Windows 7 How to self diagnose a problem is it HARDWARE or SOFTWARE? SSD issues with windows 7?

stanislaw lem

New Member
Joined
May 21, 2011
Hello I'm having issues with my desktop shutting itself down and giving 2 different errors DISK BOOT FAILURE and BOOTMGR is MISSING I've been trying to figure out the problem for a while suspecting the SSD issues at first and no just generally suspecting that it could be anything in my entire PC. I'd like to know if there are any troubleshooting diagnostics I can run to find out whats going wrong?

What follows is the whole story, you can read on if you think you can help me out with finding the problem of these errors or skip to my theories of what went wrong and post with any helpful information regarding self diagnostics

---->>

I installed an OCZ SSD as part of a brand new desktop build about 5 months ago everything worked perfectly fine, with an X58A-UD3r gigabyte motherboard and intel core i7 processor, with 6GB of RAM. The ssd being used as the boot drive and a samsung HDD 1TB used as the true storage.

About 3 months ago I noticed that occasionally the computer would turn its self off randomly just straight to black screen, it didn't seem to be at times when I had alot of programs open or using alot of cpu it just happened sporadically which I ignored at first, then it started to give an error BOOT DISK ERROR which I googled and found several fixes for ssd problems with windows 7, I looked into making the ssd more detectable with windows 7 and making sure that it was plugged into a sata as master rather than slave, and also that in the BIOS it was set as the primary boot drive but the problems didn't go away and eventually the computer would last about 5 - 10 minutes after being turned on before it went black screen and died, so I managed to log in and back up my ssd to the hdd and install windows on the hdd and boot from that which i tried for a week and it seemed to run fine so I formatted the ssd and the hdd and did a fresh install of windows 7 on the ssd this time making sure all the settings for it to detect ssd's were in place from the beginning which seemed to work fine for a few weeks but now I've been getting the same errors with the same frequency but with another one added as well - DISK BOOT FAILURE as well as BOOTMGR is MISSING the latter error seems to be over come by selecting to boot from the ssd even though it is set as the main boot drive.
---->>


What I'd like to know is how can I test which part of my PC is going wrong as I can think of tonnes of theories but with no real idea how to test them ???

Here are a few theories/queries -

-the ssd is faulty and keeps crashing the system
-windows is not properly adjusting to there being an ssd boot drive and a hdd storage and keeps attempting to boot from the hdd or is itself faulty
-There is a fault with another component of my desktop? motherboard? Power source (its 500W, I did calculate for all the parts but how can i tell if something is using more than its supposed to?) ? processor?
If any one could help provide some insight into diagnosing the problem that would be a great help

Thanking you in advance
Lem x
 
looks to me that your SSD is really the culprit.
I would try it with other computer or test it as an external HDD.
 
Hi I've tried to reinstall windows 7 onto the HDD but now it seems unable to do so. The start up boot sector seems to be messed up or confused, I'm really confused now! I put in linux ubuntu to see if I could access the drives and I can see all the files of the HDD but the ssd says 'missing boot sectors' suggesting I run CHKDSK /F which I did in windows safe mode cmd prompt but this seemed to fail as much as trying windows recorvery disc!!!!!!!!!!

I've no clue what to try next, I think the boot sector of the ssd must be set up incorrectly and then corrupted, my next step is to un plug the ssd and see if that helps installing windows on the hdd.

I need other suggestions to fix the boot MGR please

thanks
 
Back
Top Bottom