Hi,
 
I've had Windows 7 on my machine working fine since August 4th (MSDN license) :)
 
780i Mobo
4Gb Geil DDR3
2x500GB Seagate Barracuda drives, (now since replaced to Western digital brands)
Nvidia 280GTX
 
But i have now had a really werid issue and was wondering if you boffins could provide some feedback.
 
Windows 7 since about 28th Dec 09 has started to hang and lock up, a reboot is the only way out, but upon loading up just after post i get disk read error, ctrl+alt+del to restart. Shock horror i think its a bad disk issue. So i reboot but this time it goes to windows did not shut down properly, start normal, start repair etc. Well i tried to start normally and it complaints of a generic USB issue no useful error codes provided. So i tried repair, it said it couldnt do anything, so i used the windows install disk to do a repair, it failed to find problems so i used some of the advanced tools via command prompt to try and fix the master boot file just in case. Nothing worked...
 
Next day i boot the pc to try again and it works. :D Sadly it froze again at some point, but knowing it sometimes worked i keep on rebooting till it worked to backup my data. Anyway i got all the data backed up and looked at the minidump of a bluescreen. Don't have the dump anymore but it pointed to a core file in windows and indicated hard drive / memory issue.
So Memtest86 was run via CD for ~12 hours, doing 11 passes and no errors. For the record i also tried swapping memory but still never helped. I did also at this point update to the latest bios for the 780i.
 
So, i kicked the bucket and found out some segate drives have a firmware issue and might die, so these were replaced by western digital drives. Fresh install of OS, everything seemed okay. Fast forward ~2 weeks and it is happening again! So it is not a memory or hard drive issue. And since disk read error is so early on it does limit what could be causing this....
Maybe it was my external hard drive, so i tried unplugging this again and it didnt help. Still won't load sometimes. The best way to get past the disk read error is to unplug the pc, let the power drain / press power. Then plug it back in and try again. Now im thinking a mobo issue, so i googled evga 780i disk read error and i have found a few topics. It odd that 780i mobo / win7 / disk read error also seem to be very recent topics.
 
http://forums.evga.com/tm.aspx?m=99649
 
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?p=3398798
 
Does anything think it might be the motherboard is on the way out, i have no way of testing it for what is an intermit issue that kills the machine, and i hate replacing a motherboard, so much effort :P
NB. Regards overclocking, system was overclocked, the CPU only. This was turned off and put back to stock settings but has had no impact and getting it to boot. It still locks up and usually only gets past disk read error if i turn the system off fully. The disk read error comes up after the post, as i read the LED on the mobo it was at FF. 

Thanks VistaHead


1. BIOS is P09 (updated after the issues first appeared, it didnt help) Noticed P10 was released in last 24 hours, only for CPU compatibility so doubt this will help.

2. I believe so, i used the latest set that was on the EVGA site. i did not install the NForce Ethernet driver due to known issues with that NV software and games.
But note, i just had a look and it has been updated. So i have the previous version to the ones below.

Driver Version : 15.53 BETA - EVGA Recommended Download 
Release Date: 01/11/2010 
WHQL Certified : YES Driver File : 15.53_beta_nforce_win7_64bit.zip  (Primary Download Link) 
Notes : NONE

3. 
SATA 01: WD 500GB (system drive) (previously seagate barracuda 500gb 7200.11 (system drive), still in machine but no SATA or power cables plugged in)
SATA 02: WD 1TB (previously seagate barracuda 500gb 7200.11, still in machine but no SATA or power cables plugged in)
SATA 03: None
SATA 04: None
SATA 05: Samsung CD/DVD-RW optical drive
SATA 06: Asus CD/DVD-RW optical drive

IDE MASTER: None
IDE Slave: None

4. No RAID.

warlord2000ad

It has not frozen up since posting, but would it be worth installing the Beta Chipset Drivers and P10 BIOS?

Also should i install all the Beta Drivers or is it okay to leave out the NVForce Ethernet ones?

The only thing different between the 15.51 and 15.53 drivers is a newer ethernet driver...
 
http://forums.evga.com/tm.aspx?m=117152

I had a lot of those when i 1st started using Windows 7 and any NV Chipset driver. So i tried to just use whatever drivers were default windows drivers installed when you install windows and all is fine. All of those are gone. It can't hurt but i would say uninstall all chipset drivers and use default windows ones and see if that helps. If it doesn't then i would call evga tech support and see what they want to try. 

I have similar issues so i googled, how to stop drivers from automatically installing after i uninstall in windows 7 and this is what i found.

http://social.answers.mic...4ecf-bf4a-940327622fbe

http://social.answers.mic...4253-8203-c733a6cda20c

Good Luck

I am having the same problem, win 7 will not boot after splash screen, I am booting from a raid 1 array and on bootup the raid is reported as healthy.  It started with random lockups when playing games on both steam and comrade, also some video lockups when playing screen goes black monitor goes into standby. Have evga 780 sli with 2 evga 9800 gt in sli.  1000 watt power supply so do not think it is psu overloading; if anyone finds a solution please let me know, right now I have a box that will not boot.