Solved! When Disk Drives go bad...

[Craig234]

Reliability goes back to May 15. It shows an error on May 20; the info says 3 patches installed. Then there are errors on 7 days in a row starting May 25, with info saying Microsoft Visual C++ was reconfigured. Info on the third day of errors lists about 10 changes, windows and driver updates. That third day is the first one it goes from one app error to five.

As I was typing this post, World of Tanks had a box pop up I've never seen saying press to restart the game, saying something about video drivers.

 

[Craig234]

I run the driver update utility. It lists drivers to update. I'm looking at it, and then get a BSOD. It says collecting error info, but is hung at 0% and I have to power cycle.

After reboot, it did an SSD 'scan/repair'. Most stuff works ok. But Steam 'friends list' can't connect; GOG Galaxys says it couldn't connect and is shutting down; other programs, including other parts of Steam and this browser are fine.

I tell Steam to install a 1GB game, and it begins to reserve space and just freezes a few minutes. After 5+ minutes, it's sitting not moving at 4MB/200MB, with only spurts of downloading. Couple minutes watching it, still 3.9MB.

There is something weird going on.

Update: about 10 minutes later, it's downloaded one more MB. 5MB/200.

 

[Craig234]

While doing this download - which is about 2MB further in 5 more minutes - I ran an internet speed test.

142 MB download, 8MB upload, ping <1 ms.

 

[Craig234]

Several hours later, the download is up to 30mb/200mb.

 

[Craig234]

It's frustrating, I'm seeing some of the same symptoms as with the bad HD. World of tanks games take a minute to exit instead of 5 seconds, some web pages (like cnn.com) take a long time to load, etc. (By last night the download above did finish).

 

[VirtualLarry]

Have your moved your SSD and HDD to the Intel chipset SATA ports, yet? Changed out SATA cables?

 

[Craig234]

Have your moved your SSD and HDD to the Intel chipset SATA ports, yet? Changed out SATA cables?

Not yet, but I'm planning to change ports. But I don't think the SATA ports are the issue, as the PC worked fine for over a year with the current ports used. There's something else I think. You might be right about the SSD getting a problem, what else could it be? Not sure a RAM issue would be an explanation. Steam's store gets a black screen for 5 seconds, then over a minute for all the game pics to load...

 

[Craig234]

I'd buy a new SSD, but was waiting for the new Samsung 980's, and was planning to replace the SATA SSD with an nvme. Besides hating hardware handling, I hate migrating a system disk... and of course my current system disk has something of an issue from a previous disaster, where it has both the old OS install and a new one, where I pick the new one every time I boot.

That's why I was considering just getting a new PC, since I am wanting to get a new SSD and graphics card, and this one is several years old (though only used 2? years since I waited a couple years to build it).

 

[Craig234]

Another download, 56GB. 3 or 4 hours in, it's at 2GB downloaded... something is very wrong there.

 

[Craig234]

over 12 hours, it's at 3.6GB/37GB... this is unusable... I've never had this issue before.

 

[Craig234]

This is really weird. After 40 hours, it's at 9GB/37GB. It's ridiculously slow, but pretty consistent. It's hard to imagine what could cause this, how to isolate without switching out the whole PC a part at a time.

 

[Craig234]

For diagnostic purposes: The steam download is something like day 6, 32GB/36GB. So roughly 5GB/day. I just paused it and am doing a 3GB download from the Humble Bundle Trove - it's taking about 5 minutes, normal download speed. Initial estimate was 3 minutes, so maybe there's a very minor slowdown.

So there is something very selective about the problem, that isn't related to things like basic hardware or network issues.

 

[Craig234]

Steam download speed shows 2.8 KB/sec.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Maybe this is all un-related to your new drive, and your ISP is simply throttling Steam downloads, due to the increased network traffic loads of stay-at-home due to COVID-19.

Doesn't Steam use Peer-to-peer downloads (like Torrent-style)? Also Blizzard updaters? Can you try downloading a public torrent, like a Linux ISO from a public tracker, and see if that appears to be throttled too?

 

[Craig234]

Maybe this is all un-related to your new drive, and your ISP is simply throttling Steam downloads, due to the increased network traffic loads of stay-at-home due to COVID-19.

Doesn't Steam use Peer-to-peer downloads (like Torrent-style)? Also Blizzard updaters? Can you try downloading a public torrent, like a Linux ISO from a public tracker, and see if that appears to be throttled too?

I don't think that's it; if it was throttling - which Comcast said is not happening on my account - other downloads like the speed test and the Humble download wouldn't be full speed.

I don't know about the test you suggest, but if there's something else to try, like I did on the Humble Trove, I could do that.

 

[Craig234]

The problem is getting a bit worse, after being steady a few weeks. Now, World of Tanks won't start at all, it hangs when I enter the login. And overnight, Steam has either gotten even far slower, or stopped altogether. The 2.1/2.5GB download hasn't changed from 2.1 in several hours, and I don't see the spikes of downloading anymore.

 

[Craig234]

double post. I'm stuck enough I called local repair people, talked to a guy, he has no idea and would want it brought in to look at. It's hard to believe it's this hard to isolate. I have a call in to Comcast, they said they are not limiting speed at all but I pushed a bit and they promised an escalation callback that didn't happen when they said.

 

[Craig234]

Well, I rebooted and did Windows updates, and the problem seems gone. Who knows what was running that was causing it.

 

[Craig234]

So the bad news is, a month after spending $228 on a new drive, Amazon marked it down to $179 yesterday. Ugh.

The good news was, I could check on a price match.

Bad news, after several minutes hold, they don't do price matches. So why did they need several minutes.

Good news, the drive was priced even lower, at $159 today. Funny, same price they also list a used one. I asked her to confirm it was new. Yes. We came up with a plan, she'd send a return label, I'd order a new drive, and return it to refund the original order.

Bad news, when I went to order, they aren't selling the new one, it is only the used one. Turns out the $179 sale on new ended fast. I called back to tell them and cancel the label.

More bad news, she said she couldn't talk about a price match but might have been able to if the sale was still on.

Good news, she gave me a $25 gift card for the trouble.

Well, worked out ok. Not as good as if I'd done it yesterday at the $179 price, but without the hassle of a return. Third party is selling it new for $300... bit of a ripoff.

She reminded me 'used' from the warehouse just means 'returned' and may or may not be used, but not really the thing to take a chance on. Not sure where hard drives are headed, if they'll be better or worse, less or more expensive, next year.

 

[VirtualLarry]

They (Amazon) had SanDisk SSD Plus 2TB SATA for $159.99 yesterday.

 

[Craig234]

They (Amazon) had SanDisk SSD Plus 2TB SATA for $159.99 yesterday.

Unfortunately, I'm not familiar enough with the SSD's to know what's a great buy right now.

 

[mpo]

Reliability goes back to May 15. It shows an error on May 20; the info says 3 patches installed. Then there are errors on 7 days in a row starting May 25, with info saying Microsoft Visual C++ was reconfigured. Info on the third day of errors lists about 10 changes, windows and driver updates. That third day is the first one it goes from one app error to five.

As I was typing this post, World of Tanks had a box pop up I've never seen saying press to restart the game, saying something about video drivers.

Nearly identical problem happened to me last week. I was 5 hours into Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus when I got a crash dump glitch that seems affects the game for some users.

Shortly afterwards Steam downloads were at dial-up speeds.

Then GOG Galaxy, Samsung Magician, and other software would crash with an error stating that MS Visual C++ redistributable was missing and needed to be downloaded from Windows Update.

Got stuck repair mode - I was on Win 10 1909, current media is 2004. My recovery USB was 1903. Got stuck.

Went to Microcenter and purchased a replacement SATA SSD for the Nvme drive.

Installed Win 10 2004. Probably wasted 10 hours troubleshooting the error. The Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500 GB is now my spare drive.

 

[Craig234]

Nearly identical problem happened to me last week. I was 5 hours into Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus when I got a crash dump glitch that seems affects the game for some users.

Sorry to hear you ran into the issues. But good to hear the info.

 

[Shmee]

Sounds like it was a software issue then? Anyway, I would recommend most users stay with windows 10 version 1909 atm, it seems a lot of issues with 2004 not being ready. Even if doing a clean install I might stay with 1909 for now.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Sounds like it was a software issue then? Anyway, I would recommend most users stay with windows 10 version 1909 atm, it seems a lot of issues with 2004 not being ready. Even if doing a clean install I might stay with 1909 for now.

That's what I've been doing for my gaming rigs, most of them that I recently built, I put 1909 on. Thankfully, Microsoft hasn't seen fit to push 2004 onto those PCs yet either, in fact, it hasn't even mentioned 2004 in Windows Update yet. Maybe they "know" that there's a problem. With past Windows 10 versions, if I installed a down-rev version, the next few times I would go to Windows Update and Search, it would automagically "find" the version update/upgrade.