Malfunctioning PC....help needed

[Bkart]

I posted this in the general hardware section before realizing there was a help section...my bad

I have been running my current setup without any problems for almost a year now and it has developed a strange problem in the past few days that I think is hardware related. Most of the time when I try to boot into XP or Vista (they are on separate hard drives) from a "warm boot" they will freeze at the progress bar screen as windows is loading. If however I pull the power cord out of the pc for a short amount of time and then plug it back in it will boot up fine every time. Also, I can no longer get to the hardware monitor screen of the bios to view fan speeds and temps. It just freezes until I reboot but has never done this before. Both windows versions will however boot into safe mode without a problem. I'm wondering if these could be the symptoms of a malfunctioning motherboard or PSU or am I incorrectly assuming that this is a hardware problem? Things I have done so far:

1. My memory has passed several passes of Memtest 86+
2. Swapped out my 8800gts for a 7300LE I had lying around, problem persisted
3. Checked my temps with speedfan, core temp and rivatner. CPU, Motherboard, and 8800gts are all running cool.
4. Pulled out my sound card, problem persisted

I did not change my hardware configuration recently or update a bios that could provide a clue as to the culprit. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

 

[smittybg]

could be the MB ,sometimes wierd things like that could be a CPU also

 

[igibson]

i agree with smitty on mobo quirks.Try resetting your cmos though, this should get rid of your frozen hardware monitoring and perhaps the windows lockup as it's not specific to the OS. if this is successful you may have a failing cmos battery, odd for a year old mobo but maybe. if not, you may want to try another PSU for a week or so... very odd how it works after you unplug it. i doubt the cpu as it doesn't occur any other time other than boot.

 

[Bkart]

Thanks for the comments. I think I've solved the problem. So I reset the CMOS to no avail. Then I changed the SATA cables for my HDD's and the problem has disappeared (fingers crossed). What a weird way for a faulty cable to manifest itself. Would've been easier to diagnose if it just stopped working outright.