PC crashes

[Nick]

Check you have the latest version of the bios.

Realistically, I've not seen any bios-related issues in many years - this is a fairly new PC (see OP) - I'd be astonished if the bios version was in any way connected with this.

Solid disk errors is never a good sign. Using poor quality (cheap) SATA cables can sometimes cause issues, but you should never get disk errors like that.

[ppppenguin]

System is a bit of a mixture. Originally bought from a specialist shop but I've re-installed the OS since then. I supplied the system HDD which is a Crucial MX100 512GB SSD. It's over a year old but hasn't seen much use until recently. The D: drive is a WD Blue 1TB.

What tools do you recommend for testing the disks and their interfaces? Is CHK DSK a good bet, if so which switches?

[unrealdave]

Doesn't take a minute to check the bios is the latest. Also the motherboard manufacturer will have a support section and there could be mention of win 7 os causing probs

[ppppenguin]

The mobo is a Gigabyte Z97P-D3.

Typing: wmic bios get smbiosbiosversion at a command prompt returns F6 as the version. This page says latest is F9b: http://uk.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-Z9...support-dl but that's a beta version so F8 is probably a better bet.

[Nick]

System is a bit of  a mixture. Originally bought from a specialist shop but I've re-installed the OS since then. I supplied the system HDD which is a Crucial MX100 512GB SSD.  It's over a year old but hasn't seen much use until recently. The D: drive is a WD Blue 1TB.

What tools do you recommend for testing the disks and their interfaces? Is CHK DSK a good bet, if so which switches?

I can't see from the error log which drive is generating errors - the MX100 is not a bad unit at all - I use those, but it is, technically, a legacy SSD. Having said that, I've never seen a failure on one and Crucial are a very good company (they're the retail arm of Micron, one of the biggest memory manufacturers in the world and in the top 5 world-wide companies for semiconductors generally).

Having said that, they are SATA III drives and I HAVE seen errors on them when using cheap SATA cables (or when using SATA 2 cables - this is a SATA 3 MB & SATA 3 SSD) rather than decent stuff.

Note that there is absolutely no point in exercising an SSD - they have their own internal error checking and will swap out bad memory for good stuff off a spare list - they do this transparently to the host o/s.

What may fail is the signal path to the disk - check the event log for which drive is causing issues, and start from there.

WD Blue drives (the spinning metal ones) are cheap and cheerful - a failure on a non-system drive is unlikely to crash the system unless the pagefile is on it////

chkdsk only repairs the file system - it doesn't exercise the drive.

Western Digital have their own, free, drive diagnostics - Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostic (DLGDIAG) - available for download from http://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?p=3

Do backup the WD drive before doing any tests on it - the Extended Tests are supposedly non-destructive, but as something somewhere is already flaky, I'd be cautious.

[Nick]

The mobo is a Gigabyte Z97P-D3.

Typing: wmic bios get smbiosbiosversion at a command prompt returns F6 as the version. This page says latest is F9b: http://uk.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-Z9...support-dl but that's a beta version so F8 is probably a better bet.

Should not really be necessary unless there are known problems with the MB and the drives you're using. Do the other stuff first.

[ppppenguin]

The disk errors ar e all: "The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk4\DR4"

No idea which drive is DR4 but here's a capture of the DIsk Management screen.

[Nick]

The disk errors ar e all: "The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk4\DR4"

No idea which drive is DR4 but here's a capture of the DIsk Management screen.

It's not a simple issue to map the internal name to something sensible, unfortunately.

Do the following - note the "Run as Administrator" bit - the kernel descriptors for the drive are not readable unless you are running as a local administrator.

1. Download WinObj from SysInternals - note that SysInternals is part of Microsoft now, so it's a trusted tool.
   
   
2. Run it as administrator
   
   
3. Go to \Device\HarddiskX - Expand the tree on the left pane - Device -> then click on the HarddiskX entry, in this case Harddisk4
   
   
4. You will see individual PartitionY symbolic links (to \Device\HarddiskVolumeZ), note these down
   
   
5. Go to \GLOBAL??, sort by the 3rd column "SymLink"
   
   
6. Find the \Device\HarddiskVolumeZ value you noted down in the 3rd column
   
   
7. You will see various names of that volume in the first column, including HarddiskXPartitionY, Volume{GUID} and (what's probably most useful for most people) the DOS-style letter like C:
   

Have fun !

PS. Using SysInternals tools like WinObj gets you brownie points with hackers

[ppppenguin]

Winobj runs just fine. But there's no Harddisk4, just 0-3.

Under Global??
C: is a symlink \Device\harddiskVolume2
D: is a symlink \Device\harddiskVolume3

E: and F: are CDroms as expected

V: and W: are \Device\harddiskVolumes 4 and 5
I think these are related to the USB hub in one of the monitors which I use. Unplugging the USB from the monitor makes V and W disappear both from Winobj and Disk Management.

PS: Just found DR4. It's under Harddisk2. Which is the C: drive as previously found.
PPS: Is it worth mirroring the C: drive on to another physical drive (I have a spare SSD and 512GB conventional drives). I have used Aomei Backupper to do backups and drive clones. Seems to work well.

[Nick]

Yes. This is the problem with USB drives - they move the links around.

Do you use a usb hard drive for backup?


Stop using the USB ports for drives for a day and see what gets into the error logs...