Whats wrong with my computer?

[35g700]

I got back home and turned on my computer, I went to start firefox and I got an error message saying windows cannot find the program. I tried IE and got the same thing, nothing worked I got a black screen with a line of weird colors at the top. I rebooted and still nothing worked. I dusted out the case wiggled the SATA cords for the hard drives and still nothing. I booted from an ubuntu disk and that worked, I installed ubuntu on my other hard drive that windows isn't on. I tried to boot to ubuntu and I got the same results as windows.

I have 3 theorys -

1) Bad video card - I don't think this is the issue because I could boot to ubuntu and it displayed 1920x1080 just fine.

2) Bad hard drive - Could be the cause but what are the chances of 2 different model hard drives dieing at the same time? However I think my case may kill hard drives. Unlike normal cases where you slide hard drives into bays and they are secured firmly onto the case my case (CM 590) has a very annoying hard drive bay that you put 4 hard drives in and that mounts in the case. The strange thing with the bay is that instead of being firmly mounted on the bay there are these rubber gummy like things that go over each of the 4 screw holes. I think that not being firmly secured may allow the HDD to vibrate too much and kill it. I don't think they are overheating because I have a 120MM fan blowing on them.

3) Bad motherboard - I am starting to think that this may be the issue because of how low quality the thing is (I don't think I'm going to buy from anyone but ASUS anymore) I think that something may have died on it not allowing it to boot.

Thanks for the help in advanced, I will try doing some more troubleshooting tomorrow. Hopefully I will be upgrading to a phenom II or an i5 sometime soon so I won't have to deal with this terrible motherboard.

 

[Fat.Clown]

leaning towards 2 and 3

4th theory would be bad PSU 3v rail

I see that you have a nice PSU, but every brand is prone to failure.
you could be owner of that 0.01% bad PSU

 

[35g700]

I ran a RAM stress test today and it passed, I don't think the HDD's would both go bad at the same time. The video card works when I boot from a disk, the PSU seems to work fine and isn't anything like my last bad PSU. I don't think the CPU has gone bad, I haven't touched the thing since September of '08 and its had really good cooling. I think I have a bad motherboard.

EDIT: I Think I may have found my problem. I made a F@H SMP disk to try in my computer so I could still run F@H. I booted up and it only says "Setting up instance 1" after that it is supposed to set up instance 2, but something is preventing it from doing so. My guess is a motherboard issue or a dead core.

EDIT2: When I boot up in x32 mode for folding it sets up both instances. when monitoring the progress I have noticed that instance 1 (most likely on core 0) is working fine, however instance 2 is doing nothing (most likely on core 1)

 

[ETWROCKS]

I agree with Fat Clown there is probably something wrong with your hard drive or motherboard. Some sort of flaw that affects the whole system. I would hold off on getting the new processor till you know what it is for sure.

 

[35g700]

I'm planning on getting an i5 or phenom II so I will need a new board. I don't think it's a hard drive issue because the chances of two dying at the same time is extremly small.

EDIT: Swaped RAM around and got the same results, I booted up to an ubuntu CD, it runs fine and see's all the partitions on both hard drives. Are there any stress testing programs I can run off of an ubuntu live CD?

EDIT2: There is somthing wrong with the SATA ports on my motherboard. I can boot from a CD with a SATA CD drive but I cannot load any OS from a SATA HDD. I installed windows XP on a small 10gb HDD and I can boot from that any everything works fine.