HDD Light Off

[watchman626]

I wasn't sure where to post this....so forgive me if I was wrong.

I have been having a problem with what I think is my HDD, but yet again I'm not completely sure. Anyways my HDD is brand new, its a WD Caviar Black 1TB 7200RPM, all the stress tests come back with positive results when I run them so its not the HDD physically...at least I don't think so.

But when ever I'm playing a game or something intense about a hour into it my entire screen will freeze up and the whole will be OS is frozen, nothing responds so I'm forced to do a hard reset on my system. But the one thing that I do notice about my computer when it freezes is that HDD light is off and not blinking. I'm honestly stumped and I can't figure out whats going on.

I have searched everywhere to find a answer to this problem, I finally decided to be smart and ask on a site, and since this site helped me get past my Windows 7 upgrade issues I figured I would ask here. Thanks!

 

[zigzag3143]

I wasn't sure where to post this....so forgive me if I was wrong.

I have been having a problem with what I think is my HDD, but yet again I'm not completely sure. Anyways my HDD is brand new, its a WD Caviar Black 1TB 7200RPM, all the stress tests come back with positive results when I run them so its not the HDD physically...at least I don't think so.

But when ever I'm playing a game or something intense about a hour into it my entire screen will freeze up and the whole will be OS is frozen, nothing responds so I'm forced to do a hard reset on my system. But the one thing that I do notice about my computer when it freezes is that HDD light is off and not blinking. I'm honestly stumped and I can't figure out whats going on.

I have searched everywhere to find a answer to this problem, I finally decided to be smart and ask on a site, and since this site helped me get past my Windows 7 upgrade issues I figured I would ask here. Thanks!

Watchman

Hi and welcome to sevenforums

While I suspect some page file/caching issue there is one way you can check. go into search and type event viewer. go to the windows log>applications tab. Look for errors (red "X" in the left hand column) that relate to app hang, app crash, etc see which ones happen when you have just had the problem occur. when you find what you think is it write down the event ID and source codes and tell us what they are.

Let us know if youneed help with any of this

Thanks

Ken J

 

[watchman626]

Well I didn't find any in the Application tab it had errors with "red exclamation marks" in it but they did not occur at the time of the problem.

I did go down to the system tab and found two Critical errors, they both took place around the time the pc froze up:

Level: Critical
Time 6:02:55PM
Source: Kernel-Power
Event ID: 41
Task Category: (63)

and its the same for the other but it takes place at 7:59:39PM

The description is:The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be cause if the system stopped responding, crashed or lost power unexpectedly.

 

[watchman626]

A buddy of mine said that it could be a short in the power cable I was using on the drive...so I installed another power cable on it....so I will see how that does.

But zigzag if you find that I need to do something concerning software please let me know...I really don't want it to happen again.

Thanks in advance.

 

[watchman626]

Bump

The problem still persists, I got the same error as before.

I'm thinking its Windows 7, because it never did this when I ran Xp on it.

 

[poin2]

Bump

The problem still persists, I got the same error as before.

I'm thinking its Windows 7, because it never did this when I ran Xp on it.

And assumably it never did it on your old hard drive either. You've changed more variables beyond just the OS.

You could well need to install video drivers, or maybe you physically bumped something installing the new hard drive, etc.

I'd be very careful about attributing it to "Windows 7" at this point.

Since it's happening when it's "something intense," I'd personally first suspect things like overheating, RAM, power supply, etc. The Caviar Black could well be running hot for the rest of your system, or it's more of a power drain, etc.

 

[watchman626]

Bump

The problem still persists, I got the same error as before.

I'm thinking its Windows 7, because it never did this when I ran Xp on it.

And assumably it never did it on your old hard drive either. You've changed more variables beyond just the OS.

You could well need to install video drivers, or maybe you physically bumped something installing the new hard drive, etc.

I'd be very careful about attributing it to "Windows 7" at this point.

Since it's happening when it's "something intense," I'd personally first suspect things like overheating, RAM, power supply, etc. The Caviar Black could well be running hot for the rest of your system, or it's more of a power drain, etc.

Thats the thing though...all my drivers are up to date. I went through everything in Device Manager, searched for it and dl all the drivers I needed. My gfx is up to date, sound drivers, mobo drivers....everything.

It never did it on my old HDD when I ran XP on it, but once 7 was loaded on the problem began. I ran XP at the same intensity on this new HDD the night before I installed 7 and I never had the problem. But now that 7 is installed the problem has come back. So the only valid thought that comes to mind is that its a problem with 7.

I know my HDD is not over heating, the HDD never gets above 80degrees F when on a full load. I'm running memtest to see if I have bad RAM right now, as for my powersupply I don't have the resources to test that.

 

[watchman626]

I read on another forum that it has to do with RAM Timings. I changed those to what Kingston recommends for my type of RAM..... so I will see what happens.