Computer issue

Bishop149 · Post by **Bishop149** » Fri, 20. Apr 18, 14:26

Ok so my computer has developed an issue.

It first started last night when a game crashed and did so in a way which made the whole machine completely unresponsive, no choice but to hard reset. I've been poking it this morning to try and work out the problem and have experienced similar crashes whilst trying to:
- Run the game
- Open Steam
- Verify the games cache
- Back up files from the Steam folder.
The common factor in all of it is the hard drive my steam installation is on. I'm thinking that it's got an frequent but intermittent error that means at some point the machine get halfway through accessing a file only for it suddenly to vanish from the system.
Would it be normal for such an issue to result in the system COMPLETELY locking up as it seems to?
What's the best way to check the drive for issues?
Would such an error be logged somewhere?

Thanks in advance!

mrbadger · Post by **mrbadger** » Fri, 20. Apr 18, 14:44

Is this only while playing games?

Do other programs run fine?

If so then it might be related to the hardware your games put a lot of stress on, or drivers they make use of.

Drive scanning, if you want to do a good job, is best done at system boot before any programs load.

matthewfarmery · Post by **matthewfarmery** » Fri, 20. Apr 18, 15:09

System lockups are hardware related, it could be the graphics card, or the CPU,

this is a good read

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ho ... ,5449.html

But if you are having a defective gcard or CPU, then stress testing will only make things worse.

https://www.memtest86.com/

for checking ram, but I have a hunch it might either be the CPU or gcard that is the issue.

Post by **CBJ** » Fri, 20. Apr 18, 15:09

I'm with mrbadger on this. It sounds more like a hardware stress issue that a faulty hard drive, though of course the stressed component could indeed be that. For a full system hang like that, the first components I'd be looking at would be the memory, the CPU temperature, and the PSU.

Bishop149 · Post by **Bishop149** » Fri, 20. Apr 18, 15:50

mrbadger wrote:Is this only while playing games?

Do other programs run fine?

If so then it might be related to the hardware your games put a lot of stress on, or drivers they make use of.

Drive scanning, if you want to do a good job, is best done at system boot before any programs load.

Everything else runs fine, no temperatures look excessive and it doesn't only happen when under high stress, e.g. playing a game. The last time was when I attempted to run SeaTools on the drive.
Thus far it all seems fine, issue seems only to occur when I spend any time accessing things on that Hard Drive.

Anyway I'll dig out Furmark and do a stress test and see what happens.
I'll also look into the DOS versions of the HDD checkers.

pjknibbs · Post by **pjknibbs** » Fri, 20. Apr 18, 15:53

It is actually possible for a hard drive issue to cause symptoms like this--I had a drive once that would randomly just disappear from the system of its own accord, and obviously the next time the system tried to read or write from that drive, bad things happened. However, assuming the drive that's vanished is not your system drive, there should be an obvious error in the event log to show that's happened (e.g. "Drive XXX was removed from the system without being cleanly shut down first" or words to that effect).

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Fri, 20. Apr 18, 16:44

It might be worth looking for Windows error messages to help to isolate the issue. For Win 8 and 10 they are towards the end in a saved DxDiag that you could run (the list titled Diagnostics - Windows Error Reporting is what you want ).

For earlier OSs see this FAQ although obviously the named application .exe(s) you are looking for will be different.

You might just get serious device/system errors reported for several applications. It sounds to me as though you could be looking at a cluster of APPHANG errors.

burger1 · Post by **burger1** » Fri, 20. Apr 18, 17:32

Are your gpu and cpu temperatures ok when starting a game up?

Anything overclocked?

May as well run a hard drive test just to see.

felter · Post by **felter** » Fri, 20. Apr 18, 17:36

Have you tried re-installing steam.

or as you think it is the hard drive, open up file explorer, right click on the hard drive, click on properties select the tools tab and click on the error check button. You will probably get a message saying that the drive is fine, but scan it anyway.

Redvers Ganderpoke · Post by **Redvers Ganderpoke** » Fri, 20. Apr 18, 18:16

CBJ wrote: and the PSU.

Don't forget CBJ's suggestion - voltages can drop under load and cause all manner of problems that manifest as strange problems. The trouble is its quite hard to troubleshoot unless you have another working PSU.

Bishop149 · Post by **Bishop149** » Fri, 20. Apr 18, 21:30

GPU and CPU tests passed pretty convincingly.

- Furmark score for GPU was bang on what would be expected for my hardware, Max GPU temp: 40C
- CPU Burner run for 5 minutes, no issues, max CPU temp: 49C
- Water temp. after all tests: 30C

Haven't touched the hardrive drive for hours, and all has been well.
Next I'll try running diagnostics on the drive again, if that causes it to fall over I'll be pretty convinced its the drive.

It is odd, nothing stands out in the event log except the power interrupts caused by the hard resets.

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Fri, 20. Apr 18, 21:53

If it is a harddrive that is *not* required for OS and boot purposes then you should be able to run a full error check on it without any issues affecting the test execution itself and the presentation of the results. What OS are you running? (The supplied disk checking tools and locations vary with OS.)

Bishop149 · Post by **Bishop149** » Fri, 20. Apr 18, 22:36

Windows 10, I was going to check with a third party program.
Would you suggest the windows tools to be preferable?

Post by **korio** » Fri, 20. Apr 18, 22:42

Bishop149 wrote:GPU and CPU tests passed pretty convincingly.

- Furmark score for GPU was bang on what would be expected for my hardware, Max GPU temp: 40C
- CPU Burner run for 5 minutes, no issues, max CPU temp: 49C
- Water temp. after all tests: 30C

Haven't touched the hardrive drive for hours, and all has been well.
Next I'll try running diagnostics on the drive again, if that causes it to fall over I'll be pretty convinced its the drive.

It is odd, nothing stands out in the event log except the power interrupts caused by the hard resets.

open an admin level CMD window, go to the drive with D: for example (change the letter with the one of your drive)

And then run a chkdsk, if it finds something then do a chkdsk /f and it will try to fix it.

You can save a lot of time with this simple check. And it should showw you the most common errors.

Of course its better to run a low level sector write and read check, but if chkdsk finds anything atleast its pointing you that probably the disk is faulty.

I have done it a lot of times at work laptops and works like a charm.

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Fri, 20. Apr 18, 22:56

It is the easiest option if you do a simple OS disk scan first and this will identify a really serious or persistent issue. (You don't need to remember any names etc either.)

Open File Explorer, right-click on the relevant drive, select Properties, select the Tools tab, select the Check button. Start the scan.

Depending on the drive it may take some time and if there are issues found it will prompt you how to rerun it in 'attempt repair' mode.

NOTE: This is just the Win10 UI version of what korio was suggesting above.

Bishop149 · Post by **Bishop149** » Sat, 21. Apr 18, 00:33

Attempted to scan the drive with chkdisk (UI rather than DOS), as expected it fell over. Process started, then froze, followed by system non-responsiveness. Not quite the complete lockup experience before but enough to make it impossible to shutdown normally, hard reset again require.

Ran chkdisk on another drive as a control, worked fine.

Edit: Elevated command prompt version gave same result. Fell over about 80% of the way through Stage 2.

99.9% sure the drive is SEVERELY buggered.

Post by **korio** » Sat, 21. Apr 18, 00:44

Bishop149 wrote:Attempted to scan the drive with chkdisk (UI rather than DOS), as expected it fell over. Process started, then froze, followed by system non-responsiveness. Not quite the complete lockup experience before but enough to make it impossible to shutdown normally, hard reset again require.

Ran chkdisk on another drive as a control, worked fine.

Do it with chkdsk on the faulty drive, it should "unmount" the drive and hopefully it will not lock the computer again.

Also you can open the resource manager, over the storage tab it should have a ton of errors related to the faulty drive.

Given what you said, if you really need to recover the disc, or atleast try to, i would go to hirens boot cd and try a low level sector recovery tool.

If you dont really need the drive, i would just discard it.

felter · Post by **felter** » Sat, 21. Apr 18, 03:12

It is sounding like it's the hard drive. I would save any important stuff on it to another drive, then replace it, as when they start to go they normally don't stop and it's always better to be safe than sorry.

Bishop149 · Post by **Bishop149** » Sat, 21. Apr 18, 09:00

So I have a follow up question.

How many of you are using an SSD for gaming?
I'm looking into a replacement and I'm a little torn between a 500GB SSD and a 4TB HDD. Both coming in at around the same price.

My current Steam folder is 1.2TB and individual games can take up 50-100GB in the case of especially large ones. Is the extra performance worth having to be pretty selective about what you have installed at any one time?

I'd like a 1TB SSD but waaaaaay too expensive.
Currently leaning more towards the HDD.

Post by **CBJ** » Sat, 21. Apr 18, 10:46

I use an SSD as a system drive, because it makes the PC as a whole operate more smoothly, but I install my actual games on an HDD. It's a relatively cheap combination that gives good results, and it still leaves me the option of installing a specific game or two on the SSD if I find ones that really benefit from it.

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Computer issue

Computer issue