Sudden BSOD and booting problems

Spuff

Spuff

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Paul
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A bit of a long shot but hopefully someone can shed some light! Running Windows 7 with an SSD as a boot drive which has been fine for 18 months.

Since yesterday it seems to freeze after about an hour then brief blue screen then tries to reboot. On rebooting it says it can't find the boot disk. I have to restart and hit F12 to get to a boot menu and select the SSD after which it boots fine into Windows. Then wait about an hour and it freezes again.

So there seem to be two things (which I assume are related) - the initial crash and the loss of boot settings.

The only thing that might be relevant (although it could be a red herring) is I installed some software yesterday that required the .net framework - there seems to be some fairly frequent SSD and CPU activity since then when the PC is idle - but like I say this might be nothing.

Any thoughts? :shrug:
 
OK, thanks - done - will wait until the next BSOD...
 
Here's the "whocrashed" report from the last crash:

On Sun 03/03/2013 18:34:47 GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\030313-19515-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x75C40)
Bugcheck code: 0xF4 (0x3, 0xFFFFFA8002EAB590, 0xFFFFFA8002EAB870, 0xFFFFF80002DC8470)
Error: CRITICAL_OBJECT_TERMINATION
file path: C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: NT Kernel & System
Bug check description: This indicates that a process or thread crucial to system operation has unexpectedly exited or been terminated.
This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem. This problem might be caused by a thermal issue.
The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver that cannot be identified at this time.
 
Thermal issue... pretty much what I would have suggested. is the CPU fan/cooler clear of fluff, still seated properly and working OK?
 
Or have you recently run updates or downloaded drivers.
Try booting into safe mode as it only loads limited drivers and seeing if it still happens.
If it doesn't then you're looking at a dodgy update or driver issue.
 
RobertP said:
Thermal issue... pretty much what I would have suggested. is the CPU fan/cooler clear of fluff, still seated properly and working OK?
Click to expand...

Funny that 'my' old works laptop started doing same a few days ago, while linux ran without any crashes. I have never touched it since but may have a play later on
 
Paul, install a temperature monitoring program, such as speedfan, overdrive if it's an AMD processor etc. and monitor the temps. Could also be a memory issue, but lets rule out overheating first.
Have you done any overclocking?


daugirdas said:
Funny that 'my' old works laptop started doing same a few days ago, while linux ran without any crashes. I have never touched it since but may have a play later on
Click to expand...

BSODs can be caused by a number of different things. It is possible yours is down to overheating - linux tends to use less system resources than windows hence it's not being worked as much so stays cooler.
 
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i wouldnt expect a BSOD for a thermal issue, normally the machine would just power down.

im thinking a hard disk or drivers/hardware issue. have you downloaded any (or let MS update download) any new device drivers?

also worth checking/replacing the sata cable if the boot disk keeps going walkies.

whats the stop code on the BSOD?
 
Right, I installed RealTemp and the readings hover around the mid-40s mark for both cores and the maximum reached has been 68 degrees when I tried the 100% stress test of the cpu, so I would assume that the thermal side is OK?

What is apparent though is that it seems to crash consistently around the 60 minute mark from booting up (and there is still the issue of it not finding the boot disk on restart).

I think I will uninstall the .net framework (which coincided with the start of these problems) and if that doesn't resolve it will reinstall Windows 7.
 
If you have got system restore enabled, might be worth using that instead of just uninstalling it.
 
joesmith said:
If you have got system restore enabled, might be worth using that instead of just uninstalling it.
Click to expand...

Ah. Because I never get any computer problems I disabled it when I first installed the SSD. :bonk:

I've uninstalled .net framework (although I know long term that's not really a solution), it hasn't been overclocked and no new drivers have been added recently. So I'll wait until about 2 ish which should be when it's due to crash again.
 
Crashed bang on the hour. I'll try a reinstall...
 
I've checked and it's not loose. Although I've now uninstalled it, I wonder if it's something you mentioned earlier about the .NET running some sort of optimisation - seems odd that it crashes pretty much after an hour. The first thing that happens is that the internet connection drops then everything locks up.

Five minutes to go until the next one.
 
sata cables are a fragile thing, might be worth temporarily swapping them over.

Spuff said:
The first thing that happens is that the internet connection drops then everything locks up.
Click to expand...

network driver then maybe if it keeps happening? got the latest drivers from the network card manufacturer?

can we have the stop code on the BSOD if it happens again?
 
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As said earlier boot unto safe mode, see if it crashes after 1 Hour
 
neil_g said:
whats the stop code on the BSOD?
Click to expand...

neil_g said:
can we have the stop code on the BSOD if it happens again?
Click to expand...

Details of the BSOD stop code are in post 5

Code: 
On Sun 03/03/2013 18:34:47 GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\030313-19515-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x75C40) 
Bugcheck code: 0xF4 (0x3, 0xFFFFFA8002EAB590, 0xFFFFFA8002EAB870, 0xFFFFF80002DC8470)
Error: CRITICAL_OBJECT_TERMINATION
file path: C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: NT Kernel & System
Bug check description: This indicates that a process or thread crucial to system operation has unexpectedly exited or been terminated. 
This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem. This problem might be caused by a thermal issue. 
The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver that cannot be identified at this time.
 
yeah i would like to confirm if the BSOD does match the log with 0x000000F4 though.

probably does but id always trust a live error message over one thats been written to a file while in a crashed state. especially if it might be a hard disk fault :)

(probably just me being anal though :lol: )
 
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Gr8Shot said:
As said earlier boot unto safe mode, see if it crashes after 1 Hour
Click to expand...

I was just typing a reply that everything was working after booting into safe mode when it crashed!

neil_g said:
also what SSD is it? there are some links to this error and sandforce faults.

along with pagefile issues. has the page file settings been altered?
Click to expand...

It's a Crucial M4. I've replaced the SATA cable with no joy but I've just found this which could be the answer!

Quote:
(Updating the firmware will) correct a condition where an incorrect response to a SMART counter will cause the m4 drive to become unresponsive after 5184 hours of Power-on time. The drive will recover after a power cycle, however, this failure will repeat once per hour after reaching this point. The condition will allow the end user to successfully update firmware, and poses no risk to user or system data stored on the drive.


I bought the drive in March 2012 so I guess my 5184 hours are up (approx. 15 hours per day would be right). I'll update the firmware and hopefully that'll be it :thumbs:
 
Spuff said:
I was just typing a reply that everything was working after booting into safe mode when it crashed!



It's a Crucial M4. I've replaced the SATA cable with no joy but I've just found this which could be the answer!

Quote:
(Updating the firmware will) correct a condition where an incorrect response to a SMART counter will cause the m4 drive to become unresponsive after 5184 hours of Power-on time. The drive will recover after a power cycle, however, this failure will repeat once per hour after reaching this point. The condition will allow the end user to successfully update firmware, and poses no risk to user or system data stored on the drive.


I bought the drive in March 2012 so I guess my 5184 hours are up (approx. 15 hours per day would be right). I'll update the firmware and hopefully that'll be it :thumbs:
Click to expand...

Well done, learn something everyday.
 
Nice find Paul. Interesting that. I have the M4 myself, I did update the firmware quite recently so mine should be OK (hopefully!).
 
Well I did the firmware update about 3 hours ago and all is well since. Ironically I had to (re)load .NET framework for the update process - I thought it was this that had caused the crashing in the first place - obviously not.

I bought the Crucial SSD in March 2012 and the crashing problem after 5000 hours use was already known about (not by me obviously) in Jan 2012 so I was already a patch behind when I installed it and as of 3 hours ago 4 patches behind. Latest version for those with an M4 is 040H. My fault for not checking I guess, when I installed it.

Anyway, thanks to all for your suggestions and help. It was the process of elimination that helped narrow down the problem to the SSD :thumbs:
 
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