Solved Occasional random total crash (No BSOD) Hard drive suspected volmgr 46

[roflchopter11]

Hello,

I just added 2x HGST Travelstar 7k1000 to my Dell m6700 in a windows striped dynamic disk (OS RAID 0). One is in the secondary hard drive slot; the other is in an optical drive caddy. I have tried two such caddies. These disks are not used for OS. For that, I use a Samsung 840 pro 256gb SSD.

I am encountering seemingly random total crashes. There can be as much as a week between crashes or as little as a few hours. The active application will stop responding. Switching applications via the task bar causes the task bar to similarly change colors as if it was not responding. CTRL+ALT+DELETE has no effect. I recover by holding the power button for 5 seconds, causing a hard shutdown.

I typically restart my system weekly; other than that, it is either on or in sleep mode.

I currently have my page file disabled (because I have 24gb of RAM), but that has been the case for almost a year and there were no problems until I added these hard drives. Before adding these hard drives, I had a 320GB OEM hard drive that served the same purpose.

Thank you for your assistance

 

[essenbe]

Let's start by opening a 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.

I also notice quite a few windows update failures. Are all of your updates installed? if not please install them then click and check for updates until it says there are no more. Let us know how that goes.

You may also want to run the Windows update readiness tool http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947821 which is supposed to try to fix update problems. Just scroll down to the Windows 7 X64 version and download it.

 

[roflchopter11]

Thanks for the information.

sfc /scannow found no violations.

I had 18 "important" updates waiting to install. I encountered an error, then ran the Update Readiness tool, then updated again. That brought the queue down to 17, which failed with Error 80071A30.

I googled it, ran the appropriate hotfix (Windows Updates won't install. Error code 80071A30), and it still hasn't worked.
I restarted, still noting.
Ran the hotfix again, this time in "aggressive mode"
Restarted
Tried to update again. The update history was cleared. It failed with the same error.

I googled a little more and found this (http://www.tnthelpforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3160) recommendation to delete C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution . Some people say that's safe, others do not, so I figured I would check back here first.

I have not had the freeze yet (it's only been a few hours), but we will see. The inability to install updates is concerning by itself.

The other thing I have noticed is that some programs that depend on services (VisualSVN Server and Hamachi) need to be "repaired" or uninstalled/reinstalled before they will work with each exit of the application. That might be a separate issue, but I figured it couldn't hurt to mention it.

I have attached a fresh dump. Note that it MAY not include a "freeze" as the aggressive hotfix seems to have cleared some logs.

 

[essenbe]

I honestly don't know about the SoftwareDistribution file, but I would not think deleting a system file is a very good idea. Try installing the updates one at a time and see if this will help you http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorial...e-download-standalone-msu-installer-file.html

No dumps in the files either. make sure you are configured to create small memory dumps.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/174459-dump-files-configure-windows-create-bsod.html

It's time consuming, but try to work your way through this to narrow down what is causing the problem. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorial...ation-conflicts-performing-clean-startup.html

 

[roflchopter11]

Okay. I tried individually installing the updates through the built-in Windows update and they all failed with the same error as before.

I tried to get the MSU files for the updates using the instructions provided, but some did not seem to have MSUs available (MS14-040: Description of the security update for an ancillary function driver: July 8, 2014). Perhaps I am just not seeing the link, but I doubt it.

Only One update(Microsoft Security Advisory: Update to improve credentials protection and management: May 13, 2014) had MSU files avaiable. The progress bar filled, then hanged at the end for while. It then failed to install without a specific error message("Some updates were not installed". There was also a MS "fixit" on that page. I ran it, then tried the update again. No success.

I have attached another dump file that should have a crash in it.

I also (after restarting from the crash mentioned above) encountered an issue where the "microsoft windows" process stopped responding. The standard "end non-responsive process" dialog box would pop up whenever I hit a key on the keyboard. Rebooting required holding the power button.

I will try the "clean boot" link you suggested, but it will take quite some time, as sometimes the machine will work for days without incident.

 

[essenbe]

No dump file. Did I understand you correctly that you started having this problem when you set up raid?

 

[roflchopter11]

You are correct about the problem being noticed about a week after installing new HDDs and configuring Windows RAID (striping in the windows disk manager). One HDD is in one of the HDD bays, the other is in an optical disk caddy. I have replaced the optical disk caddy to no avail.

To be clear, I am not encountering an actual BSOD. The system becomes totally unresponsive (mouse moves). I am not sure if it will eventually result in a BSOD if left for hours, as I have never tried.

I tried to make this clear in the post title, but apologize if it was not.

I agree that deleting things in the \\Windows folder is not something to do lightly.

 

[essenbe]

Apologies are not needed, it is mostly my fault anyway.

Back to the updates go back to this page and try the Fix Windows Update Errors see if it helps. Fix Windows Update Error messages and other Windows Update issues

do you have a problem with moving your files and breaking the raid, just as a test to see if that is causing your issues? If you do that, it would also be an excellent time to run diagnostic tests on the drives to make sure they are functioning as they should.

 

[roflchopter11]

The fixes on that page were not successful. The description of the error using the built-in windows update is "Windows Update has encountered an Unknown Error"

I booted the computer with all SATA ports disabled except for my system drive. It still refuses updates (even one at a time) with the "Unknown Error"

I have so far spent a few hours in "clean boot" and have not had the crashing issue, but my system clearly has other problems, which may or may not be related.

Thank you for your continuing help.

 

[essenbe]

While you are in the clean boot, how does the system react? Other than the windows update issue, have you noticed any other problems?

Before you set up the raid, what sata mode was your boot drive set to? I presume it was on the same sata controller as the raid is. When you set up the raid, you had to change the sata controller to raid in bios. Having an SSD, I assume you were in AHCI mode in BIOS before switching it to raid. While it really shouldn't, I'm just wondering if changing the sata mode affected your SSD. It shouldn't have, but sometimes things happen. I assume you had IRST installed before you set up the raid.

 

[roflchopter11]

The system seems fine, except for the inability to install updates and the fact that some services (VisualSVN server, Hamachi, maybe others) do not seem to stay installed. I have to reinstall the relevant application each time the application is closed.

It is worth noting that I still don't have enough uptime to be sure the problem hasn't just not surfaced yet under Clean Boot.

My SATA was, and still is in AHCI Mode. I am Using the Windows Disk Management utility to create a Dynamic Disk, and chose Striping. I am NOT using BIOS RAID because, at the time, Windows RAID was recommended over BIOS RAID. IRST is and has always been installed.

At this point, I am seriously considering a clean install. It has been 1.5 years at least,

 

[essenbe]

A clean install every so often, is usually helpful, even if you're not having problems. I probably end up doing one every 6 months or so. A clean install may resolve all your problems as long as one isn't a hardware problem. There are other options that we could try, but none as effective as a clean install. If you plan on it and have everything ready for it, you can make it pretty painless. I did one last weekend and was up and functional in a few hours.

 

[roflchopter11]

So I finally got around to clean installing and the system and it is now stable.

In other words: Nuking from orbit is sometimes the best way to get rid of a few elusive bugs.

 

[essenbe]

As time consuming as a clean install is, It is many times a lot quicker and easier than determining which driver or which program is it that's causing problems, or determining if it is a software or hardware problem. I know if I start having problems with my computer, if I don't figure it out pretty quick, a clean install is on the way.

Great job. I'm glad you have your computer running the way you like it. Very well done.

 

[rarespa]

hello all.

i have the same setup- m6700, only one HGST, the same random "freeze" error.
Bought the HGST last month, swap with the original and now defective 750 "Black Drive", and the rest is history... A week ago I've disabled the drive from the bios and the crashes stopped. My sq is quite full and i postponed the trip to the service for the presumed hdd malfunction (although all the tests in the world say that my HDD is fine).

Today i've found this topic and i'm convinced that the HDD is fine, and I gather that i have to reinstall the whole OS and SW... (bad timing)

But why?

I see that the only difference between the HGST and the WD Black (apart from size, brand...) would be the FREE FALL SENSOR on the WD. Feature that is highly verbose d by Dell advertising and some Blootware (Free Fall Sensor) in Control Panel.

Could this app be the problem?