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Problem description: Tuesday evening I swapped out the hard drives in my computer. I replaced a 128GB SSD, a 2TB SSHD, and a 1TB HDD with three Crucial MX500 SSDs (500GB, 1TB, 2TB) I did a fresh install of Windows on the primary drive first, then added the other two after the PC was back up and running. Everything was fine as I reinstalled my apps. I set Steam to download a game, tested it, and was satisfied seeing the title screen and went to bed. Wednesday morning, I downladed BG3 and left my PC to idle for a few hours before shutting it down and heading to work. But that evening I went to make sure my video drivers were fully up-to-date and started running into issues. After installing the latest drivers for my 2060, I set Steam to download another game. That went well enough, except for save data failing to sync. I clicked the button to retry but it didn't seem like anything was happening. Steam then suddenly shut down without warning. I tried to reopen Steam but got an error message saying that Steam was not installed correctly. I tried again, same thing. I opened the E-Drive I had it installed on and Windows told me it could not find the drive. As I tried to investigate, I noticed my PC's performance was starting to drop so I tried a restart. Windows took longer than usual to shut down, and a significantly long time to load back up. However, the E-Drive was still absent and performance was still poor. I quickly shut down again and checked the BIOS and saw the E-Drive wasn't being recognized at all. I double checked the connections, I even put the drive in the hotswap bay on my case to no avail. Disk Manager seemed to recognize a drive was inserted, but failed when trying to format it. I figured it was dead and prepared to return it the following morning. I began restoring my files from my external drive back onto the PC, watching YouTube as it worked in the background. Video playback was fine, but browsing sites seemed a bit sluggish. I assumed this was from the transfer despite Task Manager/Resource Monitor saying usage was pretty low. After getting a majority transferred, I looked through a few, did some reorganizing. Out of morbid curiousity, I tried putting the "broken" SSD back into the hotswap bay. Immediately a window popped up with my Steam installation fully intact and Windows recognized it as the E-Drive. But then my desktop started having graphical issues with the wallpaper disappearing from my two side monitors, and leaving black boxes behind if I hovered over icons or highlighted an area. Thinking I might have accidentally ran a virus when viewing files (numerous scans prior came up clean), I ran Windows Defender. Starting with the D-Drive, it got about halfway through before getting stuck. The timer went from 35-seconds til finished all the way up to 35 minutes before I cancelled. Task Manager had shown CPU Usage at ~20% with Disk Usage at around 30%. I scanned the C-Drive without issue. CPU and Disk usage were as above. I tried scanning the D-Drive again and CPU skyrocketed to 100% while Disk Usage remained at 0%. Over a million files were supposedly scanned (far more than I had put onto the drive) with the progress bar remaining empty. After about 10 minutes of this, I quit in frustration. Thrusday morning I did some googling and saw suggestions that the desktop graphical issue was probably a bad driver. While troubleshooting, I was noticing intermittent issues with my internet disconnecting. The issue seemed to be on my machine's end as the indicator light on the router went out completely only for my PC. Wondering if this was a botched Windows install, I removed the new drives entirely and slotted the old ones back. They booted, though using it felt a bit slower than usual. The internet continued to cut out randomly until I gave up and shut down the PC and left for work. I booted it once again to grab information for below. Drivers for my ancient Logitech G15 keyboard had to be reinstalled for some unknown reason, but the PC seemed to be running fine *aside* from the internet cutting out. During these events, there were no hard crashes or BSOD's Attempted fixes: Initially thinking it might be graphics related, I uninstalled drivers with DDU. Windows auto-installed an older driver but the problem persisted. Tried updating other drivers with DDU's counterpart, EasyDriver, but gave up. Attempted a MemTest in case it was the RAM, but I was unable to get it to boot. Recent changes: The only changes I made to my device were the replacement of the old hard-drives. I initialized them on the old install prior but that was it. The install that started having issues was a fresh install of Windows 10. -- Operating system: Windows 10 Home Edition 64-bit System specs: Motherboard: ASUS Z87 Pro CPU: Intel i7-4770 4th Gen 3.4 GHz LGA 1150 84W RAM: 16GB (4x 4GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) GPU: NVidia GeForce 2060 Power Supply Hard Drives: New - 3x Crucial MX500 SSDs (500GB, 1TB, 2TB) Old - Samsung 840 PRO SSD (128GB); Seagate HDD (1TB); Seagate Firecuda SSHD (2TB) Location: United States I have Googled and read the FAQ: Yes
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Mar 1, 2024 06:35
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 01:49 |
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Likely: E drive suspect. Swap a new sata cable for it and try again. If it's still crashing, leave e drive disconnected It could be windows, it could be an ssd overheating, but the cable should be first I reckon
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Mar 2, 2024 18:10
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E-Drive was my first suspect, but the desktop and network issues continued to persist after it was removed. Even leaving the new drives out entirely and putting the old ones back in, the network adapter would drop signal entirely. But I have enough spares that I can swap out the cables and reinstall Windows again, see what happens. Some more googling did seem to suggest that the motherboard might be the cause. I have a spare Z87-A I could swap it with and see if the issues persist, so I might have to make that my weekend project. My first Z87-A died about 5 years ago when trying to upgrade the RAM and now the Pro is going out with a drive-swap. Can a drive fail to the point of damaging other components? Just trying to gauge if the drive itself is the cause or if this was just another freak occurrence. Granted, about half of the components (PSU, CPU, 8GB of RAM) are 10 years old at this point while the other half (MoBo, GPU, the other 8GB of RAM) are 5 years old. It might just be time to replace the whole thing.
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Mar 2, 2024 23:25
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All these issues are a bit too out there for a mb swap to make sense yet, especially with an equally as old one. Unplug it and remove/reinsert the cmos battery and reseat all ram sticks. I assume you did a reinstall already to the same effect? If not, do so, on one ssd with a *new* cable(if possible). Do not transfer files. Do not use Nvidia drivers, use windows update. Do a fresh install of steam and install one thing to test using old drivers from windows update. Test with new drivers. If it's slow still swap to a different ssd, new cable. Replacing this is fine too, it's a great market right now, go hog wild!
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Mar 3, 2024 02:03
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Got everything moved out into a small workspace where I can monitor while I try and recoup from this bought of seasonal allergies. Right now only working off of the bare essentials needed - single monitor, Mouse/Keyboard combo, using onboard wifi instead of a hardwire connection. I had plenty of spare SATA cables so I got a new one in as requested. Starting with the suspected E-Drive for now, I've got Windows freshly installed and updating. Once that's done I'll get steam going, and then try out the other drives from there.
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Mar 3, 2024 23:59
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Quick update: Since I had to wait for the roommate to go to bed to start downloading anyways, I set the PC back up in my room with all 3 monitors, hardwired connection, all that. Realized I should probably keep it fair in case it's a power load issue. PC was up and running for about 4 hours with just the E-Drive installed and a fresh cable. Downloaded a handful of games with Steam, played one for a bit, ran windows defender twice - whatever I could to put load on the disk. Everything seems stable, and I wasn't noticing any network drops. PC was idle for an hour, maybe an hour and a half at most. I'll repeat the process with the C- and D-Drives for the next day or two then introduce them all together, one at a time and with new cables, and see what happens from there.
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Mar 4, 2024 18:38
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This is going well. You understand the assignment and you will either find the problem, or everything will just work and you'll be clueless but relieved
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Mar 4, 2024 20:12
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I've gone through all 3 drives. C-Drive seems to be fine. No issues, everything is zippy and quick. Windows setup was stupid fast and I was updating and downloading games with no hassle. E-Drive was pretty quick as well, though I need to retest it. I loaded Windows onto it with WiFi initially because I had moved everything out of my room, then put it all back before I finished testing the drive. But everything seemed to download fine, windows didn't have any issues. Which leaves the D-Drive. I've got it redownloading BG3 now but both times Windows got stuck setting up on the Network phase. Installing updates seemed to take longer, and hitting RESTART NOW would be unresponsive before finally taking effect a minute later. While the other drives would scan with Defender just fine, D would max out the CPU with low disk usage. The first test with D, network connection was dreadfully slow over wired LAN connection. Steam capped out at ~90Mbps, but switching to WiFi got me ~250Mbps. Even transferring BG3 over network was going at a very slow pace. Restarting didn't fix it. C and E did not have this issue so it's hard to tell if this was just a fluke, since currently on round 2 D is downloading at a reliable pace. I haven't started pairing up drives yet, but I'm thinking either way D needs to be returned to Best Buy after I nuke it. EDIT: Forgot to mention there’s also been no issues with the desktop background disappearing either, so I have no idea what that was about initially. Wilsonn12k fucked around with this message at 00:49 on Mar 6, 2024 |
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Mar 6, 2024 00:32
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Every issue descrbed can be explained by a dying ssd and i/o timeouts so you probably nailed it.
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Mar 6, 2024 01:01
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The part where the onboard network port was failing because of a faulty SSD just baffles me  I took auto classes in high school so I understand how a small issue can appear like a bigger, unrelated problem, but it’s still just wild to me.But that means one of the old drives was on its way out too. The hybrid drive I was using had been making clicking noises for a few weeks now, and the old SSD was again 10 years old. The network thing persisted when I popped those back in. Glad I got everything backed up when I did. Regardless, I’ll take D back and pair C and E together in the meantime, see what happens with those. I’ll be happy if I can get a few more years out of this thing. It’s the first PC I’ve ever built and it has been extremely reliable, all things considered.
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Mar 6, 2024 02:11
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4th gen Intel are still worthwhile general computing chips. That system is fine still because you have good parts! Good job taking advice and following through! Re: Odd errors like the network dropping/black screen: files need to be loaded to memory, but not all files, always. Some networking files or drivers may have been needed in memory, but since they are on a drive, and your drives are acting up, files may not be loaded to memory and the connection drops because of it. This is a generalization of course. Speculation, conjecture. It's all a network, man, a series of tubesssssssss 
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Mar 8, 2024 05:09
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Finally got a chance and put in about 5 hours into BG3. With the two drives installed, everything seems fine for the most part. Reinstalled Firefox, grabbed the old desktop image I was using. Then the power suddenly went out for about five minutes. Booted everything back up and the background image was flicking out again. Moved the original file to the C-Drive, reapplied it, and it seems fine now so I'm guessing the outage disrupted something.  Something still feels off, though I can't really explain what. I do notice there's like a half-second delay when clicking right out of Firefox and trying to highlight my desktop before the box shows up, but this is probably nothing other than my anxiety trying to find any excuse it can. I'll try playing around with the PC for a bit longer, let windows install these other drivers, update the graphics drives while I'm at it. I should probably get some fresh thermal paste applied to the CPU as well. But I think I'm about ready to call this solved and close the thread. Thank you, down1nit, for the assistance. It's greatly appreciated! I do have a few more questions, but those are regarding a laptop and another small PC that I use. Is it fine to ask those here, or should I make new threads for them? EDIT: That's twice now I've booted up the computer and had the default email app open itself up unprompted, IF that counts for anything? I decided to just trash it since I check emails through a browser anyways. Wilsonn12k fucked around with this message at 06:28 on Mar 11, 2024 |
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Mar 11, 2024 06:12
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Just post! I crave giving advice!
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Mar 11, 2024 11:04
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Alright then. I am using a Lenovo Legion gaming laptop on the side while I continue to tinker with my PC. It's a hand-me-down from my roommate after he built himself a new gaming rig. I do not recall how long he had it, but one issue he always had was the built-in keyboard not working. This was never an issue for him as he used an external keyboard anyways. After I initially got the laptop from him months ago, I reformatted it with a fresh Windows install since the original idea was to pass it onto my sister. Lo and behold, the keyboard worked! We figured it was likely a driver issue causing the problem. At some point while installing updates and getting everything configured, it just stopped working again. She had it for months and never used it so I took it back after my PC shat itself. I plugged in a mini keyboard and got to work with updates and setting it up for my use. At some point the keyboard started working again and I used it for a solid two days before I borked again. I always shut down my PCs when I'm done with them for the night, and sometimes the keyboard miraculously works on boot! I've never had it stop working on me suddenly, just always after a power cycle. Unplugging the external keyboard doesn't seem to matter. It's a pretty minor issue all things considered. Even when I pass it back to my sister for real, she'll be using it with an external keyboard. But it's something that's baffled the hell outta me and my roommate. Other notes: - Only the keyboard itself. Trackpad works just fine. - A few FN-key shortcuts continue to work. FN+Space continues to adjust the keyboard backlight brightness (dim -> bright -> off). FN+F5/F6 adjust screen brightness without issue as well, as does FN+F11 to disable the trackpad. We thought maybe the heat this thing can produce might've been to blame, but on boots where it does work that doesn't seem to deter it any. Rebooting hot or cold doesn't seem to make any difference. I'm not confident enough in my skills to take the laptop apart and see what lies underneath, but any idea what might be causing this?
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Mar 12, 2024 08:55
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Yeah it wouldnt surprise me to find some corrosion in the kb. You could probably open it up just enough to look at the keyboard cable at least. Usually liquid damage. 🙁Often it means keyboard replacement, sometimes it's just the cable though. Type your model # into YouTube (not just legion, it has a model number too) and "disassembly" or "repair" to see how easy it may or may not be to clean the kb cable. To see inside, generally you're just pulling off an access panel, like a breaker box door. You absolutely do not have to take it apart today or at any point, but you absolutely can and should just try to remove the bottom panel to look. Remove the panel carefully and slowly of you choose to. (This is 100% my specialty by the way. Hardware and is where I thrive.) You know yourself better than me though so feel free to nope out.
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Mar 12, 2024 16:08
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From what videos I could find, I would have to tear down the entire laptop to get to the keyboard. If the laptop wasn't in otherwise good condition, I might be willing to give it a shot but otherwise it seems like too big of an undertaking for a minor issue. While I do enjoy tinkering, I don't trust myself enough to not gently caress something up somewhere along the way. Though the keyboard has worked the last 3 power cycles, and I even typed this message with it just fine! So, who knows? --- Other question then. I have a small PC I built that was only really meant to be used for watching YouTube/Netflix/etc, as well as streaming games through Steam from my PC when I wanted to game on the big TV with friends over. I overbuilt the drat thing instead of just buying a mini-PC, with the idea that I might maybe repurpose it down the line or just slap a graphics card in and just play games locally instead. While everything works great, the case's front USB ports are giving me issue. I used the right 2.0 port for the KB/M receiver for awhile until Windows told me there was an error. Plugging anything into that port causes Windows to give me an "Error: Device not recognized" notification and refuses to do anything with it. I have the receiver in one of the 3.0 front ports and so far there hasn't been trouble there and use the other 3.0 for wired controllers. If I wish to transfer files over to the PC, I have to use a network drive. Plugging a flashdrive into the other 3.0 port causes the PC to just utterly chug, like the drive is somehow draining all the power from the rest of the system. A restart is required after removing the drive and symptoms clear up. And most recently my 8Bitdo Ultimate has disconnected on me twice without reason. The base (with receiver) is plugged into the main USB-C port on the rear I/O panel, and the disconnect is not from a low/dead battery. TLDR: USB ports disconnect at random, don't work at all, or cause system slowdowns when a flashdrive is plugged in. System specs: Motherboard: ASUS ROG Strix B360-I CPU: Intel Core I7-8700k RAM: 16GB (2x 8GB) GSkill Trident Z Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA 750 GS Hard Drive: Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 (500 GB) Case here OS: Windows 10 Home 64-Bit I have shocked myself a number of times when plugging controllers in or grabbing near the USB cable, since this couch can be lousy with static on dry days. My guess is something got fried but I figure it's worth asking about anyways.
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Mar 15, 2024 10:19
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Oh this is why customer service guys go insane. I didn't say to take the kb out, just pop the cover and look. Read over my post again, but this time read it as a person who is capable of turning a screwdriver a bit and nothing scary. If you still don't want to unscrew a panel and look then all that's left is taking it to a shop or just living with it. You likely have pins shorting in your usb port. Take a flashlight and look! Most people will cover it with tape and get an extension cable to bring a port to the front. I have multiple extension cables running to the front because my front usb ports are dongled up too. You can try moving the usb header cable (if your board has another usb header) to confirm if you like.
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Mar 15, 2024 18:30
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Okay I completely misinterpreted original message about the laptop. That's on me and I apologize. I popped the cover as soon as I got home and used the opportunity to clean out of the vents and fans. Other than the dust, I don't see anything out of place. No corrosion, no signs of spillage. I checked the ribbon cables and nothing is loose.
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Mar 16, 2024 04:54
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 01:49 |
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OK that's perfect. Then it's the keyboard likely. Good idea to clean stuff out!
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Mar 16, 2024 05:42
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