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My computer has always had this problem but lately its gotten a bit more frequent. While running at seemingly random times the computer goes into a bluescreen and before it has a chance to make any sort of dump it reboots, I don't even get to see the bluescreen for that long, and yes I checked for a MEMORY.dmp in C:\windows (where it's supposed to put dumps) and found nothing, the systems event logs just show a 'general' error which caused a reboot, nothing specific.

After going into the reboot process it hangs in a section where it says it couldn't find a hard drive and that I should insert a hard disk to continue.

If I hit 'restart' on the PC it does the exact same thing giving me the same error about a missing hard drive and I should put one in to boot.

So i have to turn the computer off then back on for it to successfully boot. The system is Windows 7 with a Core i7 2600K an Asus P8P67 Pro mobo with an Antec 1000W PSU and an nVidia GTX590, it has 4 hard drives, one OCZ 120GB drive, two 2TB Samsung drives and a third 2TB drive but I can't remember the brand (might be Hitachi).

Any ideas?

meds
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    The very first thing for you to do is to disable "automatically restart" under Control Panel / System / Advanced system settings / Startup & recovery settings. – sawdust May 21 '12 at 00:54
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    "After going into the reboot process it hangs in a section where it says it couldn't find a hard drive and that I should insert a hard disk to continue." This sounds rather like a bad hard drive. Do you get any warnings if you use an utility such as the one recommended [here](http://superuser.com/questions/29240/how-can-i-read-my-hard-drives-smart-status-in-windows-7) to read the SMART data? – Renan May 21 '12 at 00:55
  • @sawdust forgot to mention automatic restart is disabled... – meds May 21 '12 at 00:58
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    @Renan I've always suspected it's a bad hard drive, I'll look into your link. Thanks! – meds May 21 '12 at 00:59
  • Same Problem i had, Just check your Processor Fan/SMPS Fan is working fine or not –  May 21 '12 at 02:07
  • If you want to capture the BSOD and can induce it with some certainty, then use the movie capability of a digital camera to record the sequence. – sawdust May 21 '12 at 03:48
  • @sawdust no luck, I tried my best to induce it all of last night, since I figured it's a hard disk problem I wrote a simple program that edited a file and saved it on the hard drive for it to crash but no luck. Soemtimes it BSODS when it's just idling, it's very bizarre. – meds May 21 '12 at 03:53

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Some more details on the drives would be nice, since there's a bug that causes BSODs, and affects specific sandforce controllers - specifically the sf-2200 series. Try updating the firmware of your SSD and see if it fixes it if its one of the affected models.

Journeyman Geek
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Run WhoCrashed which will (hopefully) inform you of which driver or software caused the problem. WhoCrashed is able to identify the source of the problem, even after you install it after the crash.

Other than that, make sure any non-critical periphial devices are unplugged and revert any hardware, software & driver changes you have made prior to the crashes beginning. You may want to try going back in time to a system restore point when your system was okay.

Jeff
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  • The sad part is the system was *never* ok, it has just gotten progressively worse which makes me suspect it's a hardware issue. – meds May 21 '12 at 00:59