PC crashing?

Peerzy · 24 Sep 2013 at 08:13

Not sure where to go with this one, a friend has a year or so old custom build office PC. i3 CPU, 8GB RAM, 64GB SSD etc....

For the last few days he's been using it, then coming back to it to find it on a black screen with;

Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press any key

Obviously the PC is rebooting itself and getting stuck on this screen.

I went to have a look yesterday and checked the eventviewer and there isn't anything I can see doing it, just a massive gap and 'the previous shutdown at xx:xx was unexpected'.

I using the PC and suddenly it became unresponsive, couldn't even task manager and was left to push the reboot button myself.

The HDD is set to boot first and when he gets the black screen if he reboots the machine it loads into Windows and works fine for another hour or so before repeating.

Microsoft Security Essentials brings up nothing and he's running Windows 7 x64 with all your usual updates.

Any ideas?

Stelly · 24 Sep 2013 at 08:17

Sounds like a hard disk issue to me... not consistent enough for a SATA cable issue... I recommend, if you have a spare HDD, cloning the OS to the other HDD and booting into that to see if the issue still happens.

Stelly

Peerzy · 24 Sep 2013 at 08:21

Stelly said:
Sounds like a hard disk issue to me... not consistent enough for a SATA cable issue... I recommend, if you have a spare HDD, cloning the OS to the other HDD and booting into that to see if the issue still happens.

Stelly

I'm sure I can find a spare HDD, it won't be an SSD though - will that matter?

If not then what software would you suggest to clone the hard drive?

Meekal · 24 Sep 2013 at 09:26

Peerzy said:
I'm sure I can find a spare HDD, it won't be an SSD though - will that matter?

If not then what software would you suggest to clone the hard drive?

From experience, Cloning an SSD isn't always the best idea.

If it is only a 64GB HD then why not just copy all of the files you need from it to an external and do a fresh build.

You could also use a Hirens Disk and run HD Tune on the SSD to see if it throws up any obvious problems. But I think you want to look into other issues such as over heating for the PC to restart itself in the first place.

Peerzy · 24 Sep 2013 at 09:48

Meekal said:
From experience, Cloning an SSD isn't always the best idea.

If it is only a 64GB HD then why not just copy all of the files you need from it to an external and do a fresh build.

You could also use a Hirens Disk and run HD Tune on the SSD to see if it throws up any obvious problems. But I think you want to look into other issues such as over heating for the PC to restart itself in the first place.

I've got Hirens CD so I'll run that program, advantage of cloning the drive is lots of setup has been done on the PC but a fresh format and install was a last option.

Stelly · 24 Sep 2013 at 09:55

Peerzy said:
I'm sure I can find a spare HDD, it won't be an SSD though - will that matter?

If not then what software would you suggest to clone the hard drive?

There is no problem at all cloning an SSD (as long as its Vista or over). I recommend Macrium Reflect Free for cloning mate.

Stelly

Peerzy · 24 Sep 2013 at 10:15

Stelly said:
There is no problem at all cloning an SSD (as long as its Vista or over). I recommend Macrium Reflect Free for cloning mate.

Stelly

Cheers, will grab it and have a go.

What's the best way to clone to SSD onto another HDD? Plug both into a working computer (as a 2nd and 3rd drive) and then run the program off the working PC?

Epoch · 24 Sep 2013 at 16:59

Have you updated the firmware on the SSD? Sometimes there is issues after a certain runtime on some older SSDs.

Stelly · 25 Sep 2013 at 07:49

Peerzy said:
Cheers, will grab it and have a go.

What's the best way to clone to SSD onto another HDD? Plug both into a working computer (as a 2nd and 3rd drive) and then run the program off the working PC?

Yes I would do that myself

Stelly

bledd · 25 Sep 2013 at 14:11

Check event viewer, see if there are hard drive errors.

Might be able to fix it using chkdsk /R

Keep data backed up!

Peerzy · 25 Sep 2013 at 14:17

Epoch said:
Have you updated the firmware on the SSD? Sometimes there is issues after a certain runtime on some older SSDs.

Just got the PC home, will have a look at the make and model of SSD and see if there is any new firmware out for it - never had to do this before though and it's worked for about a year.

Stelly said:
Yes I would do that myself

Stelly

Will give it a go in the next hour or so then!

bledd. said:
Check event viewer, see if there are hard drive errors.

Might be able to fix it using chkdsk /R

Keep data backed up!

Nothing in the eventviewer pointed at HDD errors, will back everything up before attempting to clone the drive!

Stelly · 25 Sep 2013 at 14:52

bledd. said:
Check event viewer, see if there are hard drive errors.

Might be able to fix it using chkdsk /R

Keep data backed up!

If he is getting just a black screen without a bluescreen its not even creating a dump file never mind writing to log files for the event viewer

Stelly

Peerzy · 25 Sep 2013 at 14:53

Right, it's a Crucial M4 60GB 2.5" SSD. I've backed up all his documents and run a checkdisk from within Win 7 and it returned to say there were some errors, a quick look at the log and all that appears to be is free space that was marked as allocated. I'm gonna clone everything to a 500GB HDD I've got spare and then see if that fixes the issue.

Peerzy · 25 Sep 2013 at 16:14

Hmmmm I think there is an issue with the HDD. I've managed to get everything off of it that is important (as a slave on my PC), I then went away and came back only to find the drive had totally disappeared from Explorer and it couldn't be found. Reboot didn't solve it so I shutdown, swapped cables and it's back again.

So I thought I'd clone it sharpish and be done with this, downloaded Macrium Reflect and selected to clone the drive to a spare 500GB, it's been sitting on 0% and 'Creating Volume Snapshots' for about 15 minutes now without doing anything. I can access the drive through Windows still but I'm not sure it's actually doing anything!

Peerzy · 25 Sep 2013 at 16:42

Drive fails to clone after about 30 minutes, I've rebooted, changed SATA cable and position and now it fails instantly.

I can still access the drive though and I've made sure I've got everything backed up. Ideally I don't want to do a fresh install as he's got so many settings configured.

Any ideas or suggestions on other cloning applications?

bledd · 25 Sep 2013 at 16:47

What firmware is on the drive, older firmware had a problem after 5200 hours of usage.

I believe the firmware that fixed it was 0309, before that, they were labelled 0009, 0013, or something.

Back up his stuff, then flash it with the latest firmware.

Peerzy · 25 Sep 2013 at 16:53

Interesting, wasn't aware of that. Everything is backed up, no idea on firmware - whatever came with the drive. It has Firmware Rev: 0009 written on it.

I'll download it now and have a whirl!

Peerzy · 25 Sep 2013 at 17:03

Firmware upgraded (surprisingly easy!), I'll chuck it back to him and hope to never hear about it again!

Elevon · 25 Sep 2013 at 17:05

Peerzy said:
Interesting, wasn't aware of that. Everything is backed up, no idea on firmware - whatever came with the drive. It has Firmware Rev: 0009 written on it.

I'll download it now and have a whirl!

Also might be worth running memtest86+ to rule out faulty memory,I had similar issue about a week ago,updated my Crucial SSD firmware,tried repair etc was my memory that was the issue (65000+ errors),new ram and clean install of OS fixed my issue.

Anyway does no harm to test your ram.

Peerzy · 27 Sep 2013 at 11:51

Firmware upgrade has solved the problem - thanks for the advice everyone!