PC crashes randomly with 6 month history of freezing with PDFs and File Explorer

[Bleda412]

A little over six months ago, around the time I started using a new hard drive (hooked in months previously but not yet used), my computer would freeze up while navigating in File Explorer or while using an opened PDF. The PDF could be opened for 5 minutes or 5 hours. It was very unpredictable as to when this issue would occur. I also noticed an issue that appeared to be corruption-related on my boot drive, an NVME, which made no sense. Some of the desktop file thumbnails were not displaying correctly. I thought these issues could be related to a bad HDD and attributed the PDF / File Explorer issue to it being a large size (8 TB).

 

Earlier this week, my computer started crashing (once every other day or so). I talked to a more technologically knowledgeable friend, and he told me to go into my BIOS and check my RAM speeds. Sure enough, it was set too low. I managed to alter the speed exclusively, but some of the time, it wanted to also alter the voltage and the CPU fan speeds. It was very weird. I made sure only the RAM speed was changed. Anyway, changing the RAM speed fixed my Desktop thumbnail issue, which we both found very odd. I'm not sure if the PDF and File Explorer issues still exist, but I still have the crashing and I'm also noticing some lag with my mouse, even though I'm able to play Cyberpunk just fine. While merely streaming video with 4 tabs open in total, my 32 GB RAM is 22% utilized. I know that Chrome is a very hungry program, but is ~7 GB RAM normal? Also, I went to a malicious website by accident while looking into a Wikipedia source last weekend, but nothing downloaded, and Malwarebytes found nothing. I used Display Driver Uninstall this week too (after the RAM BIOS change), but that was only because I needed to upgrade to the new AMD Software. Sorry for information overload. I'm just at a loss.

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Bleda412/saved/GxYPFT

[Radium_Angel]

Test ALL your drives with either the manufacturer's drive check program(s) or a program that I love called "Disk Genius". It will do a sector by sector check.

If the drives have bad sectors, DG will find them.

Test ALL your RAM with MemTestx86

 

Reset your BIOS to stock, turn off XMP/DOCP

Report back.

[Bleda412]

13 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

Test ALL your drives with either the manufacturer's drive check program(s) or a program that I love called "Disk Genius". It will do a sector by sector check.

If the drives have bad sectors, DG will find them.

Test ALL your RAM with MemTestx86

 

Reset your BIOS to stock, turn off XMP/DOCP

Report back.

I have Crystal Disk Info, Crystal Disk Mark, and Disk Fresh, but I never heard of Disk Genius. Great program. I saw a message when I was installing it to not install it on the partition I want to repair. I installed it on my boot drive, an NVME purchased 2 years ago when I first built this computer. Just for fun, I did a verify (no repair) on my 500 GB and 250 GB SSDs. They came back with all goods and excellents.On the NVME, there are a number of severe sectors. Can I repair them, or do I need to install Disk Genius on another drive and then repair? How soon am I going to have to replace that NVME? Will it be as simple as popping a new one in the second slot, cloning the data, removing the old one, and then going about business as usual? I'm checking the 8 TB HDD now, but it looks like I won't get the results for a very long time. Should I wait the 13 hours for it to complete?

 

I did a memtest for 1 hour and 20 minutes with 0 errors. Let me know if you'd like me to do the full 4 tests. One thing I noticed is that it said "Memory: 32 GB    18.6 GB/s." Isn't the second number less than what I should be getting? Does that have to do with my RAM speed being set lower than the factory standard? I reset the BIOS before running the test, by the way.

 

Pictures of BIOS settings, Memtest, and Disk Genius Results for NVME boot drive: https://imgur.com/a/FlytPmU

[Radium_Angel]

2 minutes ago, Bleda412 said:

On the NVME, there are a number of severe sectors

Time to back up the data on that and replace it.

2 minutes ago, Bleda412 said:

Will it be as simple as popping a new one in the second slot, cloning the data, removing the old one, and then going about business as usual?

With the right cloning software, this is correct.

3 minutes ago, Bleda412 said:

Let me know if you'd like me to do the full 4 tests.

Well you want to test all your RAM sticks at once, and ensure at least 1 full complete test.

3 minutes ago, Bleda412 said:

Should I wait the 13 hours for it to complete?

Absolutely.

4 minutes ago, Bleda412 said:

Isn't the second number less than what I should be getting?

I generally pay no attention to the RAM speed when doing a RAM test. Just let it run...

[Mark Kaine]

57 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

With the right cloning software, this is correct.

yeah, sure, but...? this seems to be the os drive, so what if there's some windows files corrupted, wouldn't that just basically migrate the issues to a new drive? (assuming corrupted files *are* actually the cause for OPs issues...)

 

[Radium_Angel]

6 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

yeah, sure, but...? this seems to be the os drive, so what if there's some windows files corrupted, wouldn't that just basically migrate the issues to a new drive? (assuming corrupted files *are* actually the cause for OPs issues...)

 

Then time for a re-install.

Windows is pretty good at self-repairing (or sfc /scannow) but there are limits

[Mark Kaine]

14 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Then time for a re-install.

Windows is pretty good at self-repairing (or sfc /scannow) but there are limits

yeah, you're right... if nothing helps a reinstall might do the trick but its not necessarily the first step. now we have to wait if the other drive is corrupted too ... a curious case. 

[Bleda412]

@Radium_Angel @Mark Kaine I'm no genius here, so I want to make sure I understand everything. My NVMe, the boot drive, is done for. There is no repairing the sectors, even though there are no bad ones. Second, I might be able to clone it, but I might not. If I can't clone it or just want to make things simple, I can still still just move the files I need to keep to my big hard drive, provided it's healthy, and then put them wherever I want after I do the new install, right? What time frame do I realistically have? I have finals the week after this one and would prefer to do this when I have a little more free time. Is that all right?

 

I bought the drive in October 2020. I think it's unreasonable for the drive to fail so soon. I took a look at Samsung's Warranty Agreement, and I think I'm probably covered. I just installed Samsung Magician, since their warranty is defined by reads/writes. Is it worthwhile to go down this path, especially since I don't have the serial number on-hand (found it in Samsung Magician)? If not, what do you suggest I buy for a new 2 TB NVMe?

 

EDIT: The drive checking programs I've used never indicated any problems. What should I have done differently? Samsung Magician detects no problems with my drive. Will they be willing to do a warranty?

[Radium_Angel]

44 minutes ago, Bleda412 said:

@Radium_Angel @Mark Kaine I'm no genius here, so I want to make sure I understand everything. My NVMe, the boot drive, is done for. There is no repairing the sectors, even though there are no bad ones. Second, I might be able to clone it, but I might not. If I can't clone it or just want to make things simple, I can still still just move the files I need to keep to my big hard drive, provided it's healthy, and then put them wherever I want after I do the new install, right? What time frame do I realistically have? I have finals the week after this one and would prefer to do this when I have a little more free time. Is that all right?

 

I bought the drive in October 2020. I think it's unreasonable for the drive to fail so soon. I took a look at Samsung's Warranty Agreement, and I think I'm probably covered. I just installed Samsung Magician, since their warranty is defined by reads/writes. Is it worthwhile to go down this path, especially since I don't have the serial number on-hand (found it in Samsung Magician)? If not, what do you suggest I buy for a new 2 TB NVMe?

 

EDIT: The drive checking programs I've used never indicated any problems. What should I have done differently? Samsung Magician detects no problems with my drive. Will they be willing to do a warranty?

It's not failed yet, but as you know, when it does, everything goes bye bye with no recovery. I'd start the backup process now.

It's possible it overheated, causing degraded sectors.

If Samsung Magician says the drive is ok, I doubt they will do a warranty swap, can't hurt to ask and show them screenshots from Disk Genius.

 

[Cyberat]

Altering Fan speeds is fine, altering voltage up or down is called over/under-clocking and causes system instability issues and even faster wear of hardware.

Tips for better PC performance: Disable Windows Search in Services, Disable File Indexing, per drive, Disable Pagefile, antiquated memory leak that trashes drives.

To check for RAM issues run memtest64 from a USB stick, get at least 8 passes overnight.

Use Speccy app. to see your temps and know where you are.

[Mark Kaine]

2 hours ago, Bleda412 said:

@Radium_Angel @Mark Kaine I'm no genius here, so I want to make sure I understand everything. My NVMe, the boot drive, is done for. There is no repairing the sectors, even though there are no bad ones. Second, I might be able to clone it, but I might not. If I can't clone it or just want to make things simple, I can still still just move the files I need to keep to my big hard drive, provided it's healthy, and then put them wherever I want after I do the new install, right? What time frame do I realistically have? I have finals the week after this one and would prefer to do this when I have a little more free time. Is that all right?

 

I bought the drive in October 2020. I think it's unreasonable for the drive to fail so soon. I took a look at Samsung's Warranty Agreement, and I think I'm probably covered. I just installed Samsung Magician, since their warranty is defined by reads/writes. Is it worthwhile to go down this path, especially since I don't have the serial number on-hand (found it in Samsung Magician)? If not, what do you suggest I buy for a new 2 TB NVMe?

 

EDIT: The drive checking programs I've used never indicated any problems. What should I have done differently? Samsung Magician detects no problems with my drive. Will they be willing to do a warranty?

thing is it would be better to copy the stuff you want or need to keep *now*... the drive might survive a few months, it may be dead tomorrow... hard to say...

 

and then, yes i generally would agree, fresh windows install,  then copy the stuff you want to keep over (only problem is time , which you don't really have... also if you just keep using the drive more stuff may becomes corrupted...)

 

i know it kinda sucks but best thing would be getting a spare drive or two and then immediately copy your stuff (windows reinstall could wait for later then on another drive)

 

i mean it kinda depends how important the stuff is and how big...

 

i suggest crucial MX500 (not BX500) btw, they're cheap and reliable drives...

 

as for what happened with your hard drive... who knows but sometimes they just fail and that's why you have a warranty. 

 

doesn't mean this specific drive isn't reliable,  more like it was a dud...

 

[Mark Kaine]

13 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

If Samsung Magician says the drive is ok, I doubt they will do a warranty swap

which would be kinda scummy, the software is a big pile of poo poo  

 

like i had a borked Kingston drive,  all software said it's "ok" except crystaldis mark showed it was running at 3mb/s ... and ironically user benchmark also said its "faulty"... but i didn't use warranty,  there was still stuff on it i needed, plus it only cost 20 bucks (you get what you pay for basically...)

 

but defo sure amazon *would* have refunded me ... 

 

Spoiler

yes i know samsung "magician" has nothing to do with my faulty Kingston drive, but i tried it, its awful,  full of misinfo, doesn't explain anything, slow, dreadful , and it didn't even show me what i wanted to know... never uninstalled any software faster lol

 

[Radium_Angel]

2 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

the software is a big pile of poo poo

I have no experience with it, so I was speculating on how Samsung may or may not react on a RMA

[Bleda412]

@Radium_Angel @Mark Kaine I've accomplished three things since my last post. I talked to Samsung. They are willing to send me a replacement, despite Samsung Magician showing everything is fine, but only after they receive the drive. That's not going to work out for me (2 week estimate), so I'll buy a new SSD NVMe, swap out the new for the old, send the old one in for warranty, and figure out what I'm going to do with the replacement.

 

The second piece of news is that my RAM test was perfect. And the third is that my HDD has only good and excellent sectors. I have one question about it, though. I ran the test and fell asleep half way through. Even though I have the "prevent sleep mode" box checked, my computer still went to sleep. After waking myself and subsequently my computer, I started getting progressively more goods than excellents. Is this a function of the interruption to the test, or is it a function of where the hard disk was being scanned? Thanks for your help. I'll try to remember to provide an update when I install the new drive.

[Radium_Angel]

10 minutes ago, Bleda412 said:

a function of where the hard disk was being scanned?

I've seen that as well. So long as it's "good" or better, you are fine.

[Bleda412]

@Radium_Angel @Mark Kaine

Hello again. I have installed a new power supply and the new SSD NVMe. I am also on Windows 11. It was a bit torturous to get Windows 11 properly installed, but I did it. I had the TPM issue at first, so I went with Windows 10. Then, I enabled TPM in BIOS and upgraded to Windows 11. There were some issues with drive folders, so I reinstalled Windows 11. Things are mostly fine, but I'd like some help with a few issues. #3 is the most important. #2 is only a fun fact.

 

1. When I installed the new SSD NVMe. When I removed the heat spreader, it noticed there were bubbles that I don't remember being there when I first built this PC. I took the top of my screwdriver (cleaned with alcohol) to flatten it out. I think that was a dumb idea. I noticed small hairs in an area that I didn't touch and in the places I did. I carefully removed the biggest ones with a piece of plastic. I did not have any spare heat spreaders on me. Imgur link below contains an intermediate stage picture. Should I buy a replacement heat spreader? The temp is at 33 C with a few applications and Chrome tabs open. By the way, my 6600 XT is running at 47 C while doing the same thing. I got it only one year ago, but I'm using the stock thermal paste. Should I change the paste?

 

2. I solved this problem, but I think it was worth noting here. Windows didn't recognize my ethernet connection. Installing a Windows update fixed it. That was weird. Maybe, it has to do with my new fiber internet.

 

3. I still get mouse lag when using Google Chrome or looking at files. I have Logitech G-Hub installed, and the mouse is new. I also tried it with a different mouse, although I didn't get the brand specific drivers for it. I'm installing Windows updates as soon as I can. My mouse cursor also goes invisible at times (hovering over text or search bars). What could be causing this issue? The new drive is registering all sectors as excellent.

I also have this weird issue in File Explorer where sometimes if I scroll down, I can't use the scroll wheel to scroll up. I found resizing the window fixes it, but it has cropped up a few times. I think that's an OS problem I can't fix. I haven't noticed any lag in File Explorer or PDFs like I used to, but I haven't used them very much yet.

 

https://imgur.com/a/ERvZzRO

[Radium_Angel]

7 hours ago, Bleda412 said:

Logitech G-Hub

It's morning and I"m very tired, so forgive me if we've covered this before, but is your mouse wired, or wireless?

[Bleda412]

12 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

It's morning and I"m very tired, so forgive me if we've covered this before, but is your mouse wired, or wireless?

It is wireless. The other mouse I used to test is wired.

 

I also have further information. I had my first crash since doing the new install. My primary monitor turned off, then my secondary, but my music kept playing. After a minute or so, I turned the monitors off and on, and after a while, the secondary became the primary and the music stopped. It later started up again. Turning the primary monitor on and off got it to start working again. I also was met with an AMD crash report form, which I filled out. I included my email, so I hope they follow up. I'm wondering if my mouse issues are tied into the GPU. I, of course, have the latest AMD Adrenalin drivers.

[Radium_Angel]

Look in the Event Viewer, see if there is anything under the Windows Logs>System that shows what might have happened

[Mark Kaine]

honestly it all still sounds like a hardware issue to me or maybe BIOS...

 

do you still use the barracuda drive now btw?

 

as dumb as it sounds you could also run some userbench benchmarks... this test is *really* good at finding faulty parts... but you need a few runs because it doesn't always pick up something right away. 

[Bleda412]

5 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

Look in the Event Viewer, see if there is anything under the Windows Logs>System that shows what might have happened

Looking at the Event Viewer, I can see tons of errors and warnings over the past few days. These are the ones that I believe to be connected to the event of when I had that crash 12 hours ago plus one more an hour later just because they were all next to each other.

https://imgur.com/a/CVGL8hu

 

[Bleda412]

3 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

honestly it all still sounds like a hardware issue to me or maybe BIOS...

 

do you still use the barracuda drive now btw?

 

as dumb as it sounds you could also run some userbench benchmarks... this test is *really* good at finding faulty parts... but you need a few runs because it doesn't always pick up something right away. 

Yes, I still use that drive. Disk Genius said everything was just fine. I will continue to run more tests.

 

https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/57555826

UserBenchmarks: 
CPU: Intel Core i7-10700K - 96%
GPU: AMD RX 6600-XT - 102%
SSD: Samsung 970 Evo Plus NVMe PCIe M.2 2TB - 187.7%
SSD: Samsung 850 Evo 500GB - 76.8%
SSD: Samsung 850 Evo 250GB - 76.6%
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 8TB (2017) - 47.6%
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws V DDR4 3200 C16 2x16GB - 74.5%
MBD: MSI MPG Z490 GAMING EDGE WIFI

[Mark Kaine]

2 minutes ago, Bleda412 said:

Yes, I still use that drive. Disk Genius said everything was just fine.

well run user benchmark seriously... it might give us some glues... because honestly "just fine" doesn't help (cause something obviously isnt fine)

 

i had that drive too... horrible... kept slowing my system down (not sure about crashes) 

and guess what, user benchmark told me exactly that this drive doesn't work properly... (btw the drive isnt defective,  it still works, it was just kinda "incompatible" with my mobo or bios)

 

but regardless,  run it a couple of times see what it says, better than endless speculation imo?

 

not saying the logs wouldn't help possibly... just user benchmark takes like 10 minutes and has a chance of showing whats actually causing all this. 

[Bleda412]

9 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

well run user benchmark seriously... it might give us some glues... because honestly "just fine" doesn't help (cause something obviously isnt fine)

 

i had that drive too... horrible... kept slowing my system down (not sure about crashes) 

and guess what, user benchmark told me exactly that this drive doesn't work properly... (btw the drive isnt defective,  it still works, it was just kinda "incompatible" with my mobo or bios)

 

but regardless,  run it a couple of times see what it says, better than endless speculation imo?

 

not saying the logs wouldn't help possibly... just user benchmark takes like 10 minutes and has a chance of showing whats actually causing all this. 

I first read your message half asleep. Since looking at it again, I understand what you meant. I think I edited my reply before you saw it. I was coming back here to post two additional userbenchmark results before checking to see if dual channel is enabled.

https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/57555949

https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/57556069

 

P.S. I might have cut off the sustained write test on benchmarks 1 and 2, but that did not happen for 3.

[Bleda412]

@Mark Kaine I think I misunderstood what was meant by making sure my RAM is in dual channel. That's simply a physical thing, right? If so, my RAM sticks are in the slots A B A B. I will mention again that my BIOS is left at all the default settings, which might include disabled TPM, now that I think of it (but that's only since going into the BIOS after the benchmark. Should I go back in to see if it's disabled?). My RAM is advertised as 3200 MHz, but it wants to default to 2133 MHz. @Radium_Angel asked me to leave it on the default settings previously, so that's what I have been doing.