Please 
Just sanity-checking my logic here.
So, have a 6-7 year old build, Gigabyte Z77 DH3, i5 etc. Running Windows 7.
Recently, came back from work, turned it on, attempted to do more work (Excel... ugh) and it locked up, hard. Had to pull power.
On reboot... Windows can't load. Error in winload.exe. Eeek. I went thru a bunch of steps, including rerbuilding BCD, and I eventually managed to get it to boot Windows. Couple of minutes in.. bluescreen, hard boot required, back to square one. Winload.exe is corrupt, etc.
This PC also has other Windows installs. On separate drives. Two Win 7, one Win XP. So I tried rebooting into those other OSs. Same deal, Some kinda problem with the bootloader.
So, three OSs and three drives dead, in the space of an hour?
I'm thinking, something on the mobo has died. IO controller chip, whatever. It's a Gigabyte ultra durability. Oh the irony.
Does that make sense to you guys/gals? I stuck the main OS drive in a caddy to access it on a laptop, and after a couple of minutes it became unreadable. I tried the powercycle trick, and no joy. I can read the data drive that was in the dead PC, but the OS drives... no.
On that PC, I have one course of action left: I have a spare SSD, so I could try reinstalling Windows, but I don't really want to brick a rand new SSD if it's something fundamental on the mobo that has failed.
What do you think? Is it new mobo time? *especially painful because that also means new CPU and RAM...)
Thx
abc
Just sanity-checking my logic here.
So, have a 6-7 year old build, Gigabyte Z77 DH3, i5 etc. Running Windows 7.
Recently, came back from work, turned it on, attempted to do more work (Excel... ugh) and it locked up, hard. Had to pull power.
On reboot... Windows can't load. Error in winload.exe. Eeek. I went thru a bunch of steps, including rerbuilding BCD, and I eventually managed to get it to boot Windows. Couple of minutes in.. bluescreen, hard boot required, back to square one. Winload.exe is corrupt, etc.
This PC also has other Windows installs. On separate drives. Two Win 7, one Win XP. So I tried rebooting into those other OSs. Same deal, Some kinda problem with the bootloader.
So, three OSs and three drives dead, in the space of an hour?
I'm thinking, something on the mobo has died. IO controller chip, whatever. It's a Gigabyte ultra durability. Oh the irony.
Does that make sense to you guys/gals? I stuck the main OS drive in a caddy to access it on a laptop, and after a couple of minutes it became unreadable. I tried the powercycle trick, and no joy. I can read the data drive that was in the dead PC, but the OS drives... no.
On that PC, I have one course of action left: I have a spare SSD, so I could try reinstalling Windows, but I don't really want to brick a rand new SSD if it's something fundamental on the mobo that has failed.
What do you think? Is it new mobo time? *especially painful because that also means new CPU and RAM...)
Thx
abc