[solved] Sudden, severe instability problems, unsure how to begin diagnosis

[pavelb]

Hello, have had great experiences here before with solving computer issues, so thought I'd ask again:

A couple days ago, I've started experiencing severe instability issues on my machine. The issues are:

• applications become unresponsive shortly after booting, once this begins happening all applications stop responding and I have to hard reboot the pc (the mouse and keyboard remain operable)
• sometimes following reboot, the pc tries to boot from the wrong hard disk, going into UEFI (BIOS) and changing the boot order back usually helps, sometimes the boot drive I'm using isn't detected right away and I have to perform another hard reboot in order to make it visible

This may point to a problem in the drive itself (it's a Crucial 64GB SSD) or the controller, or could be an entirely new issue -- I don't really know where to begin in diagnosing it. The OS being used is Windows 7 Professional.

The only thing that has changed recently in terms of software/hardware installations is I installed Dota2-beta and played it for, perhaps, 2-3 hours. The game itself was installed on another SSD in the pc that is used solely for apps/games (no OS).

Could this be a software issue (corrupt OS files?) Or does the boot order changing and problems with drive detection point to drive or controller problems? How would you recommend I proceed with testing/diagnosis?

Thank you.

 

[BrightCandle]

One thing you can do is get a Ubuntu Live CD/Flash drive and boot into that. In the messages at boot (run dmesg in the console after boot to review them) any hardware issues will be listed and that may give you an idea if something has gone wrong.

If all initially looks well and you are into the OS and everything is working then you can mount the drive, performance test it and do a drive scan for errors. You can also run 3D programs and a variety of different apps to confirm that everything is working correctly.

If Ubuntu live runs correctly then its almost certainly Windows that is the problem, its possible to get a corrupted install in a number of ways (overclocking being a common one).

 

[RadiclDreamer]

There was a Crucial M4 Firmware update (I am just assuming its an M4) that addressed several issues with the drive not being detected on boot as well as several other issues. If this is the model you are using have you checked for a drive firmware update?

 

[pavelb]

One thing you can do is get a Ubuntu Live CD/Flash drive and boot into that. In the messages at boot (run dmesg in the console after boot to review them) any hardware issues will be listed and that may give you an idea if something has gone wrong.

If all initially looks well and you are into the OS and everything is working then you can mount the drive, performance test it and do a drive scan for errors. You can also run 3D programs and a variety of different apps to confirm that everything is working correctly.

If Ubuntu live runs correctly then its almost certainly Windows that is the problem, its possible to get a corrupted install in a number of ways (overclocking being a common one).

Good idea. I'll boot from a LiveCD tonight. I'm familiar with dmesg and I'll mount the drive. What are some common diagnostic tools that come bundled on the LiveCD (I haven't had a chance to diagnose HDD issues on Linux before)? Alternatively I can probably run the OS out of RAM (I have a lot) and install any recommended tools that don't come bundled.

 

[pavelb]

So, after booting into a Live Ubuntu session, I didn't come accross anything in dmesg (no errors, no SATA/IDE/ATA/storage related warnings).

fdisk -l doesn't see the troubled SSD at all. Issuing partprobe then fdisk -l seems to have no effect either (thought I guess partprobe just re-reads the partition tables rather than detecting drives).

Any ideas?

edit: I should mention, that despite the disk not being detected consistently by UEFI (bios) and having the aforementioned issues, I've run a number of HD Tune Pro benchmarks and tests on it and everything passed without a hitch (no SMART warning flags either - i.e. everything seems within normal, unalarming, ranges)

 

[pavelb]

There was a Crucial M4 Firmware update (I am just assuming its an M4) that addressed several issues with the drive not being detected on boot as well as several other issues. If this is the model you are using have you checked for a drive firmware update?

Hey RadiclDreamer,

You were correct, the solution was to update the firmware. I plugged the drive into a SATAII port to get the updating software from Crucial to recognize the drive and from there everything went smoothly. Plugged the drive back into a SATAIII port and the stability issues haven't returned, yet.

Thanks.