W7 - Explorer crashes and "not quite there" HDD's

[EricKei]

Ztats:

Win7Pro 64bit OEM - recent reinstall after a nuke n pave, fully updated, has AV & AS installed, scanned weekly or so. System be clean
Core 2 Duo Clarkdale ~2.9 ghz, does the job
8 gigs DDR3 SDRAM
GeForce GTX 660 video (requires 450W PSU)
750W Power supply


Drives:

SATA-2 or 3? - Boot (notebook size) - 128gb SSD
IDE (standard size) - 320gb x2 (~5 years old)
SATA DVD drive - completely unplugged, as it's on its way out, but I don't have a slot cover for it, so it's just taking up space.
SATA-1 (standard size) - 1tb, ~4 years old
SATA-1 or -2 (notebook drive) - 500gb (from a ps3 - only there so I can try to recover some old files off of it. Did you know that dropping a HDD into a different PS3 from the one it's linked to automatically wipes the entire drive? I didn't! >_<) - will either go into my next replacement ps3 (#3 at this point) or be reformatted and used as an external backup

Issues:

Whenever I try to right-click on any hard drive in Windows Explorer, Explorer itself promptly crashes and must be restarted. Started doing this in the past 2 months or so. Possibly related to the second issue:

Not all the time, but more often than not, not all of my HD's will be properly recognized by the system. They appear in Explorer, but with no info aside from the drive letter and name -- no space remaining bar, and double-clicking does nothing. Once in a very long while, a drive or three won't show up at all -- but that's the BIOS hiccuping, and a quick reboot fixes that.

I'm thinking that maybe I'm simply overwhelming the PSU -- I can take out the PS3 drive if needed. No other apparent issues caused. Heat has not been an issue. Any thoughts?

Note that I am planning to upgrade the whole schmeer in a few months, if and when I can -- newer (read: under $200 each) mobo/CPU, PSU (all circa 2010), bringing over the boot drive, the SATA drive(s), and the video card -- possibly the RAM and the case itself. I can always repurpose the old hardware as a media server or something.

[prjkt]

If it's any of the drives that causes that issue, your chipset might be failing....

If, however, it's your PSU that's the issue, it might no longer be putting out full power, or simply overloaded...

The following procedure may take a while:

Try removing all drives but your boot disk, opening it in explorer.

Then add each disk drive one by one until you see the failure again.

The other two possibilities I can think of that might cause your issue are;

Corrupted windows instal/damaged boot diskl (do you have a backup image?)

One (or more) of your drives might have an issue that's affecting the whole system... In the past I've had similar issues with laptop drives giving desktop machines trouble, but that was back in the IDE days, however your PS3 drive *MAY* have formatting issues that's affecting the SATA chipset... Do you have a USB external enclosure to try?

[EricKei]

Actually, I ordered an enclosure over the weekend for just that reason Should be here soon.

Thanks! I'll try things out when I have more time closer to the weekend.

Winstall -- I have an ISO on a flash drive -- Prior to w8's release, MS had legal, downloadable ISO's available at exactly one domain other than their own (still needed a legit keycode to install, of course), and my ISO is one of those. My only issue is that my keycode is an OEM version I bought from MS; unsure if it'll allow me to reinstall, even on the exact same hardware. I may have no choice but to try at some point. I always *meant* to make a ghost of the initial install (after all updates but prior to anything else), but...x.x

[Arcus]

I know the site you are talking about. It's where I got copies of windows for the computers people give me without the disks. OEM keys have worked just fine for me with the downloaded versions. Some of the laptops I've rebuilt ran better with the downloaded copies rather than the factory disk due to the bloatware the manufacturers like to add.

[Buzzard]

The SSD is likely fine. No moving parts helps us there, as well as how that type of drive is supposed to handle things when bits start failing. (The drive just gets a little smaller in capacity as components burn out)

The IDE and SATA HDDs can have all kinds of frickin fun issues. As sectors become unusable, there's a small cache of 'remapable' sectors at the end that can be used to replace the bad. Downside: Automatic handling... yeah, about that.
There are utilities out there that can force the remap. I just can't remember the last one I used, sadly.

Again for the HDDs, there's also physical failure of moving parts. Drive motors die, spaz, and get buggy as hell. Noises and clicks that weren't there before are un-good signs. Drives stopping and restarting their spin: Grab your data quick.
Theoretically, worn/broken drives could be repaired, but cost/benefit usually indicates you now have a fancy paperweight. (I've got plenty)


As to the power supply: Nifty. You *should* have enough power, even with that monster load from the graphics card. Also, graphics card power usage varies with how hard it's working. Web surfing and movies are easy load. Latest super game with ULTRA graphics at max... yup, that whirring sound you hear outside is the electric meter. (Your whole setup at full load is less than a 1000 watt heater)

Hope the fix is an easy one for ya.

[EricKei]

Yeh, I've lost a drive or two in the past. One back in the 90's taught me a painful lesson about backing up my data

As an aside - I ran sfc /scannow - no errors found. Prob gonna do chkdsk this weekend once I have that enclosure in.