Anyone got any fricking ideas?

My gaming rig has gone south. I build this computer about five years ago and it's wonderful. Recently splashed some cash and gave it a Styrix 980. And that required a new PSU so a CoolerMaster 650 costing about 130 went in! The HDD has always intermitently made a repetitive clunking noise (three or four times) which I've always taken as a sign of some bad head parking and intented to replace the HDD at some point. Recently I switched it on and the BIOS warned me that SMART was saying bad things... So I replaced the HDD with a fresh 4TB WD Blue. Transpires I was downgrading from a 7200 drive in the process but hey...

The PC would run using the old HDD but it was super slow- I took this as a sign that the HD was having to do serious amounts of remedial work to repair failing sectors.

Did a clone using the WD recommended software. When I switched it on I could get to the Windows 10 login screen then it started flashing like an impromty epilepsy test. Okay, you copy a knackered disk you probably get a knackered disk.

Decided to cut my loses, format the new disk and installed Windows 10 from fresh.

Trouble is now I'm getting all kinds of screwy new problems. Like my Wifi password (which I'm 100% certain I've typed in correct isn't working), when I try to rip a BluRay disk (which previously worked), it gets 50% through and then the program fails saying the hardware (BR drive) has gone unresponsive.

Could the HD failing have shagged up the SATA controller? Trying to decide whether to first just try replacing the SATA cables or splash for a new motherboard..... I find it hard to believe I've got two hardware failures and they're not connected. Of course it could just be bad connectors with me fricking around with the thing to swap the disks over.

All a bit annoying really.

Any bright ideas?

My plan is

1) Replace the SATA cables (cheap)
2) Try using the bluray via a SATA/USB converted on another computer and see if I can rip a disk (IE rule out BR drive failure)
3) Replace the MB

????

you dont say what motherboard it is. if its an old style one then resetting cmos values is a good start. also worth checking/ re-flashing/ updating 'bios'

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Trouble is now I'm getting all kinds of screwy new problems. Like my Wifi password (which I'm 100% certain I've typed in correct isn't working),

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It's V strange. Now the BR rip seems to be working fine. Perhaps it's a PSU issue. Strange thing is I can stress test it via the GPU and it works fine.... Hmmm. Certainly something to sleep on. Let's hope it's not the MOBO. It's a 1155 CPU (albeit it a flipping nice one) which means replacing just the motherboard would be a tad tricky....

The last time I had these sorts of errors it wasn't the controller that had gone south, it was the leads. Whoever designed the SATA specification needs to be taken out and shot... give me big bulky PATA connectors any day, with lots of surface area on the pins for a nice solid connection!!!

Anyway, I've now learned not to use the SATA leads that come with the drives. I bought a set of proper lockable leads, and miraculously all my 'failing' drives started working again.

These are what I bought;

90cm High Speed 6GB SATA 3 III Data Cable Serial S ATA Locking Clips Lead Fast

They're not that expensive, and well worth trying. It may have just been my imagination but even the working drives seemed faster.

[Edited on 3/10/16 by Slimy38]

Here's hoping! Although in the last hour it seems to be behaving.... I'm hoping the SATA driver update for the mobo might have made the difference. Then again, I did stick the drives on SATA3 instead of 6 so who knows what the hell is going on (I clearly don't!!!!!).