Are a HDD failure and a blue tinted screen linked (along with multiple other issues)?

Question

I've been dealing with a sporatically malfunctioning computer since I custom built it two years ago. Since last year, the motherboard, video card, powersupply, and harddrive have all been replaced. I replaced the first WD HD due to the fact that it disappeared in BIOS and could not be found with either linux or ubuntu boot disks. The motherboard had a bunch of problems, including boot issues that seemed to be a problem but before I was sure, we got a nice powersurge during a lightning storm and afterward no longer had a network card working. After these replacements, the problem has only changed shape, but not really gone away.

I torrent a lot. Not a huge amount of stuff, but enough that it could be a problem if that sort of thing can cause problems. I download at max a few gigs a month, but sometimes I upload for a few days straight. I rarely shut the PC down. I only play one relatively low demand MMO on it, and really only use it to watch tv shows from DVDs or my HD - and sometimes video editing with windows movie maker.

Recently (in the past year), it has been getting disk read errors. Usually I fight with them until it spends a few days refusing to boot. I reformat with a slightly modified version of windows xp and the problem goes away. ...except the disk boot errors started getting closer together. And took longer to go away. Also, sometimes the desktop would just lag like a 8 year old pc running windows 95 - and sometimes also freeze so I'd have to reboot.

Recently, the new HD (still western digital, different model) has been vanishing from BIOS again. I tried to run check disk after three boot failures and a bluescreen of death (that's new. Got a 0x00000077, 0xC0000185, and 0x00A00000). I used the repair console in a copy of windows xp that came with my laptop, only to have it tell me that the C: drive was missing, or there were nonrecoverable errors.

After an unsuccessful boot during which it told me that I had no hd, it ran the checkdisk even though it never confirmed that it could. When it got to the desktop, it froze again after I tried to open internet explorer, with numlock and caps lock not registering on the keyboard, nothing changing, but the mouse still moving around.
I rebooted, and suddenly my second monitor (different model from my primary, kinda old) gets a blue tint to it.
Then the HD vanished again.
Then it booted to the desktop and acted like nothing had happened.

Temperatures look fine on the desktop, and I ran memtest, and tested 500 mb of memory. It was using half my CPU. Running multiple memtests just made my computer hate me. And then crash.
I have never updated any type of firmware, but I keep my graphics card drivers up to date, and have to update a ton of other drivers after each reboot. I don't remember which ones offhand.

I've read quite a few forums, all of which suggest the problem lies in most of the things I've changed or checked (motherboard, memory, if cables are plugged in, video card, power supply). I thought about changing the sata cable to see if that was the issue, but then the blue tint happened, and it makes me think that either I'm really unlucky and a ton of stuff happened at once, or something important isn't working

I keep things backed up, because I'm used to reformatting several times a month. I've never had a problem with my 5 year old Dell laptop (had the same computer use habits when I used it as a primary computer for three years, now its a secondary computer), though, but I keep getting crazy errors on my desktop since I got it. And I mean crazy. Nobody yet has managed to properly fix any of the situations I've come up with. Anyway, it means that I do not have many things on the HD of my pc (so probably not something to do with fragments or whatever), and that salvaging information won't be an issue.

Any thoughts?

Motherboard : Gigabyte 770 ATX AMD
Video Card: Radeon HD4670, running dual monitors with it
Harddrive: Western Digital Caviar Blue (WD6400AAKS) Sata HD
2x 1gb ram sticks
AMD dual core processor

Answer 1

I had a similar issue with a Western Digital HD that I used to have on my rig. It would constantly create bad sectors and I would have to reformat my system just to get it working again. Sometimes I could go a couple months without any problems, and sometimes just a week. Then one day I realized that I must have accidentally connected both a SATA and a molex connector to it during the build (I was somewhat inexperienced at the time). However, I was never actually able to confirm that was the issue as I haven't used it since. Unlikely as it is, you have have done the same thing and that might possibly be the issue. If that doesn't work, it may just be a manufacturer issue.



As far as the HD vanishing entirely, you could try upgrading the BIOS if it isn't already, resetting the BIOS settings, making sure the connectors are snug, or trying a different power connector. If you finally do get it do appear again, but still have issues, the only thing I can suggest would be to run Check/Scandisk or a diagnostic tool from the WD website to keep the sectors clean, and possibly CCleaner to fix registry errors, as that may also be part of the problem.



You should also read the names of the BSoDs when they occur and do a google search to see if you can find out any more info.



Sorry I can't help with the tinted screen issue but it might be related to the HD issue also.



Good luck!

Answer 2

HDD problems are hard to deal with because their are alot of things that can go wrong with them. When you said that the BIOS wasn't picking up your HDD on boot up i immediately though of a bad motherboard. However because i don't have the computer sitting in front of me their is only so much i can say. Bring it in to your local computer repair shop and ask them to do diagnosis on it. They'll look at the problem, then get back to you with it. I'm saying its a bad motherboard but that's only a guess. If you've invested alot of time and money into this computer check it out. diagnosis usually cost around 40-50 bucks, and depending on what it is (a hardware problem or something with the BIOS) you'll go from their

Answer 3

That's what happened to my computer. It probably has a virus from downloading too many applications. Try going to the start menu on the bottom left of your computer screen then at the bottom of the start menu click on all programs. Right click on all of the applications and click delete. That's how the blue tint went away on my computer.