This issue has beaten me completely and is without doubt the strangest, weirdest, most annoying computer issue that has happened to me since I first got interested in PC's.
I'll try to be as brief as possible but to explain the hoops I've jumped through, and what the problem is exactly, might take a bit of typing.
Probably the best place to start is with my system specs:
OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit SP1
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P
CPU: AMD FX-8320E
Memory: 24GB consisting of 2 x Kingston 8192 MBytes DDR3 running as Dual Channel, plus 1 x Team Group 8192 MBytes DDR3
Graphics: 2GB Nvidia GeForce GT730 (set up for dual monitor)
HDD's (where the real crux is)...
Currently I have 3 installed but this time last week I had 4, for reasons that will become clear I (probably wrongly) removed one as defective.
Crucial CT250BX1 250GB SSD
WD Blue 1TB WD10EZEX
Samsung 1TB HD103SJ
The one that i removed as faulty today: WD 500GB Caviar Blue WD500AAKS
The rest of the specs are likely irrelevant so I won't list them, but will if requested.
I'll come to the issue in a second but a bit on the background as to what led me here in the first place may be useful...
About a week or so ago my PC started to behave oddly just after the GUI loaded, namely the GUI would appear and some but not all of the notification icons would appear, there was a delay of about a minute between half of them loading then suddenly the rest would all burst on screen.
During the delay the PC was totally non-responsive to anything I did but when the "pause" ended everything I clicked on would suddenly flash before my eyes.
At first I thought I had some sort of driver conflict or a corrupt programme but after disabling everything i could think of at startup the problem persisted, even in safe mode etc.
I next looked at my memory and ran checks on that but i kind of knew that was pointless because the only time the system stalled was right after the GUI loaded... it would run all day and night and no matter what i did i couldn't replicate the pause, except by rebooting.
In my mind that left one thing, i had an infection that my antimalware and antivirus software hadn't caught so i wasn't going to waste any more time on it and formatted my C drive...
This is when the real problems started!
As i usually do when i suspect my C drive is infected and I'm about to re-install Windows i like to disconnect all other drives to make sure my Windows install is clean and on the correct drive, so that's what i did.
After the install (and when I'd finally got Windows Update working, ffs Microsoft, get a grip of this will you!) i reconnected my drives one by one, rebooting in the process.... horror ensued after i connected the 500GB WD drive, it wouldn't boot, instead the system tried to get into the recovery environment.
The only way to stop that happening was to disconnect the drive so my logic told me there was some issue with that drive (rootkit, virus, MBR infection? I had no idea but ignoring it was likely a really bad idea) and that it needed to be formatted so that's what i did... formatted the drive and i booted into windows with no issues.
Thinking i was now good to go i repartitioned the WD 500GB drive and rebooted.... only for the system not to boot!!
The system was again trying to load the recovery console/environment (whatever it's actually called i don't know because it's never got there).
I get one of two messages every time, it's either (wait for it, I'm not done...):
"Reboot and select proper Boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key"
Or,
"Onboard sata controller disabled, reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key"
I tried every possible permutation to boot from the "proper boot device" using F12 etc but none of them worked.
I tried enabling and disabling the sata controller, rebooted until i couldn't reboot any more and the pc still wouldn't boot... i even loaded my Win7 disc but that just went into the loop earlier or said something along the lines of incorrect media or version...
At this point, convinced that the only logical reason nothing i was doing was working was because there was something i hadn't thought of so i slept in it... then it came to me, it must be the MBR on the HDD, it's the only thing that makes sense.
I woke up, formatted the drive again and set it as one partition, but it didn't work.
Convinced this has to have something to do with the UEFI bios and the basic mbr on the drive i took the drive out of my PC and connected it to my wifes PC that doesn't have a UEFI bios... formatted it into one partition, took it back to my PC and apart from selecting "Start Windows Normally" it booted straight away!
I thought I'd cracked it, it was a corrupt mbr after all, so i formatted the drive again on my pc and partitioned it... rebooted... and ffs... i was right back at square one!
Took the drive out my pc, plugged it into my wifes, formatted it with a single partion and it booted.
Took the drive out again, plugged it back into my wifes, partitioned it this time (2 partitions), plugged it into mine... wouldn't boot!!!
Faulty drive i thought so i downloaded DataLifeguard for Windows from WD and let it run overnight in enhanced mode... it passed every test... that's no guarantee of course but it does lean heavily in the direction it may not be the drive.
If you're still following this you probably have an idea of the issues I'm facing.... but it gets worse...
Along the road of what is above i accidently overwrote the first and last 1,000,000 bytes of the wrong WD drive with the WD software in an attempt to rule out once and for all the basic MBR on the WD 500GB drive as being the culprit.
I recovered almost all the data from the 1TB drive thanks to a piece of freeware called "Recuva" from Piriform (be aware of foistware)
After many more hours i let out a sigh and decided i should retire the 500GB drive to history so formatted the now empty WD 1TB drive and partitioned it.... only to be thrust right back into the position i was in with the 500GB drive... the PC won't boot with that drive installed if it's partitioned either!
There's something seriously wrong and i haven't a clue what it is, I'm having a hard time believing that a company the size of Gigabyte would allow they're BIOS's to have such a serious flaw that they would stop partitioning of a hard drive so i must be something glaringly obvious.... any ideas what that might be??
I could test on a third drive but I'm all out of space doing my own testing so simply put, I'm not going to.
For one drive to (allegedly, I now don't believe it has) fail after 7 years of use is one thing, but for another that isn't even a year old to fail replicating a simple partition process to that of the first is so far out of this world that not even Patty riding on top of a D'Kyr science vessel could explain it