Issues with Secondary HD and CD-Rom Disappearing

[ZOMBGiEF]

Hello, I have been having a whole boat load of issues with my rig lately. I am currently running Win 7 Home 64-Bit, my OS is installed on a Samsung SSD 840 Series, my motherboard is an ASUS Sabertooth P67. I have a 500GB Hitachi HD as a secondary drive for my junk programs and media files.

The issue started about a month ago. In this order:

-I began having overheating problems, I opened up the computer and cleaned it out nice an neat, cleaning off the old thermal paste from the CPU and applying a fresh coat, I also cleaned out the heat sync, leaving it virtually dust free and spotless. The overheating problems stopped completely after this.

-Windows began having a really long boot up problem that occurred primarily when I rebooted my machine for any reason, it would just stall on the "Starting Windows" screen with the logo animation constantly looping, sometimes if I was lucky, 10 minutes later it would boot in. I would normally just get angry at this point, shut down and give the computer an hour or so, come back and everything would boot fine. Booting up in Safe Mode didn't seem to do anything, I would just freeze up loading different files. I cleaned up my boot order to only the essential stuff but it hasn't helped, I still get this, in fact I got it this evening which prompted this post.

Additionally, my secondary drive along with my CD-Rom will vanish randomly after my computer has been on for a few hours. For example, in the morning I will wake up and boot up, everything running fine, no issues. I can game on the computer pretty much all morning and all afternoon but out of the blue I will begin to get error messages such as my Drop box folder vanishing (i have it set to a folder on my secondary drive) If I reboot, my bios will detect all of them but after breaking through the Windows Boot up crap, they don't show up in Windows.

So far I have replaced all the SATA cables to brand new ones, I have also tried different ports. I don't know if this is a Windows problem, a Motherboard problem, or what. It's very frustrating and before I dump some money on new parts I'd like to get to the bottom of it.

One thing to know is both of these problems seem to happen at the same time...My HD will vanish then I will get the boot up problem or vice versa. I also noticed that the last series of Windows Updates won't seem to install, basically every time I shut down it says "installing update 1 of 1"

Any help and advice is much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

-

 

[bobafetthotmail]

Hmmm... could be PSU failure. Can you tell the PSU brand and specs? If it's a cheapo one (easily spotted by anyone here if you post the specs) it's almost guaranteed to be your culprit. If not, then it remains a likely candidate.

 

[ZOMBGiEF]

Hmmm... could be PSU failure. Can you tell the PSU brand and specs? If it's a cheapo one (easily spotted by anyone here if you post the specs) it's almost guaranteed to be your culprit. If not, then it remains a likely candidate.

Coolmax V600

COOLMAX V-600 600W ATX12V version 2.2 Power Supply - Newegg.com

I never realized how badly reviewed it actually was, never bothered to check. I built this rig in 2011 and I've never had problems with it up until this point.

 

[bobafetthotmail]

Oh boy, Coolmax is a bad brand. And that is definitely a cheapo unit (even on newegg there are at least 5 feedbacks where the thing failed within a year). Good 600W ones cost twice as much.
PSUs are usually the component most people skimp on, but are rather critical, just as your CPU or GPU.

A good place to look for your next PSU would be professional hardware reviewers (that have the equipment to see if it holds up), for example, Hardware Secrets. From there you can choose another PSU of around the same wattage with a good review.
Yes, it will cost you a bit more than 30 bucks but it will probably outlast the rig it is in. You can check if you really need 600W or you can do well with a smaller unit by using this PSU calculator.
If you have no dedicated graphic card for example, I doubt you need more than 450W.

 

[ZOMBGiEF]

Oh boy, Coolmax is a bad brand. And that is definitely a cheapo unit (even on newegg there are at least 5 feedbacks where the thing failed within a year). Good 600W ones cost twice as much.
PSUs are usually the component most people skimp on, but are rather critical, just as your CPU or GPU.

A good place to look for your next PSU would be professional hardware reviewers (that have the equipment to see if it holds up), for example, Hardware Secrets. From there you can choose another PSU of around the same wattage with a good review.
Yes, it will cost you a bit more than 30 bucks but it will probably outlast the rig it is in. You can check if you really need 600W or you can do well with a smaller unit by using this PSU calculator.
If you have no dedicated graphic card for example, I doubt you need more than 450W.

Put a new PSU in, went with a CoolerMaster and everything has been running smooth. Seems like you were right and the crappy PSU was the problem. Thanks for the help.