All new hardware and it wont work! Help PLEASE!

[smallfrycel]

Gigabyte MA-770T-UD3 Motherboard, Revision 1.5
AMD Phenom II X6 1075T CPU with stock cooler (retail)
8GB (2x4GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3 sticks in DDR3 slots 0-1)
ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB video card (PCI-E)
Antec Earthwatts 650Watt PSU
1 500 GB SATA Seagate HD (Windows Boot Drive)
1 650 GB SATA Western Digital HD
1 250 GB IDE Seagate HD (About to be replaced once backed up)
1 Sony SATA DVD-RW
Antec P180 case with back fan and top fan running for extra cooling
Sound and LAN are onboard the Gigabyte motherboard (RealTek)

I've disconnected all drives apart from the 500GB SATA Seagate and the 250GB IDE Seagate and switched the SATA cable. Prior to doing this the bootmgr would suddenly go missing from the Windows drive when powered down and back up again. Since disconnecting the 650GB WD HD it hasn't repeated this process and has been fully shut down and powered up 3-4 times without a problem.

Also since removing the SATA cable that wasn't actually connected to a drive and was merely there for later convenience I haven't had the blue screen of death at all. For instance right now it has been running for over 5 hours with no problems.

I don't see how the WD HD would be corrupting the bootmgr though? Any advice on how to solve that would be good.

Thanks guys ( boyfriend of smallfry lol)

[absic]

Hi there,

well the only thing that jumps out at me about your specs is the IDE HDD as sometimes running IDE and SATA drives at the same time can cause a problem. I would suggest backing up the IDE drive as soon as possible and removing it from the system.

The problem with the missing BOOT MGR is most probably due to your reconfiguring the system HDD's when you have been playing with the SATA cables rather than the WD drive but, as a matter of interest what model is the WD 650 GB Hard drive? I'm not aware of any specific problems but it could be that the drive needs a firmware update.

If you are confident that the RAM Modules are fine then you could try them in slots 3&4 rather than 1&2 and see if that makes a difference. It shouldn't really but we are talking about a computer here.

[smallfrycel]

Hi again,

The only time I've modified the SATA setup is when I took that one spare (not attached to a HD or DVD drive etc) out of the board, which for some bizarre reason has stopped the BSOD not less or equal error entirely. When it was shut down and powered back up again, nothing had changed hardware wise but the bootmgr had gone missing on the main drive. Windows Recovery (Windows 7) allowed me to fix that and it was all fine again until the next complete shut down and power up.

As I say, with the 650GB WD hard drive unattached the problem hasn't resurfaced and it has been shut down quite a few times since. I severely doubt there's a fault with the WD drive as it's only 2 years (at best) old while the Seagate IDE drive is at least 5 years old. I have every intention of backing up the data on that drive and moving to a complete SATA setup in the v.near future as the vibrations from the IDE drive are too annoying, lol.

PS : The Western Digital drive is a Caviar Blue.

[absic]

Hi again,

if you installed the OS with several hard drives installed you can find that the BOOT MGR is actually put on a different drive to the one you would expect it to go on ie the C:/ drive. It is always best to Install the OS with only one Hard drive installed as this will prevent anything being written where it shouldn't be, especially if you are installing Windows.

The fact that the BSOD's have stopped since removing this drive could point to it being faulty or to a problem with the original install of Windows Vista. Although your WD 650GB HDD is only 2 years old doesn't mean it can't be playing up. Have you tried running the WD Lifeguard Diagnostic software ( you can download from here: http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=606&lang=en ) to check that your HDD is OK?

[smallfrycel]

The BSOD stopped appearing after disconnecting a cable that was attached to the motherboard but NOT attached to any drives. On removing that SATA cable the blue screen completely stopped occuring and the only problem has been this with the bootmgr. At no stage did removing a connected hard drive stop the BSOD from occuring.

Last night I disconnected all drives, used the Windows Recovery system to recreate the bootmgr and booted into Windows. I then plugged the hard drives back in and so far it has booted up fine without corrupting the Bootmgr after several shut down Windows and power cycles of the machine. For some reason the problems seem to have utterly vanished.  

I'll try the WD software just to be double sure about that drive though.

PS: This is a Windows 7 install, though fundamentally similar to Windows Vista I need to mention that just so everyone is on the same page.

[stevevnicks]

just change the ram mate thats your best bet