G73JW - Strange Windows crashing

[giturar]

Hello all,

Just last night my laptop started doing something awfully strange. After being on for 4-5 minutes, windows will grind to a halt and eventually blue screen, with the error being a random .sys file, or loads of hex codes. During the grinding nova halt phase, the hdd light will stay on full (no flickering). After the computer restarts itself, the primary hard drive is no longer in the boot list, however if I hold the power button to force it off and turn it back on again, the hard drive is there and I am able to boot from it.

The primary drive is an ocz vertex2 ssd. At first I thought the ssd had kicked, but both ssdlife and hdtune report the drive in good health. I also tried removing the ram and testing each individual stick, but to no avail. I figured at this point it was either windows was broken, or some more critical piece of hardware had failed, or the hdd programs were lying to me.

Unfortunately, I am out of state on business for the next couple weeks, and didn't think to bring a windows disk with me, so I am unable to do a system repair, nor can I do a system restore since windows just dies before it can even finish initializing.

Here's the really odd part, if I force shutdown the computer before the blue screen, the ssd doesn't vanish from the boot menu and it boots up just fine. Also, once it's up and running, it runs as if nothing is wrong. I've also tried just idling after a boot, but it still just dies. Though as of my typing this, the machine has been sitting on the bios screen for 40 minutes, and nothing strange has happened yet, if that means anything.

I can't really download any large files, or execute any long processes, but if anyone has any ideas as to what may be going on here, I'm all ears.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated!

Also, I ought to mention that just before windows dies, all temperatures are in normal ranges.

Also also, same thing happens in safe mode.

[Idestruction]

Sounds like a critical file is either corrupt or damaged in your OS install. If you are completely sure that the SSD is not dying, then the next best thing in my opinion would be to get a windows cd and run a repair. Also, you could google the exact error message the BSOD gives you and the hex codes. You might be able to find something on it from that information. I could help you further, but i cannot do any research without the exact .sys filename or the hex codes.

But to me and from my experience, if it happens during boot or just after boot, it could either be the Master Boot Record or some file that windows needs to load at startup that is corrupt or damaged. If you could post the exact error message and the hex codes, I may be able to help you further.

[giturar]

Idestruction wrote:
Sounds like a critical file is either corrupt or damaged in your OS install. If you are completely sure that the SSD is not dying, then the next best thing in my opinion would be to get a windows cd and run a repair. Also, you could google the exact error message the BSOD gives you and the hex codes. You might be able to find something on it from that information. I could help you further, but i cannot do any research without the exact .sys filename or the hex codes.

But to me and from my experience, if it happens during boot or just after boot, it could either be the Master Boot Record or some file that windows needs to load at startup that is corrupt or damaged. If you could post the exact error message and the hex codes, I may be able to help you further.

I did some further testing, looks more and more like those SSD diagnostics lied to me. I bought a USB stick and was able to keep windows up long enough to get a small linux iso copied to it, loaded up into linux, and it stays on forever. When I mount the SSD, itll work for a couple of minutes, then the hdd light will stay illuminated, and it will unmount it self and I am unable to get it back. I swapped my secondary hdd to the primary hdd slot to see if maybe the connection is bad, but it works just fine.

I tried to run a windows repair, but it just died, same as if I were running windows, and if I try to do anything with the SSD, it just crashes and burns. Luckily I can keep it on long enough to get important stuff off of it, but it looks like I'm in the market for a new hdd 😉 Though I may just switch back to a traditional hdd, the ssd is maybe a year old, and I'd rather not spend that sort of money and deal with headaches every year if I can help it 😛

Thanks for the reponse!

[Idestruction]

Good testing. HDDs are cheap right now anyways.