tech support Broken Windows (and possibly drive).

[Twililooks]

Hello! It's been a while since I last posted here~ 

 

I got a new laptop in December to work as a desktop replacement for college work. Believe me when I say I would've highly preferred a desktop, but it's not like it's much of a pain. 

 

What is a pain though is having a new Windows update automatically installed into your machine, and afterwards making everything take FOREVER to load. For reference, my laptop's an Asus GL703vd (i7 7700HQ, 16 GB 2400Mhz, 1TB SSHD, non-SSD version); I was appalled as to why it'd run so slow, however, one day while booting it up, the laptop simply gave me a bluescreen with a "PNP_Watchdog" error or something along the lines of that, and then it'd sent me to the BIOS.

 

I wouldn't really care to losing my files, since all I have are just games and downloadable pictures, but the "weird" stuff would begin here. In Windows' troubleshooting menu, it would give me an error whenever I'd try to go back to the previous version. I suspected at first something was corrupted, but I tried to reset (whenever the option would appear, most of the time it didn't), and... an error would've popped up whenever I tried to. I went into the command prompt to see if I could do something there, but it didn't even detect my own hard drive. The only thing detected was my USB media which I would eventually use to try and reinstall windows, and the internal X drive. I tried to reinstall Windows through the Creation Tool through an USB drive; I booted it up and the process went along nicely until... for some reason, my drive wasn't showing up, period. However, in my BIOS, sometimes the drive will appear as "Boot Manager" with its 1k GB name, serial number and everything, but other times it would only show as "Boot manager" with no details about the drive shown at all. 

 

Is my drive broken? Is Windows corrupted? I might be very dumb in this brain field, but frankly I don't know what's going on with the drive itself. I haven't dropped the machine or anything, so it's not like the hardware itself has been damaged.

[Tabs]

@Twililooks I haven't gone over everything in detail in your post yet, but I wanted to point out that when you run wmic from WinPE, you're bringing up stats only for the preinstallation environment. Most actual drives aren't listed using that until you manually assign drive letters.

 

Can you take a screenshot of diskpart - list disk from winPE, and then list partitions on each disk? it may help narrow down why Windows apparently can't see it. If diskpart can't find the disk it could certainly be a drive failure, or an issue with the controller.

[Twililooks]

6 minutes ago, Tabs said:

@Twililooks I haven't gone over everything in detail in your post yet, but I wanted to point out that when you run wmic from WinPE, you're bringing up stats only for the preinstallation environment. Most actual drives aren't listed using that until you manually assign drive letters.

 

Can you take a screenshot of diskpart - list disk from winPE, and then list partitions on each disk? it may help narrow down why Windows apparently can't see it. If diskpart can't find the disk it could certainly be a drive failure, or an issue with the controller.

 

Might it just be a drive failure?

[Tabs]

@Twililooks Okay, I've looked at the rest of your information in detail - this is almost certainly a drive failure. Has the machine been kept in a hot/humid environment, or has it been run hot for extended periods of time?

 

Do you have any other machines you could test the disk in, or alternative drives you can install in the machine?

 

If the machine is only 6 months old it's definitely within it's warranty period, so you might want to consider putting it in for an RMA. There's no excuse for a drive failing in a machine that's only 6 months old, although (anecdotally) I have heard of SSHD's having higher failure rates than either SSD's or HDD's individually. More parts that can go wrong in effect.

[Guest]

I would not rule out the fact that your HDD might be FUBAR.

 

However I have had in the past, especially in ASUS laptops, where with transportation of the device, the grips on the side of the HDD would move and unplug from the connection. Might be worth a look if your device is not under warranty.

 

If it is under warranty, I highly suggest to take it back to the retailer or to give ASUS a call to ensure no warranty is void.

 

Let us know you go.

 

Cheers,

[Tabs]

5 minutes ago, Twililooks said:

 

Might it just be a drive failure?

 

I think so, unfortunately. The disk only sometimes appearing properly in bios is a telltale sign than something is wrong with it, but in order to 100% make sure it's the drive and not the controller, you'd want to test the drive in another machine, or a different disk in this machine. Just reseating the disk if it's come loose could help too, but seems unlikely.

 

If you can't test other drives or want to risk opening your machine, my suggestion is to put it straight in for an RMA. No excuse for a machine getting a disk failure (of any kind) within 6 months of purchase.

[Twililooks]

Thank you both; I sadly don't have another machine where I can test this, so it may seem like my best option is to take it to Asus and hopefully get a replacement, or get it fixed It's my first time having a drive failing on me so I was a little lost.

Spoiler

 

 

[Tabs]

1 minute ago, Twililooks said:

Thank you both; I sadly don't have another machine where I can test this, so it may seem like my best option is to take it to Asus and hopefully get a replacement, or get it fixed It's my first time having a drive failing on me so I was a little lost.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

Sorry it wasn't better news, would've been nice if this was a software thing. Disk failures are quite uncommon in reality but when they do happen it's always at a terrible time.

 

The degradation in performance you mentioned before this happened implies that the flash cache on the disk might have been having problems before it stopped working completely. The problem (as I see) with SSHD's is that if the tiny solid state cache on the disk dies, it doesn't just revert to being a normal hard disk - the entire disk stops working.

 

Like @Netivity suggested, finding out the warranty status of the machine would be a good idea. Some retailers are responsible for replacing machines and processing RMA's for the first year of purchase, so you might not be able to send it to Asus directly for repairs or replacement. Check with the place you bought it from to find out for sure.

 

Either way, good luck with it mate.

[Guest]

Quote

Like @Netivity suggested, finding out the warranty status of the machine would be a good idea. Some retailers are responsible for replacing machines and processing RMA's for the first year of purchase, so you might not be able to send it to Asus directly for repairs or replacement. Check with the place you bought it from to find out for sure.

[Off-Topic - Suggestion]

 

If it is not under warranty - I'd definitely invest in an SSD for reliability and speed. 

[Twililooks]

After an enormous amount of time, I got my RMA approved and after waiting just a tiny bit more, I got a replacement. Thank you all for helping me~ <3 It was really a pain for my drive to fail 6 months in.