Continuing my HALP PLEASE questions ;) – UPDATED !
(5 votes, average: 4.20 out of 5)
Loading...Hi everyone, I can’t thank you enough for all the helpful replies I got, thank you really 
Things progressed, now. Either it’s a dying system disk, either it’s a power problem.
The system disk is a SSD Crucial C300, the contructor provides no diagnostic utility. Do you know if a scandisk with both repair and bad sectors options is enough to make sure all is fine or all is fixed with the disk ? For my PC’s config, cf HERE, but watch out, it was saved while there were no other plugged in disks than the SSD..
Or do you know how to make sure to know if there are problems with the power supply in the PC tower ? Even with 3 disks out of 4 unplugged, only the system SSD remaining, and there’s still the freezing problem, after all…
–
UPDATE. I did some testing at midday (busy weekend, here). The frequency of the freezes is worsening. Greater variety of BSODs (like bad pool header 0x00000019 or apc index mismatch 0X00000001).
With linux Mint BootCD : no freeze if only running from the boot CD (this is an external USB CD player), but if there is another hard disk plugged, no matter which one is plugged, there will eventually be a system freeze. I tried (“feck, why not”) installing that Linux Mint on my hard disks (all save the system one), with every time just that one hard disk plugged, and every time there was a freeze at some point.
Conclusion :
Conclusion 2 : actually, I don’t know. Next will be running with only one out of 2 RAM slots. And next might be waiting for fucking next tuesday and buy a new tower + components from an assembler, I SO wanted to spend 300€ just for it.
No shares this evening, shares next evening with lots of chance :o
if the problem persists after plugging so many out, no, either the power supply is broken or its just the disk.
With broken sectos there is always a certain loss of data.
you can either disable the dying sector or try repairing it with a program like scandisc which will try to repair stuff.
Either way, keep the system dvd ready in case you need to go in repair mode.
Hi.
To detect problems in the PSU, try installing a monitoring program like Speedfan and, in options, select to write a log of use.
It will tell you about the voltage, which indicates a possible PSU failure (have you changed the connectors between PSU/HD ?) and temperatures, wich is also something trick to discover.
I'd bet money it's the system disk. I think if it was a power problem, the motherboard's BIOS would kick in and shut down the computer.
Also, I have read that with SSD's don't last nearly as long as conventional hard drives.
Is this the same disk I remember you asking people for an opinion on months/years ago?
The BIOS wouldn't necessarily kick in unless there was a massive power spike that it couldn't manage (and honestly, if that were the case, it would just not turn on). It probably allows things above the threshold, but manages it in a stopgap way: Temporary power prioritization until it can return to idle or normal workload. However, it's temporary: Bound to break apart at some point. When that happens, the BSOD is triggered.
You may be onto something about the SSD, though.
Not sure if you saw my reply on the other one, so here it is copy and pasted:
They sell adapters. You might wanna buy one, they're only like $4 and you can return it later after you confirm whether or not that's the problem.
Have you considered the problem might be that you don't have ENOUGH RAM to run your programs (thereby causing it to lockup and crash)? For instance, Photoshop (which I know for a fact you use) should have at least 1GB dedicated to it alone (as per Adobe's specification).
Edit: Just saw the update. Are you suse your power supply has enough power to supply to a video card AND 4 HDDs? Might wanna considering upgrading to 1000W. Also, start plugging them in and see if it's a compatibility issue with the HDDs. (This is kind of redundant now that you said it's still happening with only the SSD installed.)
Also, get a real antivirus. Spybot isn't even an antivirus, it's antispyware. I dunno why it's being labeled as such. I recommend Kaspersky or NOD32.
And if I'm reading this correctly, you have two different RAM sticks? That's not good, you should always have the same exact one in each slot. Also, it's recommended to skip a slot when using only 2 of them. Looks like you have them right next to each other (2 and 3), you should either be using 1 and 3 or 2 and 4.
I still recommend you extend to the maximum of 4GBs (1GB in each slot), using the same exact memory stick in each slot.
Guh, HurpDurp kind of beat me. Oh well. Anyways, my summary is : get more power (though might not have to reach 1000W) and similarize your RAM sticks (would suggest getting a kit of 2 sticks of 2GBs each).
Power: Depends on the size of your drives and other plugged components.
RAM: Grab a 2x2GB kit to keep the brand (and hopefully the chips used on the sticks) and speed the same. Read your manual for a dual channel configuration RAM sticks placement.
The maximum each slot can take is 1GB, so he would have to get 4 1GB RAM sticks for 4GBs (he can't get 2x2gb).
I know you said you want a free firewall and antivirus on Twitter, but I HIGHLY recommend you purchase Kaspersky Internet Security. It's seriously worth the money (the site has a 30 day trial, but you could also pirate it too I guess. I don't endorse the piracy of security software and operating systems, everything else is fine but those two things should always be purchased to ensure you don't have too many backdoors), I haven't gotten any viruses the last 5 years I've used it (the ones I did download it always caught and stopped from finishing downloading – for example today I've gotten popups from RyuuTama's blog because apparently the ads got trojan's embedded in them).
Dude, he's running a Pentium E, a GeForce 8400, and 2 gigs of RAM. HDDs aren't sucking in a lot of power (most they punch is 20, 30W). He would need 1000 W if he were running a Core i7 EE, CrossFire/SLI current gen graphics cards, and 16 gigs of RAM. 400 W sounds more reasonable in his case, and far cheaper (€35 on average vs. €140 on average).
Go big or go home, bro.
Dumbest response I've ever seen. It's his money, not yours.
It's called "future proofing".
It's called "it's not your money, you dumb fuck." He's not doing a full investment. If he were, then maybe we'd pull all the stops. But as it stands, he's got a Pentium E and he's a-okay with that. He just wants to fix his computer, not make it better than ever. He is thinking short-term, not long. That he would just spend €300 on a simple problem is a bit reckless. Baby with the bathwater thinking, as it were.
take a ubuntu live cd and run it, use the pc. if it crashes its not the ssd. or just install linux (or windows if its big enough) on a thumbdrive and use your pc, see if it crashes.
really just test out the hypothesis that the ssd is broken.
The memory info seems really weird, and I'm having trouble identifying exactly what your motherboard is since apparently model ms-7366 refers to a couple different motherboards. Ditto for the RAM. If you would be able to identify those better I may be able to add more input. As stands the ram seems to standout as the most troublesome because it looks like you are running two different modules and possibly not at recommended speeds.
Morning Oliver.
Very strange sounding problem indeed.
I highly doubt your PSU is too weak with your configuration. I’m running much beefier hardware and my computer hardly consumes 200W under full load. Please plug in all the HDDs and other kinds of drives you can find, without hooking them up to the mainboard. Also run some CPU intensive programs (entering “1000000!” in a calculator does the trick when running WinXP, not sure if it still works with Win7). This is soley to put the maximum possible load on your PSU. Try not to use the harddisks or fill the RAM (which might be easier said than done running W7…)
If your computer doesn’t crash any more often than before, then your PSU is probably still good.
To me this sounds much more like a problem with either the SATA controller on your mainboard or f00ked RAM. Since your memory seemed fine (How long did you run memtest for? Minutes? Hours?) I’m guessing it’s the controller. I’ve had a similar issue myself last autumn. My mainboard’s SATA controller randomly froze and didn’t do any reads or writes anymore. This sometimes took 2-3 days between incidents. Then one application after another would crash until the whole system was down. A reboot fixed the issue for a few hours/days.
To confirm, can you boot a linux from USB stick? If so, please keep reading/writing from and to one of the harddisks, preferably use one that’s known to be good (and make a backup of any valuable data on it first!). Keep a close eye on the output of the “dmesg” command in a terminal. If something like “exception emask” pops up you most likely got the exact same issue as I did and your mainboard is slowly dying on you.
Cheers and good luck!
If your motherboard has more than two RAM slots, try using the others in order to discard bus deprecation. If you can procure other RAM sticks then try them as well. Most of the page or service fault BSODs are due to three factors, USB failures, faulty RAM and/or faulty reads/writes from/to harddisk pagefile or Windows' system files. Try to give HDDRegenerator a spin to test your system disk and the one(s) that host Windows' pagefile. If you used any USB drives/SD cards etc. for ReadyBoost, unplug them. If you use USB Mice/Keyboards and have some spares, swap with them. Use normal mode on each test. Be careful if you installed any service dependant software on drives other than the System Disk (Examples of service dependant software: Antivirus, Disk burning apps, virtualization apps, messaging apps, P2P apps, Security/Monitoring programs, etc) then if any of those services run or try to run by schedule, you WILL get another BSOD. Try to use msconfig to run in basic mode (not failsafe mode) and enable each service one by one until you get a BSOD, then you will know what program made everything a mess. As a last resort, use Windows' system restore and try to restore to a date of more than a week before the failure if able. If the pagefaults or service faults get too random, it is your microprocessor that's done for. Change it.
We usually use SSD Hard Drives and bad news is: We had a bunch of problems with it.
Turns out that many SSD turned out to be faulty and would fail horribly throwing BSOD randomly.
If you want to rescue your info usually you can boot using a linux live cd and backing up there.
Also you can run disk diagnostics using that live cd as well. (try ubuntu, fedora or inquisitor (this one is actually for hardware diagnostics))
Two educated guesses:
1) You should err on the side of caution and replace your faulty hard drive(s) as soon as possible. Scandisk can not fix physical damage.
2) Your system heating may be either caused or catalyzed by overheating. I recommend downloading Speedfan or a similar app to determine the temperature at which your system is running.
Dude.
Been following your computer woes.
I think your system disk is dying.
Back up and get a new one.
Cheers.
hey Oliver first see if you can download on another computer a copy of “PC-Check stand alone” is a diagnostic tool use by some companies on repairs it does a full diag on hardware but there is a utility to run just a HDD, checks for integrity covers read/verify, chaos communication, SMART if the HDD comes build with it and a stress test other options you can use could be seagate tools diag or forgot the name of the other HDD tool; how ever SSD is something I don’t recommend to use as they often have problems with the board, electrical problems the memory component never dies but the board that is build into it fails allot, I have used on some SSD and works fine but still there is some models that may not work on to. For your power supply there is PSU testers http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&…
you can buy if there is a computer shop you could order one or look on the internet just not sure how will be on your language but on English search topic use “PSU tester” ebay could do also.
Love your page hope this helps you out I will be on the look if you need something else
I'd go with the same recommendation: you should test your SSD with a SMART diagnose tool.
You can find lot of linux distros for USB drive with these tools. I use Parted Magic and included GSmartControl for my work. It's very light but useful.
http://partedmagic.com/doku.php
also will check with my other colleagues to see if anyone know of a easy to download Hardware diag. tool that can handle generic hardware
Hiren's BootCD?
Try posting your problem at Eggxpert.com
That place is filled with computer specialists. No joke.
Hello Oliver,
what i see from this report is that you have an awfull lot oft crashes lately with ntfs.sys to blaim it seems wat could be indicating that your ssd is dying which you could propably check (warning not to be taken fully serius just uses a "normal" nand lifespan) with Crystal Disk Info http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/… which shows a level of "wear" on a drive.
hope i could help with the diagnosis process, feeel free to mail me if you want
oh and seen to late your Temperatures TMPIN0 is with 63 °C (145 °F) a bit high and by my quick an dirty research could be a sensor on your motherboard or in your CPU socket but there could always be something wrong witch readings on those sensors
oh and to exclude your PSU from the list of suspects use furmark that stresses your grafics card and prime 95 witch stresses your cpu simultaneusly witch schould take your systems power consumption to the max
(temps too)
reBonjour Oliver,
tu as beaucoup de choses à tester :-) La plupart des commentaires sont très pertinents, ce n'est déjà pas toujours évident de dépanner son propre PC, mais celui d'un autre à distance… :-s
As-tu fait le test basique sou BIOS ( voir mon dernier commentaire dans le précédent post ) ?
Beaucoup parlent du SSD, moi je suis comme toi, il me semble que le SSD, c'est ON/OFF mais pas entre les deux ;-) mais j'ai peut-être besoin d'un update. Dans la catégorie conseil gratuit, effectues-tu un TRIM régulier sur ton SSD ( pour faire simple, c'est un peu l'équivalent d'un défrag de HDD ) ?
Si non, cela pourrait expliquer un état en apparence autre que ON/OFF de ton SSD.
Bon courage et surtout bonne chance, il en faut parfois pour localiser ce genre de panne.
as I recently had a PSU problem, and had it for about 1 year before it started catching aflame…
I tried multiple ways to test it, including:
Unplugging everything I could except for the basics.
Unplugging everything I could except for the basics for it to power on (no hdds)
running it in a simple mode (memtest where it uses very few system disc resources
monitoring programs.
Probably a few other things, but until it became obvious that it was the PSU it really seemed to be a hdd error. (Though the whole time I had a nagging feeling that it wasn't and was the PSU even though no proof pointed to it etc.)
The only sure fire way would be to get another PSU and test it. if the problem persists, it's not the PSU if it doesn't it probably is the PSU. *I don't remember reading the frequency of the problem* and if it isn't the PSU, you can probably return it if it is within 30 days or so.
Les BSOD peuvent etre du a une barrette de RAM défectueuse. Cela peut etre aussi dû a des problèmes de driver son/vidéo. J'ai avec mon installation rencontré de nombreuses fois ce genre de problème, et réinstaller les drivers a réussi a supprimer le problème.
After reading the yesterday descriptions and the done tests there seems realy only one part left.
BSOD which randomly occurse and always with different messages are mostly from the Memory.
Most memory testing programs can not test the RAM in a way a system is utilizing it.
The only transfer different pattern to the RAM an check if it gets corrupted.
the problem is that patterned writings are mostly more stable in RAM than random data (physical reason).
first test should be to remove 1 pcs of RAM to see if this BSOD is coming back.
if yes .. try the 2nd one alone.
also a good way to stabilize RAM issues is to raise the voltage for it a little bit.
for DDR2 you could test it with +0.1 Voltage .. this is often helping … sometimes the capacitors or the RAM itself is loosing their "stability" through aging.
Another thing i did realize when checking your PDF with System configs.
you are using a 60GB SSD disk which is filled to 90%.
with only ~7GB left on diskspace you are nearly to the end which can lead to a problem with memory paging to the SSD.
Especially Sanforce based SSDs (like the Crucial you own) shouldn´t go past the 75% filling or they will get realy slow after some time … including a faster aging of the Flash chips in it.
a small help would be to stop the "hybrid standby" function in windows 7 which would give you at least 2GB of new fresh space on the SSD.
You will only lose the capability to "Suspend to Disk" .. which is only usefull with normal HDDs which are much slower in booting.
the simpley way to do this:
open the command windows as administrator.
enter: powercfg -h off
this will delete the hidden hyberfill.sys file on C:
to bring it back again use: powercfg -h on
also i would suggest (after the system is back to working stable) to delet the "restorpoints" of Windows .. this should also bring ~1-4GB of fresh space:
right click on the SSD –> settings –> clean –> further options –> 2nd option (i have a german version so i do not know the exact naming in english) should be "systemrecovery and shadow copy" –> clean –> OK.
The suggestion above with "buy more RAM" wouldn´t be a good idea if you wouldn´t remove the "hybrid standby" function infront of it — cause your SSD would be then filled to the end.
Another suggestion about failing PSU is simply not right — the problem wouldn´t come with a BSOD it would simply crash the system .. and it would have been getting better through removing all of the HDDs which didn´t help.
Greetings!
Im a long time "lurker" here, but it seems i could perhaps help you with your problem.
From everything you described, it is possibly it is actualy a RAM issue.
So did you perhaps change/add RAM, or did you perhaps had a Power shortcut in house or in your part of town?
Cause RAM can sometimes be picky, when you install RAM into Motherboard, the MB usualy sets all the parameters automaticaly, (Latencys DDR2 4-4-4-12 for faster ram/ 5-5-5-15 for slower or if more than 4gb, and the same goes for voltage, DDR2 usualy works at 1.9-2.1V but many MB just give it 1.65V).
So if MB seets RAM for low latency and for low voltage, it will work ok until it starts using more and more of it, then it would just simply crash.
For instance, if you use mozilla, it still has problems with memory overfow, so you start browaing with just few tabs, but after few hours it uses >300mb of RAM, so you open few more windows, or start some video edit software and bam windows crashes.
Next time you start mozzila and you imediately open 20+ tabs, and it crashes immediately.
So if your PC worked without problem until now, and you changed some of your parts/updated bios/ had power loss in house/neighbourhood, the Bios on MB might reseted and loaded default/generic settings for RAM.
P.S.
Win7 usualy has a nice log about crash, It shows after computer boots.
could you post it somewhere, it could ease the process of finding the cause.
It should loke something like this:
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name:BlueScreen
OS Version:6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID:1050
Additional information about the problem:
BCCode:3b
BCP1:00000000C0000005
BCP2:FFFFF80002E04F8C
BCP3:FFFFF8800BBE2DD0
BCP4:0000000000000000
OS Version:6_1_7600
Service Pack:0_0
Product:256_1
Files that help describe the problem:
C:WindowsMinidump40911-25474-01.dmp
C:UsersMarkoAppDataLocalTempWER-55333-0.sysdata.xml
P.P.S
I doubt it is a POWER suplly issue, that PC with 4HD in peak is maybe using 300W-350W
It is sounding more like your motherboard is failing.
Si la RAM et les disques sont ok, il ne reste plus que la carte mère même si ce n'est pas franchement le plus fréquent.
word of advice, your info says you are running the x64 version of windows 7, which has a minimum ram requirement of 2gb, so you may run into more problems if you try running with only run stick of 1gb. Looking at your config info as well you appear to be running two different ram modules which may be contributing to the issue as well. Unfortunately as it stands with what you appear to have available, it'd be hard to do any testing beyond adjusting the timings and voltage. as another poster pointed out, the board may be setting the voltages around 1.65v, when your ddr2 memory i believe is rated to run at 1.8v
All that aside, it may be a sign to upgrade your comp anyway if you are still running a system on ddr2 memory. a new i3 or i5 system running 4-8gb or ram wouldnt be that expensive.
“but if there is another hard disk plugged, no matter which one is plugged, there will eventually be a system freeze”
Just from that as well as the numerous BSODs, it sounds like the PSU needs to be replaced. The other could be RAM, but I’d bet it’s the PSU.
From looking at your system spec you won’t need a powerful psu and good decent branded 400-500w will be more than fine. GL
I haven't read everything but if you are sure your RAM and graphics card is fine.
Then from those error messages it sounds like you have a corrupted file system.
Have you tried to:
1.) Update the firmware of the SSD? (might erase all the data contained in it)
2.) Update the motherboard firmware
3.) Set all the ram timings so that they are all similar. Use the slowest (PC2-5300) timings and speed to all of the sticks.
4.) Update the drivers.
5.) remove some unecessary software. eg. daemontools caused my system to randomly reboot
To add to my previous comment
6.) tried plugging the drives to different sata ports
7.) tried a different sata cable
8.) restore the bios settings to defaults
9.) reinstall windows
If all of the above result to nothing i would suggest trying out the drives on another PC for a while and if no problem comes up go for a good quality 400-500W PSU from brands like seasonic, corsair, etc.
try swapping hard drive cables.
try memtest on every RAM alone, at the same time make sure you got no sporadically failing fans.
either way, those are rather uncommon but a bitch to catch.
Soooo eventually i couldnt hold back to post here – though i didnt want to help here for several reasons…
And ähhhm – sry for my bad english – I'm from "Bratwurst-Land" ^^
First i want to say that i consider myself kinda pro cause i earn some money by creating special pc gaming systems from selected components for my customers.
okay but back to business…
by ur description its hard to say exactly whats the cause of the errors your expiriencing, therefore i recommend you to CREATE A BOOTABLE USB MEMORY STICK WITH A OS TO TEST YOUR SYSTEM LIKE PENDRIVE.
after you got it ready UNPLUG ALL DRIVES AND USE pendirve FOR SOME TIME – if the problems still occure you can be pretty shure that the HDs are not causing it.
okay if the HDs are not the cause of ya problem check that your PC IS COOL ENOUGH – open it and remove the dust – check with speedfan taht your processor temp isnt too high – if its still to high after you've removed the dust you might have to add NEW COOLING PASTE between CPU and COOLER
If the problem still occures check RAM with diagnostic tool for RAM in PENDRIVE
IF YOUR RAM IS OKAY TOO ITS GETTING ( a lil bit more) DIFFICULT ^^
it could be your PSU – but if you've got a PSU from a common brand its not likely…
if not you might try to exchange it for testing
ONE THING I WANT TO SAY CLEARLY IS, THAT 400 WATT ARE TOTALLY ENOUGH FOR YOUR SYSTEM – >>BUT<< THE WATT NUMBER OF THE PSU MIGHT BE NOT ITS REAL>> EFFECTIVE<< WATT NUMBER…(i will not go into detail here)
ahh okay … another thing that came to my mind is that ur SSD might also cause the probs, but its more or less unlikely cause its a good one and youve got win 7…
did the probs already occured BEFORE you added it to your system?
if not you might get informed wheter its a known cause for problems like yours
Sooo if nothing helped you should get a new system – yours is really,really outdated ^^ –
cause the reason for your BSODS could be broken capacitors on your motherboard – so called china-capacitors ^^ and as long your not a real pro in terms of welding and electronics better dont try to change them ^^
If you should still have questions reply here – the email address is not working…
Good luck !
Okay here a testing tool for ya SSD http://www.heise.de/download/h2testw.html
comes from this site http://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/f227/nuetzli…
sry, everthing in german…
and here the pendrive site http://www.pendrivelinux.com/