HW failure, MBR corrupt, MBR malware? Where to begin?

I honestly don't know where to begin - whether I have a HW problem or MBR malware has taken over.

Homebuilt desktop - Windows 7 64bit Ultimate, Asus Sabretooth Z77, Samsung EVO 850 1TB, WD Black 1TB, Seagate 1TB . Added the EVO about a year ago and used Acronis to clone the WD onto the EVO. Created a Macrium rescue disc and a Win 7 recovery disc. Re-formatted the Seagate to use for video editing and digitization for music. Booted the machine from both drives (all others disconnected) and each came up fine. Been using it for a year like this with no problems until yesterday. Last time I used the machine it worked perfectly and then I shut it down. Had been powered off for two weeks due to travel. Bottom line, I was able to boot off both the EVO and WD, and now can not boot off of either getting the same error messages.

First clue when I pushed the power button yesterday - nothing happened. First thought was power supply failure but I unplugged the AC for 30 seconds, plugged it back in and boot sequence started but went right to setup screen (low CPU fan speed but it was about 65 degrees in the room - got past that by setting to ignore). Everything recognized, pressed F10, save and immediately received the prompt to repair windows. Macrium, Win 7 recovery, and original MS install disc all say recovery succeeded but after reboot, got the following message:

"Windows failed to start. A Recent hardware or software change might be the cause. To fix the problem:

1. Insert your windows installation disc and restart your computer.
2. Choose your language settings, and then click next
3. Click "repair your computer."

Status: 0xc000000e Info: The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible."

Same story with the WD. There have been no hardware changes to the machine since the EVO was added.

I've tried re-building the MBR on both drives separately using the Win rescue disc but get the same results. On both drives (only one connected at a time), if I select repair start-up problems on the win rescue disc the system reboots with a message that start-up problems can not be repaired.

Using the repair function on the original MS Windows 7 install disc gives me the following error:

"This version of System Recovery Options is not compatible with the version of windows you are trying to repair. Try using a recovery disc that is compatible with this version of windows."

The rescue disc did find the OS but when I opt to continue to boot Win 7, I get "re-boot and select proper boot device or insert media..." continuously. I get the same message with only the EVO or WD connected, one at a time.

Interestingly, Gparted shows each drive has 3 partitions but they are not in the same order. On the EVO, the first is 128MB of unknown type but flagged as Msftres, the second is 100MB FAT32 flagged as boot and the balance is NTFS. On the Seagate, the first two are reversed in order boot first, msftres second. Neither drive will boot.

I can boot from both DVD drives just fine and all devices are recognized in BIOS. I can read each drive and chkdsk shows no disk errors. bootrec and bcdedit commands now result in the following:

"The requested system device cannot be identified due to multiple indistinguishable devices potentially matching the identification criteria"

I've read through some postings on this topic on superuser site, but nothing seems to quite match everything I'm seeing. This is not a dual boot system and there is no RAID. The only USB connections are keyboard/mouse.

Thanks in advance for any assistance. This is driving me nuts since on last shutdown everything was fine. AJG