocking them to the max. Make sure all your drivers are up to date and you are running the most recent non-beta version of bios for your mobo.

I was able to update the BIOS via Asus updater and am still getting those problems from the video card. The high temperature was from choosing XMF profile for my Mushkin memory and was causing the voltage for my CPU to go way up I guess. I can't spend more than 5 minutes in BIOS before the issue with the video card kicks in by overheating itself to the point of hardware failure. Other than the memory which is rated specifically for 1600 Mhz I have nothing overclocked(I've had to leave my memory at 1033Mhz to maintain reasonable idle CPU temps). So in summation I have the CPU down to 40C idle which seems to be high for how much cooling I have and the video card still idles mid 70s to mid 80s. I really should not have gotten a board with so many overclocking options as I have NO idea what most of the options do.

Ahemm, have you not tried loading system defaults from the bios, then go in and turn off anything that you do not need/use, do not worry about the overclocking options, those you will pickup on as time goes by, get your system running first, get to know what is what, and go from there, nobody is born ready to overclock, it is mostly trial and error, lots of errors, that's how humans learn..:) 

Of Course I reset to defaults but that doesn't stop the lock up whilst in BIOS. I've been scouring the internet for known issues with this all I could find is the card use to have problems with something called cold booting,
Homebuilt system Expert

Try undervolting your GPU a bit and see if that fixes it.

Alternately, if you have another GPU laying around, try using that one for a while and see if it overheats or not. If it runs smoothly and doesn't lock up, you may have a defective GPU.

I could of sworn I stuck my finger in the GPU when I was first building and I could feel it spinning but I recently tried again and found it doing nothing. I tested it again because I didn't hear a thing and after reading everyone saying the 5970 is load as hell I figure it had to be the culprit. Now I just need to figure out why my Mushkin in XMP profile is causing my CPU idle temp to be 70C. I've read plenty of people just switching the profile to XMP and it working beautifully. No Mushkin Redline are not on my Motherboards compatibility list:-(.
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