Gigabyte GA-Z97MX-Gaming 5 / i5-4590 / 8GB G.Skill DDR3 Ripjaws X / GTX 970 / Corsair CX550M / Windows 8.1 64 bit / 1TB Toshiba HDD / 1TB WD Blue HDD / 2TB Seagate Firecuda HDD / 500GB Adata SSD as my boot drive. The Toshiba and WD drives still have windows installed on them, I use the ssd as my boot drive and have for about a year without issues.
The issue I've had since a couple of days ago is that the boot order changes itself in the UEFI/BIOS overnight and randomly while I have steam downloading several games. What i did a couple of days ago when I started downloading was change the power settings to never sleep, and left it overnight with my account locked. In the morning the monitor was on standby, the computer was still on, but with no hdd activity according to the HDD case light, the keyboard led back light was still on so the peripherals were functional, but the computer wouldn't wake from keyboard or mouse input. So I turned off the pc and turned it on, it booted slowly, but after a lot if confusion and panic I realized it booted from my WD drive. I knew something was wrong because the desktop was different, the system reserve partitions were showing in My Computer and the drive letters were different. So I got into the UEFI and saw the boot order was different, I fixed it to have the ssd boot first again and restated. It booted fine this time, but apparently it had finish a windows update first, once that finished it restarted. This time the screen was extremely pixelated, but the screen resolution was correctly at 1080x1920 and DPI was correct. So I restated and all was good again.
Fast forward to the next morning again letting it download overnight. I wake up today to find the monitor black, but I could tell the back light was on and it wasn't in standby mode. The computer again was on with no hdd activity light, keyboard and mouse lighting up, but the computer wouldn't show anything or wake. I turned it off and on, it didn't boot, so I turned it off and went into the UEFI, to find that the Seagate drive (which does not have an OS on it) was now the first boot priority. I changed it back to the Adata SSD as the first boot priority, and it booted fine this time. This was about 6 hours ago and so far it was fine.
Now, another 4 hours later I check up on the computer again, and the same thing happened. Both my connected monitors have the backlight on with no image, are not in standby, the keyboard LED backlight is on, the computer is on and unresponsive. I turn it off, go into the BIOS and see that the DVD/CD Drive is first in the boot order. Fix it, and it boots fine. Except I find that my F: drive which is the WD Drive is not accessible and it gives me an error about a corrupted recycle bin. After some research, I ran chkdsk in the command prompt and have it in stage 4 looking for bad clusters with about an hour to go. Hoping my motherboard isn't dying or worse, my data being lost.
I'm not sure what could possibly be causing this to happen. Is it a failing drive or is my ssd dying? Could it be the motherboard? Could it be that the computer is getting a windows update and then automatically restarts in the middle of steam downloading, causing some kind of conflict or glitch that is causing my problem? These are just guesses, I'm unsure about why this is happening.
Any help or insight into this is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
TL;DR: Downloading steam games during the day and left overnight to continue downloading. Sleep setting set to never sleep to allow downloading to continue overnight. Find computer on in the morning, but not waking and unresponsive. Find boot order in UEFI is different, fix it to correct boot order and boots fine. Unresponsive again, boot order different again, fixed and boots fine again, but one drive now inaccessible. Happened twice now.
The issue I've had since a couple of days ago is that the boot order changes itself in the UEFI/BIOS overnight and randomly while I have steam downloading several games. What i did a couple of days ago when I started downloading was change the power settings to never sleep, and left it overnight with my account locked. In the morning the monitor was on standby, the computer was still on, but with no hdd activity according to the HDD case light, the keyboard led back light was still on so the peripherals were functional, but the computer wouldn't wake from keyboard or mouse input. So I turned off the pc and turned it on, it booted slowly, but after a lot if confusion and panic I realized it booted from my WD drive. I knew something was wrong because the desktop was different, the system reserve partitions were showing in My Computer and the drive letters were different. So I got into the UEFI and saw the boot order was different, I fixed it to have the ssd boot first again and restated. It booted fine this time, but apparently it had finish a windows update first, once that finished it restarted. This time the screen was extremely pixelated, but the screen resolution was correctly at 1080x1920 and DPI was correct. So I restated and all was good again.
Fast forward to the next morning again letting it download overnight. I wake up today to find the monitor black, but I could tell the back light was on and it wasn't in standby mode. The computer again was on with no hdd activity light, keyboard and mouse lighting up, but the computer wouldn't show anything or wake. I turned it off and on, it didn't boot, so I turned it off and went into the UEFI, to find that the Seagate drive (which does not have an OS on it) was now the first boot priority. I changed it back to the Adata SSD as the first boot priority, and it booted fine this time. This was about 6 hours ago and so far it was fine.
Now, another 4 hours later I check up on the computer again, and the same thing happened. Both my connected monitors have the backlight on with no image, are not in standby, the keyboard LED backlight is on, the computer is on and unresponsive. I turn it off, go into the BIOS and see that the DVD/CD Drive is first in the boot order. Fix it, and it boots fine. Except I find that my F: drive which is the WD Drive is not accessible and it gives me an error about a corrupted recycle bin. After some research, I ran chkdsk in the command prompt and have it in stage 4 looking for bad clusters with about an hour to go. Hoping my motherboard isn't dying or worse, my data being lost.
I'm not sure what could possibly be causing this to happen. Is it a failing drive or is my ssd dying? Could it be the motherboard? Could it be that the computer is getting a windows update and then automatically restarts in the middle of steam downloading, causing some kind of conflict or glitch that is causing my problem? These are just guesses, I'm unsure about why this is happening.
Any help or insight into this is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
TL;DR: Downloading steam games during the day and left overnight to continue downloading. Sleep setting set to never sleep to allow downloading to continue overnight. Find computer on in the morning, but not waking and unresponsive. Find boot order in UEFI is different, fix it to correct boot order and boots fine. Unresponsive again, boot order different again, fixed and boots fine again, but one drive now inaccessible. Happened twice now.