Help me figure out what happend.

[reluttr]

Basically I was playing left 4 dead 2 on my windows 7 system when all of a sudden it locks up and the fans kick up in speed.

I notice that CTRL+ALT+DEL does not bring up the usual menu, so I do a forced power down and restart. However when the computer restarts I get a boot error, and after some investigation I find out that my system is not detecting the hard drive with my windows 7 installation.

So I pull my tower out, disconnect all the cables, and open up the case. Its pretty dusty so I blow it out with some canned air. After looking it over I don't find anything out of the ordinary wrong with the computer. No loose cables, no clogged fans, and the heat sink was warm "not hot".

After a while of thinking I decide to disconnect the sata cable leading to my main HDD and plug it into another available sata port on my Mother Board. Sure enough when I boot into my windows 7 install dvd it not only detects my windows 7 installation, it also fixes some boot issues.

So after resetting the boot order in BIOS I am able to get back into windows.



Does anyone know what could had caused this? Also by me having to move the sata cable to another port on my motherboard in order to get the motherboard to detect the hard drive, does this mean that the sata port my HDD was on no longer functions? If so, then what could had caused this.

This is seriously the first time I have ever encountered something like this in my life. I am hoping someone here can help me figure out what happened

 

[richc46]

Sounds like overheating
Using canned air may have helped
Download speccy and check temps

 

[reluttr]

I haven't really tested it yet "but will tomorrow when I get some more canned air". But do you think the sata port I had my hard drive originally plugged into will work again?

After looking at Speccy I see my GPU is running a bit hot "64-68 degree celcius under normal load" So there must be some dust trapped in the heatsink.

 

[Ivan the SoSo]

I haven't really tested it yet "but will tomorrow when I get some more canned air". But do you think the sata port I had my hard drive originally plugged into will work again?

After looking at Speccy I see my GPU is running a bit hot "64-68 degree celcius under normal load" So there must be some dust trapped in the heatsink.

Might got a extra sata drive to test with?

 

[reluttr]

K, just totally and completely cleaned out my system "seems there was quite a bit of buildup in the power supply", and I am happy to report the port is working again !

 

[richc46]

Good for you