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Windows hangs on startup screen, SSD related issues.
Hi,
I have encountered a rather unique problem and require some advice and/or help.
Earlier this week I built a machine for an office based company, everything went smoothly; the specs are below.
i5 4570
ASRock Z87-PRO4
SanDisk Ultra Plus 256GB SSD <--- The problem (?)
GTX 660
Barracuda 2TB HDD
8GB G.Skill Ripjaws RAM
Running Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
I installed some software they wanted me to install- including a pirated version of Lightroom (possibly containing a virus not 100% sure). They called me back a few days later telling me that the machine was broken, I looked into it and found that the machine would not boot up and would hang on the "starting windows screen" I tried using startup repair when prompted after I had restarted the computer, but it too would hang for a seemingly indefinite amount of time (Im talking like 5+ hours).
I googled around and started troubleshooting, finally reaching a conclusion that the 256 SSD I was booting off was either corrupt or broken or somehow ridden with viruses (not likely).
I took the SSD out and reinstalled windows onto the HDD- The company ended up reasonably happy.
I removed the problematic drive and took it home to try and restore or secure erase it by using it as a slave on my own computer. Something interesting occurred, my own computer would also hang on the "starting windows" screen, even though I wasn't booting off the drive, but rather just having it connected to my machine. This puts me in a peculiar situation as I cannot startup a machine with the drive attached to format the drive that is attached! ( I have also tried attaching it to 2 other machines, same problem )
My Problem:
Pretty much, "How on earth do I fix this" I'm pretty sure I can't format through BIOS and I dont have an external case for me to connect the SSD to a machine via USB
The SSD is under warranty and if I find that there is no solution I may be able to return it.
P.S I posted this under installation and setup, but am not 100% sure where the right place for this thread is, Maybe an admin could guide me in the right path.
Also any help is greatly appreciated, but I fully understand if no one replies and this thread ends up hanging like the startup screen I so greatly dislike
Thank you all,
Josh
Last edited by JoshHacko; 23 Sep 2013 at 06:04. Reason: spelling