Solved Laptop shut downs, possible hard drive issue?

[LauraL]

Hello,
My laptop has begun shutting down. No over-heating, no blue screens, no reboot attempt. Just black screen, laptop is off. This was mostly occurring during playing a heavy full screen game but these are now occurring randomly as well.

It had been working fine until last Friday when I had the fans/vents cleaned at a computer repair shop. It came back blue screening and unable to reach the desktop. These blue screens spontaneously resolved by the next morning and I haven’t seen another once since.

I took the laptop back to make sure everything was reconnected correctly after the cleaning and these random shut downs then began to start during gameplay. I took the laptop to a second more trustworthy shop to again ensure everything was connected as it should be and to try to find the issue but they were not able to find the problem.

Having a look at the EventViewer I think the shut downs are related to these events as the times seem to coincide:
Level- Error,Source – atapi, Event ID – 11, Task – None, Category – The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort1.
I tried to work out what my IdePort1 is. I went to: Device Manager > Expanded Disk Drives > Right Clicked my Hard Drive > Properties > Details Tab > Selecting "Physical Device Object Name" from the "Property" drop down menu gave me this value: \Device\Ide\IdeDeviceP1T0L0-1

So am I right in assuming this error in the EventViewer is regarding my hard drive?

Assuming that the technicians between 2 repair shops aren’t entirely incompetent, the wires and hard drive are re-connected correctly so would this error indicate some sort of hard drive failure?
I’ve tried to google this error myself and took a look at some other threads here but find answers that don’t relate to my situation, or answers from people with multiple drives and or answers I just frankly couldn’t understand (I’m not very technical).

I have suspected hard drive failure for some time now and I’m just trying to find a way to confirm this is the issue before spending the time and money buying and setting up a new hard drive. I suspect drive failure because:

This issue only occurred after my laptop was opened and its components were manhandled.

My laptop originally had x2 500GB drives, the original failed some time last year and the one I currently work from was the second one. When it became my main drive I ran all SeaTools tests and they were all passed.

Currently, when I run SeaTools on this hard drive it passes S.M.A.R.T testing but fails long/short generic testing. I don’t know how to interpret that…

My hard drive is currently partitioned into a C and D drive. Filed stored on the D drive suddenly became inaccessible a few months ago causing windows explorer to stop responding, freezing and blue screening when attempting to open them. I’m certain there are bad clusters on the D partition but chkdsk fails to complete. It managed to find and fix some bad clusters but currently it results in getting stuck at a pitifully small number of files on stage 4 and usually blue screening so I have given up trying to fix this partition and simply stopped using it. I had thought maybe the bad clusters on this partition were causing the SeaTools tests to fail and that the hard drive might still be ok otherwise.

Chkdsk does complete on my C drive but I have found bad clusters on 2 separate occasions over the past 1.5-2months which makes me worry that they are appearing rapidly.


I guess I’m asking for opinions on whether this is hard drive failure or not, how I can confirm it or are there other causes for this error or other solutions I can attempt before buying a new hard drive?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Currently, when I run SeaTools on this hard drive it passes S.M.A.R.T testing but fails long/short generic testing. I don’t know how to interpret that…............

I’m certain there are bad clusters on the D partition but chkdsk fails to complete.

I guess I’m asking for opinions on whether this is hard drive failure or not, how I can confirm it or are there other causes for this error or other solutions I can attempt before buying a new hard drive?

I suspect the hard drive is failing, but more details needed:

When it fails Seatools tests now, do you get any on-screen message about the failure?

The failure may mean that there are too many bad sectors. Drives ship with spare good sectors that are brought in only when existing sectors go bad. But there is a limited number of spares and you may have exhausted them.

Can you post a screen shot of your SMART screen?

I think a failure of the Seatools tests would be grounds for a warranty replacement, which presumably would not apply to you.

What exactly do you mean by "passes S.M.A.R.T testing"? As run from what tool? As indicated by what?

 

[LauraL]

Hi, thank you for your reply.

When it fails Seatools tests now, do you get any on-screen message about the failure?

What exactly do you mean by "passes S.M.A.R.T testing"? As run from what tool? As indicated by what?

When I run SeaTools and use > Basic Tests > S.M.A.R.T Check > this is the result and there are no additional on-screen messages:

When I use Short Drive Self Test, this is the result and there are no additional on-screen messages:

When I use Short Generic, it halts at “Outer scan,” this is the result and there are no additional on-screen messages.

Needless to say, when I use Long Genereic, it halts at “Long Generic – 3:10” (basically within 20 seconds, right at the beginning of the test), this is the result and there are no additional on-screen messages:

 

[oscer1]

well to me looks like your going to need a new drive. i would not trust that drive.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

CrystalDiskInfo Portable | PortableApps.com - Portable software for USB, portable and cloud drives

Download CrystalDiskInfo from the above link and run it. It's a "portable" application, so you don't have to install it. Just poke it after it downloads.

I checked it, it is free of viruses.

It will show you the individual SMART parameters and may give you some insight.

Post a screen shot of the results.

Keep your expectations low and locate your wallet.

 

[LauraL]

For some reason I wasn't able to download from that link on IE or Chrome so I downloaded it from CrystalDiskInfo Portable - Free download and software reviews - CNET Download.com hopefully the same thing.

Here are the results:

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Go to the function menu in Crystal Disk Info and look for "advanced features". Look for "raw values" under that.

Your raw values are probably set to 16 Hex.

Change that to 10 Dec and repost the same pictures.

16 Hex is hexadecimal and foreign to those familiar with standard numbers. 10 Dec will display in standard form.

The complaint is about "current pending sector count". Those sectors have been marked bad and are waiting to be remapped (send the bad ones to the sidelines and bring in the good spares).

Your drive is certainly failing; the question is how soon will it fail completely.

I notice you are using Seatools on a Hitachi drive. Is there no Hitachi tool?

I would immediately copy my most important data files to some other drive if you have not done so already as this drive could not start tomorrow for all we know.

Checkdisk or the manufacturer's utility will typically remap the bad sectors, but you can't yet get those tools to run.

 

[LauraL]

469 sounds...unhappy...is a hard drive failing capable of causing computers to shut themselves off during demanding activities?

And as far as I'm aware I have no Hitachi tool or at least, I've never seen it/don't know where to look for it.

 

[essenbe]

LauraL, I would not trust that drive. I would recommend you back up all your personal files now to an external source and look into getting a replacement drive. A bad hard drive can be the cause of your problems. I doubt anyone could tell you that is the only problem, but it is a serious problem. Both those tests you ran are to determine the health of the hard drive. Both seem to say the hard drive is failing.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

I don't have a frame of reference to be able to tell you that 469 is bad, but the larger point is that it apparently can't be corrected by Seatools or checkdisk.

I'm not sure exactly how a successful correction would appear on your screen when you ran Crystal again, but my guess is that the "current pending sector count" would drop to 0 from 469 and you would see the "reallocated sector count" move up from 0 to 469.

The drive has operated 24708 hours, which is 8.5 years worth of 8 hour days. That's a decent life span, so it's not surprising that it's failing.

If I read that Crystal screen correctly, the drive contains both C and D--which I assume means Windows and data of some type--on separate partitions. All the more reason to replace it when in doubt.

I'm no hard drive engineer and there may be someone out there who has other ideas about how you might be able to force the 469 bad sectors to be processed, but that's beyond my expertise.

I concur with Essenbe--I'd begin drive shopping. AFTER I backed up the data.

 

[LauraL]

Thank you all for your input. I have been suspicious for a while that the hard drive was on its way out and I purchased a new one today.

It's been installed with a fresh copy of Windows and all I have done so far is update the basic drivers for it. 0 additional software has been installed and no backed up system images or anything of the sort were used to reinstall my data and software because I wanted to see if my issue was fixed.

My initial issue was the random shut downs which I couldn't pinpoint a cause of so I decided to run a heavy application to see if it would provoke these shut downs now that I have solved my hard drive issue.

I ran a heavy game from a backed up version on an external hard drive and I unfortunately still had a random shut down.

The only Error logged at the time of shut down now is "The previous system shutdown at bla on blabla was unexpected" - Event ID 6008.

I think its fair to say I have eliminated the failing hard drive as the cause and I have not taken any software or settings from my pervious drive and put them onto this one...so am I right in assuming I've eliminated the chance it's a software/configuration issue and that this is certainly a hardware issue but that the failing hard drive was not the cause? What else could be the cause here?

It's still early days (hours) yet so I will continue to test the new drive out tomorrow and see if it continues to shut down on its own but I'd love to hear any other suggestions you may have for me :shock:

 

[ignatzatsonic]

I think its fair to say I have eliminated the failing hard drive as the cause and I have not taken any software or settings from my pervious drive and put them onto this one...so am I right in assuming I've eliminated the chance it's a software/configuration issue and that this is certainly a hardware issue but that the failing hard drive was not the cause? What else could be the cause here?

You appear to be conscientious and have done a good job of explaining the issue.

Do you see any yellow exclamation points when you look in Device Manager?

I assume Windows and the machine generally perform well except for this single issue--shutdowns when gaming?

Can you force this unwanted shutdown by doing anything other than gaming, such as stress tests that are intended to put heavy loads on the CPU, RAM, and the cooling system?

Can you force this unwanted shutdown with more than one game?

Are you monitoring temperatures in the moments immediately before these unwanted shutdowns?

 

[oscer1]

well it could be heat related. have you cleaned out the fan and vents of the laptop? can run hwmonitor to check the temps mgiht want to try core temp to to see if giving same temps from both programs.
HWMONITOR | Softwares | CPUID

Core Temp

 

[essenbe]

LauraL, you seem to be on the right track on your troubleshooting. It would be best if you could run some stress tests, but on a laptop, it is not usually a good idea. Laptops tend to run hot under normal situations. Stress tests seriously increase the heat output, so I am always reluctant to run them. I know you have not had a BSOPD, but if you would, could you run the BSOD posting instructions? It provides a lot of information and maybe we could see something in them. http://www.sevenforums.com/bsod-help-support/96879-blue-screen-death-bsod-posting-instructions.html After you run it, please upload the compressed folder it creates here. This will tell you how. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/9733-screenshots-files-upload-post-seven-forums.html

 

[LauraL]

Hi, yes there were but these were the only Warning & Error logs around the time of shut down:

Warning 22/05/2015 03:53:45 Microsoft-Windows-WLAN-AutoConfig 4001 None "WLAN AutoConfig service has successfully stopped.
"
Warning 22/05/2015 03:23:09 k57nd60a 4 None Broadcom NetLink (TM) Gigabit Ethernet: The network link is down. Check to make sure the network cable is properly connected.

Error 22/05/2015 03:23:21 EventLog 6008 None The previous system shutdown at 3:21:18 AM on ‎5/‎22/‎2015 was unexpected.


95% of these unwanted shut downs do occur during gaming, it isn't specific to one game it will happen with any heavy game I attempt to play.

5% of these unwanted shut downs occur completely (seemingly) out of the blue. For example, the day before yesterday, I had 3 shut downs whilst attempting to reply to this forum thread within 30 minutes of each other. All I had open was my browser (IE 11) and I had to type my replies into Word to save them to prevent having to start over when I shutdown. It was pretty alarming to see it happening running virtually nothing.

I had initially thought this was an over heating issue as well. I know that it isn't the fans/vents as these were cleaned, ironically, the day this issue began. Like, immediately after I took it back this issue started.

I did monitor the temperatures before shut downs using HWMonitor and I can shut down anywhere between 75C/167F and 86C/186F but other times I've seen the laptop running the game for over an hour up to 90C/194F with no shut down at all.

I can try Core Temp if you'd like me to and see what temperatures that reports?

As for stress testing, I no longer have a failing hard drive and my vents are freshly cleaned so I don't mind trying this either if you think it will be helpful though I'm not sure how to perform one.

Here is the compressed folder you requested:

 

[essenbe]

LauraL, I haven't found anything obvious yet. You have no dump files meaning no BSOD. The temps your are talking about 86-90°C are pretty high. Are those your CPU or GPU temps? HWMonitor will tell you both. Any temp monitoring program is not exact. It is pretty much an approximation. If you get that high during gaming, a stress test is out of the question. I believe your shutdown temp is around 100°C. So, you are getting close. When you said this started after you cleaned the laptop vents, and just picked it up, I am assuming you had it done by a computer shop. Is that correct? If so, I would be concerned that in the process of cleaning, something happened that caused the shutdowns to occur.

I don't think so, but does your laptop have switchable graphics? That means it switches between the on chip graphics and the dedicated graphics card, depending on what you are doing.

If you would, please open an elevated command prompt ( click start, type cmd in the search box, right click on the cmd entry and select run as administrator) in the black box that opens, copy/paste sfc /scannow. If you decide to type it, notice the space between the sfc and the /. It is a system file checker which will scan your system files and attempt to correct any missing or corrupt files. What we want are the results to say windows found no integrity violations. If it says files were found but could not be repaired, close the box, reboot and run it again, after opening the administrative command prompt. You may have to reboot and run it three times for it to repair all system files. If it can't repair them after 3 reboots, let us know.

 

[LauraL]

I managed to make full use of my laptop all day yesterday without any shut downs at all and have managed to do so today as well.

Perhaps the previous one after the new hard drive was a fluke, it's been as good as gold for 48 hours now and I'm seeing the same results having put my system image back onto the new drive as well.

I'll mark this thread as solved for now and thank you all for your time and input in helping me deal with this issue. Much appreciated

 

[essenbe]

I'm glad it is working for you. Good luck with it. I don't think I helped a bit, but it's good that it is running well.

 

[oscer1]

Glad working for you. Hope stays that way

 

[cyberSAR]

Sounds like you have it fixed but thought I'd share this with you. We had an Asus laptop in here recently that had just been cleaned. It would shutdown periodically and then run fine for days. I couldn't feel much airflow from the fan so decided to investigate. When I pulled it apart ALL of the blades had broken off the fan and were laying inside the case. Not sure how it happened but my guess was they blew through the vents with too high of pressure.

Weird thing was this thing didn't shut down unless it was under a pretty heavy load. Under normal use it ran for days.