Aurora R7, randomly getting stuck at Alienware loading screen

Question

So this has happened to me 3 times now the first 2 times I did a fresh windows install and the third time running the ePSA somehow fixed it and I was able to boot up instantly.So I installed the NZXT Kraken m22 liquid cooler into my Aurora r7. Everything was going fine. The MOBO doesn't have any internal USBs so the cooler isn't plugged into the MOBO but I read that the mini USB connection is just for the lighting and wasn't needed.The Stress tests went fine, spent afew hours messing around, performed many restarts and power downs but didn't get to opening any games. Then I did a restart after looking in the BIOS for fan settings. I wanted to see the RPM from this pump however the Command Center I had was some stupid version from the Microsoft store that didn't have thermal controls anywhere. I didn't touch anything in the BIOS but it asked me if I wanted to save when I exited after not being able to find any fan settings, I don't remember changing anything but I said no to changes and exited the BIOS.Then It Happened I got stuck at the loading screen. The wheel at the bottom just keeps rotating for hours. https://ibb.co/1vYTsh8 Made sure the BIOS was updated and scanned through everything to see if it all looked good. Tried many combinations of restarts and power downs but nothing worked. Kept going to this screen, so I grabbed my thumb drive and did a fresh install of windows after fighting with the BIOS for an hour to get the thumb drive to appear. Windows 10 installed successfully phew!  Windows then started updating itself and I went to dell support website to get my drivers(don't know if doing these two at the same time was a good idea). Restarted windows per request and boom back to the same screen. I performed a windows fresh install again, took it a bit more slowly and was able to get all my drivers and windows updates with atleast 5 restarts, made a new windows recovery media and a recovery drive. Then started downloading some apps. Error popped up again within an hour, this time I ran system diagnostics from the BIOS before doing any fresh install. I got my usual errors about the NZXT and CPU fans not responding correctly from the ePSA and rebooted, then the error was gone. Not sure if running the diagnostics helped with anything and would love to start installing games and trying out my new liquid cooler. I see the need for some restarts in the future :s , though we are liquid cooled now :D. Hopefully someone has some insight or experience with this error. Thanks in advance!

tilt_skillet · Answer

No problem yet today, only restarted twice so far.

tilt_skillet · Answer

So I think I may have found what caused this. I Noticed my storage drive(the HDD the computer came with) was missing, I know the SATA spot for this is in a crappy spot with the giant cables I have from my power supply.
I Opened her up and yup during the liquid cooling upgrade I must have swung the power supply arm and completely mangled the SATA connection to the HDD. The underside of the connection is totally snapped off, the pins are all wonky and the SATA cable itself is banged up on the inside. Its unplugged itself now, perhaps that's why its working well.

I grabbed a new SATA cable and taped it into the HDD and barely got it into the MOBO since I cant swing the power supply out very far without unplugging the taped in part.

Booted up and windows loaded fast and fine, storage drive is visible and accessible.

So the question is, could having a mangled connection to a storage drive cause windows not to load up?

Did some research and yes faulty HDD connection to a secondary drive can cause a computer to freeze. Hopefully that was the cause.

Alienware Desktops

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