BSOD

[John Connor]

I keep getting a BSOD in Windows 7 Ultimate. I do a few things and the computer crashes. The stop code begins with 0x000000F4. I can't take a good snap shot of the screen before the computer tries to restart. I was thinking my old SSD which has something like 1500 hours of use. I never had the issue before and installed nothing prior to this happening. I was just playing GTA Vice City when I got the crash. I can't use Whocrashed because I only have 19GB of space left and apparently it needs at least 25GB. If I had enough time before the crash I could move some data around.

Would that stop code be indicative of the HDD? I do suspect a PCI-e SATA card as well. Not sure if I can run SFC/scannow as the computer will more than likely crash, but I'll try it anyway.

 

[Ketchup]

Is there is .dmp file in the Windows\Minidump folder? It can be copied to any Windows computer and placed in the same directory (you will need to create the folder if that computer has never experienced a dump). Then run Whocrashed on that computer.

 

[UsandThem]

Since you can't run Whocrashed, try the steps in the "best answer" here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2501688/blue-screen-stop-0x000000f4-error.html

 

[John Connor]

Well, I ran SFC /scannow and at about 85% the system BSODed. I then ran Memtest 86+ 1 pass no errors. So I attempted SFC /scannow again. This time at about 70% system crashed again. So I knew I had to do this with the Windows disk independent of the OS. But in order to do that I would need to unencrypt my HDD. I use TrueCrypt. So I loaded the TC CD and booted it. Proceeded to unencrypt the HDD independent of the OS. No more than 30 min goes by and there was a write error. So this immediately tells me it's the HDD and it is bad.

So I will be replacing the SSD. I guess it's due. It's only a 120GB and bought it about 7 or 8 years ago. Crystaldiskinfo said I had about 1,500 hours on the thing. Crazy thing is, is that I was still able to boot the computer even after the process of decryption had begun. I thought for sure that write error would have meant a broken data integrity between unencrypted and encrypted data. So now I'm wondering if I should run several passes of HDD Regenerator and then doing a clone. Hate to have to reinstall all those programs and a 50 GB install of Flight Simulator. That I do have backups of, but still. I added some scenery and other stuff that hasn't been synced with my backups yet. I think writing to the disk is what is causing the BSOD or perhaps there is already corupt system files. Which means a clone will be a fruitless endeavor. Worth a shot any way. Worst case my new HDD has OS issues and if that happens I'll reinstall Windows and all my crap from scratch. Which will take a few days. Come to think of it. I might have a clone somewhere. Old, but useful.

 

[VirtualLarry]

If this is an older OCZ SSD (likely)? Then possibly, a Secure Erase will reset the mapping tables, which might have gotten corrupted. You might even be able to revive the drive that way, and make it usable again.

I gave a friend an OCZ VPR2 drive, and it died on him, suddenly. But when I told him about the Secure Erase, he was finally able to hot-plug it and get it Secure Erased, and now he's able to use it again. It just had some sort of weird unknown glitch, I guess.

1500 hours is not a lot for an SSD, and unless you've had a write-heavy workload, the NAND is probably mostly fine, unless one of the chips itself has developed a defect, and that's why it's punting.

Edit: That said, given that this is an older 120GB drive, you may just want to bite the bullet and get a 500/512GB SSD instead.

I recommend the Samsung 850 EVO 500GB, the Crucial MX300 525GB, or the Adata SU800 Ultimate 512GB.

 

[John Connor]

Not an OCZ. It's a 120 GB Adata SP something or other. I have to look at the model again. I didn't do much writhing on the drive. I mentioned HDD Regenerator, but after reading about it again it's only for platters. I'll just run Windows check disk and see what happens.


Plan on buying a replacement soon. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820156150

 

[John Connor]

So I ran check disk twice and it only get to stage 4 of 5 always BSODing at a certain fie it seems.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I would copy everything of value off of it (if you can), and then try a Linux LiveUSB and try a manual command-line Secure Erase and see if it fixes the issue. Then do a fresh install onto it (don't just restore an image backup from the original corrupted SSD).

Edit: That MX300 is a fine choice as a replacement.

 

[mxnerd]

Check Event Viewer, might give you some idea.

Googled and some people suggest it could be faulty disk or faulty SATA cable.

 

[John Connor]

Pulled the drive and tried to raw copy it to another external. Total fail, won't read from it at all. It's gone to hell. Unless anybody knows of a good SSD program that can attempt to fix blocks/sectors. I tried Victoria and it's a DOS Russian program I can't figure out. Doing a cluster scan is fruitless as well. Something tells me NAND is bad or something.

Already checked event viewer before, Seen nothing. Now I can't even boot the computer without a BSOD.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I tried Victoria and it's a DOS Russian program I can't figure out.

Why bother with stuff like that? Your first choice should be to do a Secure Erase in Linux, hotplugging if the drive is really wonky. If that doesn't work, then worry about something more esoteric.

 

[John Connor]

Because I'd like to recover my data?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Let me suggest a NAS, with support for encrypted volumes / user data (Seen that option on my QNAP TS-451 I think), that you power-on, log in, enter the encrypted volume password, then back up your client PC to it, and then shut it down.

At least, for future reference.

 

[John Connor]

I have an external HDD that I clone to. It just so happened about a month ago I deleted the clone thinking I was going to reclone. Well, it's gone and I tried to recover the partition on the external and couldn't. Might be due to the fact I enceypted the clone as well. I mean, why encrypt the computer and not the clone, right? Oh well. Not that big of a loss. I do have backups of the most important data.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, your troubles motivated me to get the newest version of Macrium Reflect, and install it and make a USB boot drive, and backup one of my PCs to my NAS, after re-configuring it with volume encryption.

Seems to work.

 

[John Connor]

Yeah, it pays to have a backup. At the same time I buy my SSD at the egg, I'm buying another external. I keep it all in a fireproof safe with DVD/RW backups of my websites, etc. The database is only about 10MB so it's not like this site. If it grows I'll move to Blu-ray. But I want Blu-ray for my 55GB FS2004. Right now it's backed up to three HDDs.