Two days ago i woke up and wasn't too surprised to find my pc wouldn't boot. When it came around to loading windows it would reboot itself (before the loading screen appeared). I figured my HDD or install was fubar so i formatted a spare HDD and installed a fresh windows on it.

This is where things get a bit odd.

When my pc rebooted as it should during the windows install i was not around babysitting it so when it prompted the question, load Windows 7 or Windows 7 it waited it's 30 seconds then automatically chose the top option which was the original install that wouldn't boot earlier. Everything started as normal except it wasn't activated and asked me to reenter my activation key, so i did and everything worked fine.

Curious to see what happened i rebooted my pc again and loaded the 2nd HDD with the fresh install and unsurprisingly it was as it should have been, asking me for some things about the fresh install, PC name, Homegroup password etc.

So everything was grand, i left my pc on that night as i was up all night playing CSS and Borderlands. Eventually i got around to sleeping last night and woke up this morning to a lovely surprise.

My pc won't boot again. This time when it comes around to loading windows it doesn't reboot, it just sits there on a black screen, fans running at a steadly mid speed, HDD not active. This happens with both installs. It will boot from CDs fine, i'm currently writing this from my trusty Ubuntu Live CD.

Is my 3rd motherboard of 2010 fucked? Siiigh

Maybe it could be HDD's fault instead? Are there any disk-check programs available for linux? (Surely they are, but I am a linux newbie )

viewtopic.php?f=30&t=6199

Try some of this perhaps?

Currently running hard drive tests but they're looking pretty clean so far. I doubt that's the issue because it happens with two seperate hard drives with two seperate windows install on them. The common denominator of everything i've experienced is the motherboard.