System Specs:
Dual boot system (win 10 home x64/win 10 pro x64) on 128 G SSD
Motherboard: Gigabyte 970A-DS3P
CPU: AMD FX-8350
Ram: 32G
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GT 610 internal graphics card
1x SSD data drive 1TB
2x sata data drive 1TB/4TB
I'm having trouble some issues on my PC which (I think?) are related to faulty hardware/or firmware- most likely the motherboard and I was hoping for some help with checking if this diagnosis is correct.
I've been having some long term problems – PC accasionally (every month or so) stops booting to windows. I tried diagnosing this when it first started but decided it happened infrequently enough to just use clonezilla system images to restore each time. The front two USB3 ports from the motherboard also often stop working after a restart, only being useable again after a shutdown, but again after some reseach just lived with it as I couldn't find a fix online.
More recently I've had problems with the computer freezing for about 20seconds (mouse still moveable) -usually, but not exclusively around start up which was accompanied by error I.D. codes in event viewer and in the notes described as relating to faulty hardware. The last time my computer failed to boot I restored to a recent system image and when I booted to my main OS successfully was informed that 'the recycle bin on drive G: (one of my 3 data drives) is corrupted would you like to empty the recycle bin'
I tried opening two doc. files on the drive in question. One opened but the writing was corrupted and the other had access denied. This was also accompanied by the 'the recycle bin on drive G: is corrupted would you like to empty the recycle bin' message again.
I closed the computer (it was very late) and when I next booted to windows I noticed there were 3 folders inside the G: drive recycle bin each from a different date which contained the same files.
I deleted the two oldest files manually and the message, 'the recycle bin on drive G: is corrupted would you like to empty the recycle bin' ceased. I checked for viruses with Bit defender/Malwarebytes (no threats detected), the disc appeared fine in my computer/speccy/device manager. I did a restart and bios informed me it was repairing disks C:, F: (Both OS partitions) and G: Back in windows all the data on the G; drive appeared fine apart from the two files I had opened.
I gave myself back privalidges to open the the access denied file and copied the corrupted file back from a backup. Things seemed fine. At next boot bios informed me it was repairing G: again and once booted the G: drive in My Computer had data capacity/usage info missing and clicking on the drive I got an 'access denied' message. I gave myself back access rights thought right click/properties/security etc... and succeeded in getting access to the drive however each folder/file needed me to repeat the same process for them as well to get access. Thinking it might be a corrupt system image I went back to an earlier image and whenever I tried to open files/folders on the drive they would dissapear and I'd be left with a message that said the folder/files doesn't exist. 99% of my data is backed up and so I decided to try deleting the partition to recreate one and copy my data back. I did this but then also noticed that a second data drive (SSD 1TB) which has about 600G of data was also showing problems. In My Computer it still showed as having 600G amount of data used but when I clicked on the drive no files showed. Changing settings for show/hide hidden folders didn't make any difference. I checked the drive through paragon recovery media builder to if it was just the OS that couldn't see the files/folders. In the file tranfer wizard no files showed up on the drive. However in the undelete partition section of the program the drive showed up as a partition with the correct amount of data. Back in windows I tried to run an error check/chkdsk on the drive, it found errors and repaired them – if helpful I can post the full report tomorrow- but afterwards like the other drive the whole drive became access denied.
Because lots of my earlier -ongoing- problems seemed to be hardware related the fact that the problems seem to be related to more than one disk drive and remained constant over different system images it seems likely to me that it might be a problem with the motherboard. I'm still considering a fresh install of windows, flashing the bios or buying a new motherboard. But I don't want to buy a new motherboard if that isn't the problem. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Sam
