Help Me Help My Father

Wizards of the GWJ Community:

I need help in helping my dad fix his computer problems. Several days ago, he bought and installed a new SSD as a slave drive on his rig. When he goes to boot the computer, if he does nothing, it boots into Windows briefly, then crashes. If he can open a program in that window of time, the computer works great and doesn't crash.

I know this isn't enough to go on in and of itself. What additional information can I gather for you all?

What OS? What motherboard? Did he follow the install directions completely, and is the device properly set up in the BIOS? Any chance the computer is old and crufty (ie, bad/out of spec cable, bad power, loose connection)?

If he disconnects the flash drive, is everything fine again? Did he try connecting it to another controller port? Did he load the firmware drivers after installing? Did he need special drivers for the motherboard to use an SSD?

You're gonna need to do some detecting...

I'll be out of touch for a few days coming up...

Robear wrote:

I'll be out of touch for a few days coming up...

Thanks, Robear. My father and I are going to do some digging this weekend over Skype. I'll let you know what I discover.

Any luck?

Thanks for checking in. He's been recovering from a small surgery, so we've been on delay.