Win 7 x64 Freezing/Hard Reboot Required help...No Error/Events Thrown

[thrashmagazine]

PROBLEM:
I am wondering about some issues I am having that I am puzzled by and am hoping someone could help out. About a week ago my computer froze up, didn't think much of it, just cold rebooted it and away I went, no issues for about a week. Last night when I got home, same thing, this time when I rebooted I did a reset instead, and upon this my computer could not find the bootable hard drive. I decided to cold reboot it and sure enough, came back up. Since this time, about every 45 minutes or so, it does the same thing. Cold reboots are the only way to bring it back up.

The computer was put together in November by me (probably issue #1, see my user specs for PC info) That being said, the two hard drives (if those are issues) would possibly be the SSD (Boot drive) or the 500GB Seagate (older hard drive, also stores all my installed programs).

1. The could not find boot drive is a simple red flag to my SSD. But when I cold reboot its fine and monitoring it all checks out ok.
2. The 500GB drive seems to have a corrupted portion on it, but it boots normal and lasts for 45 minutes or so. I have not tried chcdsk yet, plan to tonight.
3. As far as I know my PSU, CPU, Memory and GPU are fine. I plan to run a 12+ hour memtest tonight but my CSU passed intelburn tests, and GPU passes FURMark and memtestg and although I don't have a voltage reader, via BIOS my power isn't spiking at all
4. No events thrown since its just freezing.
5. Things I noticed last night while playing Diablo III. My Skype call would die out, D3 would still work until I Alt-Tab to see what happened to Skype. Once I did that, computer would freeze. This didn't make much sense to me.
6. All drivers are up to date. No windows updates have been run in the last week, although everything is up to date.

TESTS I PLAN TO DO:
1. Unplug the secondary hard drive to see if it lasts more than an hour, although I don't have anything installed on my boot drive, I am sure I can figure out a few stress tests to see if its the secondary drive, but would the secondary drive even cause windows freezing?
2. Put in a HD and install windows on it to test if its the SSD

QUESTIONS I HAVE
1. Does anyone know any tests I can do to actually test the HD or the SSD besides unplugging it as a solution? Unplugging the HD is easy enough, but unplugging the SSD means, installing windows, reinstalling programs etc... If its broke fine, figured I would see if anyone knew of any software to test SSD's, or stress test them to hopefully cause a crash.
2. Any thoughts on if I a am even heading down the right direction? Would lockups be PSU related? or would that be an actual crash/reboot. I would assume if the PSU was dying it would be crash not a lock up.

 

[karlsnooks]

trashmagazine,
How about doing us a favor an putting your specs into your System Specs?

Follow this procedure please:
Update your SevenForums System Specs
User CP (located on the top menu bar) |
Your Profile | Edit System Spec (left-hand column)

To gather info, use Speccy (my favorite) or SIW or System Info

ADD the word laptop or desktop or netbook to the
“system manufacturer” block, for example,
Toshiba Satellite L305D notebook.

Provide full windows version info, for example:
MS Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-bit

Use the “Other Info” block for Optical Reader,
Mouse, touchpad, wifi adapter, speakers, monitor, etc

Scroll down and click on SAVE CHANGES.
============================================================

Now my old eyes can't handle that small typeface.

Would you post a short post, in normal size typeface which states the problem and the problem only?

thanks,
karl

 

[thrashmagazine]

Updated.

 

[karlsnooks]

thanks,

and Would you post a short post, in normal size typeface which states the problem and the problem only?

 

[F5ing]

Running that memtest overnight would be excellent. Don't have enough experience to recommend the best way to deal with the SSD, but for the Seagate spinner I would recommend Seatools from Seagate. But for either storage medium, if you suspect health issues I'd recommend copying/backing up what cannot be replaced before running any tests. Not so sure how detrimental the stress would be on an SSD, but on any spinner with mechanical/controller issues the stressing can scramble data beyond any hope of recovery.

http://www.seagate.com/support/down...toid=552bd20cacdec010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

Just using the diagnostics to check the SMART status shouldn't be a problem. If it appears there are issues, copy/backup before running the tests.