BSOD a few minutes after every boot, error 0x000000F4

Ah - after a reboot or three or five, now I'm getting somewhere with chkdsk.

chkdsk /r c: "Windows has checked the file system and found no problems." But.... "Failed to transfer logged messages to the event log with status 50."

chkdsk /r d: Wow, what a mess. Went fine most of the way and then hit "The disk does not have enough space to replace bad clusters detected in file 64667 of name ." Repeated this for nearly every file through 64767 (out of 98544 files total), then "An unspecified error occurred <6e74667363686b2e b34>." and the scan halted.

When I try to run chkdsk again, I get "cannot open volume for direct access."

Mr Chaucer said:

chkdsk /r d: Wow, what a mess. Went fine most of the way and then hit "The disk does not have enough space to replace bad clusters detected in file 64667 of name ." Repeated this for nearly every file through 64767 (out of 98544 files total), then "An unspecified error occurred <6e74667363686b2e b34>." and the scan halted.

When I try to run chkdsk again, I get "cannot open volume for direct access."

I will try to explain what this most likely means. A hard disk has spare sectors on it by design; all hard disks have bad sectors due to manufacturing because they cannot be 100% quality, and when the disk is formatted or runs for the first time in NTFS, the disk is re-allocated using good spare sectors to the bad sectors which are set aside to never be used again. One of two things is happening in the errors you are receiving: 1. due to the partitioning, it is having a hard time determining where spare sectors are to replace the bad clusters it has found or 2. Bad sectors have accumulated to the point that all spare sectors have already been used and the drive is failing.

To find out which of these is occurring, I would recommend using the steps in HD Diagnostic to determine the hard disk manufacturer and then using the manufacturer's diagnostic tools to run all tests available through those tools to determine if the drive is still good.

Hmmm.... thanks for the explainer, this is a big help. I was wondering why my clean install of Windows 7 seemed to totally cure the hang-then-crash problem, albeit only for a couple of weeks. I suppose degradation of my (brand new) SSD could account for the sudden reoccurrence of this problem.

I'm not seeing any diagnostic tools available put out by Sandisk for its SSDs. I guess tomorrow I will swap the SSD out and put in a new drive, see if that gets it.

Hmm, SSDs shouldn't have this problem. What I spoke of is for HDDs... Sorry, did not realize it was an SSD before now. Been a busy day... I am still trying to learn about SSD issues since they are fairly new technology. The best I can give is: See the quote from usasma regarding SSDs found in post #2 of BSOD when hibernating.

Ah - very informative post from usasma. Next step for me is to figure out if the firmware is up to date.

Just curious - the blue screens happen at almost exactly the same time (approximately 4 minutes) after booting up. You could almost set your watch to it. Is this indicative of anything? I do wish I could get some .dmp logs...

I believe that is indicative of something. Someone else had a similar problem. It was resolved through one of the updates (I think it was firmware, but I am not positive). I will see if I can track that down.

Theirs was a once per hour problem: https://www.sevenforums.com/crashes-d...ml#post1793840

I will cautiously report that I believe the problem is solved.

Went to the motherboard website (for my MSI H67A), and among other things, there was an Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver update. When I originally built the system, I used the drivers included on the CD with the motherboard, all with a release date of July 2011. I individually updated each new driver listed at the MSI site for my motherboard (this was a laborious process, given that I had only a 4 minute window on my machine; ultimately, I downloaded the updated drivers on another machine and put them on a USB drive).

The Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver update did the trick. After running and restarting, my computer suddenly re-recognized my SanDisk SSD and immediately sought out drivers - then wanted another restart. Restarting again, I've had no problems.

If I could I would post the html file that listed everything this driver update was supposed to do (on the MSI site, description: Intel Rapid Storage Technology for SATA RAID and AHCI mode). Fundamentally, it simply appears my SSD was not working and playing well with others. This driver update from my motherboard manufacturer did the job.

Thanks very much for your attention! I'll be back of course if the hang + crash thing starts again.

You are quite welcome. Sounds like you did good troubleshooting steps. Nicely done.

Also, post back in a few days how the system is responding. :)