Hi,
I recently built my first PC as a retirement present to myself and thoroughly enjoyed the experience up until a few days ago.
My set-up is...
- Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H
- AMD Phenon 2 X6 1090T 3.2MHz Black Edition with AMD standard cooler
- Coolermaster Elite 430 case with 5 fans
- MSI GTX 460 Cyclone
- Corsair Gold 650W PSU
- 4GB Corsair DDR3 1333MHz RAM
- 2 x Samsung HD103SJ SATA Spin Point 3 1TB Hard Drives
- Samsung SH-S223C DVD Re-Writer
- LG 21.5 LED 2ms Display
- Windows 7 running in 64 bit config.
Everything worked well from first set-up and I even managed to set up the hard drives in RAID 1 mirrored configuration. I have run AVAST anti-Virus from the start and have had no attacks that I'm aware of. About 10 days ago, I got an error message from Windows 7 on start up and chose the safe start and inbuilt diagnostics to sort the issue. The PC booted OK but when I looked for the root cause I noticed that my hard drive had mutated from a single 'C' to C,D,E & F! - it seemed that the first two drives held mirror images of my data and the last two had different sytem files for Windows 7.
From that point on I was asked to choose between 'Windows 7' (usually led to start up issues) or another variant titled Windows 7 recovered (not the exact wording but along those lines). The latter booted the PC OK and all was well apart from the multi drives. With the owners manual in hand, I went about trying to restore the RAID 1 config in the BIOS. It was clear that some of the original RAID settings had changes without my input. Initially I ended up with three drives showing - C,D & E! Only the latter seemed to have an operating system. I made further changes I thought were needed and was rewarded with just two drives now in RAID 1 format.
I got all sorts of error messages from Windows 7 and went back into the BIOS a number of times. In the end I decided to re-install Windows as it was likely that there was some conflict in the two version of the operating system that were previously on the drives. Because of the changes to the BIOS, I decided to select on the F key 'Optimised' setting choices shown on the BIOS screens. I then saved the settings and re-booted.
During the windows install I was asked the usual keyboard choice and country questions. I couldn't select anything as both my mouse and keyboard weren't working. I tried to get into the BIOS, but again could select anything. Tried Windows 7 repair disc, Gigabyte system disc and Windows 7 install disc. Nothing would respond to the keyboard / mouse. After studying the manual, I tried taking out the battery to reset the CMOS. That worked and brought up a new screen, however the inputs didn't work again and it defaulted back a saved version. I tried using a PS2 coverter for my USB mouse without success. After 8 hours I don't know how to get out of the puzzle?
Any help would be gratefully received.
Cheers