After cleaning catastrophe

[Carsoncity123]

My desktop starts getting dusty and I decided to clean it up. I don't have a conventional blower/vacuum thingy so I took all the parts from the case and leaved the motherboard intact (did not removed the  stock cooler and RAM). So  after cleaning the case and fans and the other stuffs I managed to assemble them right away and I did nothing wrong (I guess). But the moment I booted it up things goes weird. The games that I already installed are now asking to be downloaded again. Some stays but always goes "STOPPED WORKING". Also my HDD is making more noise than before its like the sound of a paper hitting the blades of a fan.

 

Anyone?

[SEAL62]

Hard to say without any test results but my guess is that your HDD broke. Did you move it roughly during your cleaning process or maybe even dropped it or hight something with it by accident (table corner or something like that). HDDs are very fragile to shock or any sort of physical force or magnets. Since some sectors of your HDD might be defect your OS cant read its values properly and games cant really find their files so thats why you get errors and prompts to re download the games again.

Buy a new HDD or better a SSD and transfer as much data as possible as long as it is still readable.

[Mark Kaine]

So what probably happened is, some cable hitting a fan (this is typical after 'cleaning') and also somehow your hard drive not connected properly either psu side, the sata or the data cable(s) 

 

So I would suggest to look at these things very thoroughly, and try to reconnect everything, even if it might looks 'ok'. 

 

Also check that the ram is seated properly, I guess. 

 

 

Otherwise I don't know how you'd damaged the hard-drive, seems unlikely they're pretty robust when powered off.