I suppose I could try that.  Indications are leaning to the issue being with the connection on the windows drive anyway as it's hella slow to install then boot etc.

Would a sh*tty cable on C: affect file copy from/to D: and cause hangs?  I suppose it could...

Does it matter which SATA port the cables go into?  The windows drive is currently connected with an L-shaped one tucked tightly right behind the graphics card.  I don't have another L-shaped connector so would need to use a different port.

Thanks for everyone's help so far. :

Lol... just had someone say it's more than likely a RAM problem. 

I've always run Corsair matched pairs so not cheap to replace 4Gb worth.

I refuse to believe stuff just 'dies'. #indenial

FFS....

have you checked ram prices lately ?  8gig of decent corsair will only set you back £40 now

download/run mem test, see if that sorts it (btw takes hours to do a full scan)

also, check your cooling, make sure the m/b heat sinks aren't full of dust/fulff etc..

If he's getting errors/problems that quickly I doubt he'd need a full scan to identify dodgy RAM. My first 32GB quad channel set had a duff pair in it, I was getting crashes once a week perhaps and occasional file corruption errors, memtest86 had picked up the errors within about 5 mins, if that. If he leaves it running for an hour or so he'll know for sure (I don't think its the RAM personally).

It doesn't matter which SATA port you use btw, SATA is good like that!

Thanks again.

Rather than rush back to the shop just to get another HDD, I'm (for once) going to do the sane, methodical thing and reseat everything on the mobo first.  I'll switch SATA cables to different ports and/or replace, too.

Update:

Grabbed some spare SATA cables and replaced the one on the C:\

On a hunch I put the old C:\ back in and it booted right away (with no BOOTMGR error either). 

So, it seems at this stage that it might just have been the SATA cable at fault as suggested.   What's the bet I'll regret writing this later!... 

I'm guessing that it wasn't allowing enough 'throughput' for the drive, therefore it wasn't finding 'bootmgr' in time before a time-out?  And when it did boot, it wasn't allowing enough data to pass through hence the Explorer freeze-ups? 

What are the chances of PCW giving me a refund on the SSD?... 

PC World are pretty good on refunds actually, I've bought and took back enough overpriced routers there in my time!

How do cables just degrade and not just fail?

could be a million and one different things... cables are normally pretty much ok tho...

but... it's digital so it's switching on and off to send 1's and 0's

8388608 bits in 1 megabyte

so at 100meg/sec there's 838,860,800 bits - or timed on's/off's going though that cable...

guess it doesn't take much for a few of those to be messed up... guessing there's some kind of error checking built in... tho it's probably only very light because of the speeds involved...


(p.s. I haven't looked into how sata works... so that's just rough... it'll be something like that tho)

Cheers all.

Back for 'Saga III' in a few months!

...weeks, days...

Did the cable hang onto/over your graphics card at all? Perhaps it was a heat related death. Glad you're back in ship shape though

No, the cables were routed away from the mobo/graphics card, outside the 'inner case', then back in just enough to connect to the HDD.

Of course it could just have been reseating it that worked - but unlikely as I did try that yesterday.

Cheers all.

Reminds me of when I convinced a friend to build his computer. I was surprised he did it without issue, but something "blew up" when he turned it on. We spent two days, and a lot of money going through the components trying to figure out what had blown. Did the logical things first, PSU, then Mobo etc.

Just as he was about to admit defeat and take it to a computer shop for them to sort it out, it dawn on me that he'd been using the same power plug from the start. The fault turned out to be the plugs fuse had blown, D'oh!