[heero_yuy]

PC wouldn't boot this morning, couldn't find a boot record on the HDD. I went into the BIOS setup and the HDD order seemed to be wrong, trying the D drive before the C (SSD). Set it to boot preferentially from the SSD and the whole thing burst into life. Stangely Windows seemed to struggle to access my D drive (500G data buffer), did it eventually and all the data seems intact.

The system has recently had the clock and date not running when powered down. The battery shows 2.9v in the BIOS and speedfan but I'm going to change it as it may be corrupting the CMOS now. It is the original battery on the mobo* from a few years ago so could well be on the way out.

Think it's time to look at a new PC build.

*Was top-of-the line when I built this machine.

Edit: Running a full system backup as a precaution.