The nightmare of computers, it drives us mad. It isn't like they can tell you what is wrong. Often you think it is one thing and then find it is something else. And then there is the times it seems to fix itself. Those are the worst as you know they will be back. That sounds like a bad line from a good movie, hehehe. Sorry couldn't help that.
I had that computer meltdown scenario yesterday. In the end unplugging my back up hard-drive and back in seemed to solve the troubles I was having. That was after reinstalling Windows 7. My son said it was the hard-drive that was failing which was causing problems for Windows as the computer booted up. Yet the drive seems to be fine and hasn't caused me any problems. Though to be sure I will need to look out my some analyzing software to check the SMART data. I can't quite remember if its Seagate or WD that does a free package for doing that. It has after all been a good few years since I did anything like that before and that was just because I read about in a magazine. It was a computer one though so they must know what their talking about even if I don't, right. Hehehe. My main drive is an SSD so my hope is that it isn't that which is failing. I know they are a lot cheaper to replace now but even so I couldn't afford to do that. Maybe it was a loose cable which could also cause the problems. It would also explain why everything is now running as it should. And the reinstall of Windows was over-due. After all the longer you run a Windows installation the more error begin to creep into the registry and such like. Let me hope that I have another two or three years of fairly good computing before I need to do another install.