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Get a blue screen crash at idle then a black screen saying "Missing Operating System".

Tags:
  • Storage
  • Blue Screen
  • Crash
  • Computers
Last response: in Storage
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October 13, 2014 7:58:40 AM

My computer was sitting at idle yesterday on a website when it blue screened on me then promptly went to a black screen saying "Missing Operating System." I hard restarted and everything boots up normally, I haven't had a single issue booting up yet, it seems to crash only during use. It crashed again when I was playing a game (the game quit loading between a match and crashed). My hard drive cant be more than 3-4 years old max. I back up some files to my external and thought it was transferring slowly. Any advice would be appreciated.

Side note: A simple software called Belarc primarily used for finding your software keys said my HDD status was "healthy"


Thank you.

Specs:
-Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
-2.90 gigahertz Intel Core i5-2310
-Intel DH67BL AAG10189-208 motherboard 100megahertz
-Seagate Barracuda ST31000524AS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5"
-(2) 4096mb DDR3 RAM

More about : blue screen crash idle black screen missing operating system

October 13, 2014 8:19:29 AM

Run Chkdsk & sfc.exe.
Try Remove you screen saver and observe during idle.
m
1
l
October 13, 2014 8:36:02 AM

-a blue screen at idle often indicates a low power sleep problem in the hardware (driver or hardware)
if the machine auto reboots and can not find the OS, I would expect that the problem is in the drive subsystem.

SO, I would look for a bugcheck that indicated a kernel inpage error

something like this happens: your system goes idle, after 20 mins your drive goes to sleep, sometime later
a task is automatically run and needs to get something from your hard drive. The system tells the drive to wake up but does not get a response.
The system issues a kernel in page error bugcheck, and displays the error, tries to write the memory dump but the drive sill will not respond so the memory dump is not written. The machine reboots, but the drive is still not responding so it can not find the OS. You then power cycle the machine and the machine works.

so, causes of a drive not waking up:
BIOS bugs, update the BIOS
poorly connected SATA cables, sometimes you can have bad connections on you sata connectors from your hard drive to your motherboard.
Connections where they are just connected and the thermal expansion of the connector makes and breaks the connection.
to fix this unplug the cables and plug them back in, or replace the cables with a better quality one. You can also enable hot swap in your BIOS for the SATA port where your OS drive is connected. This will let the drive automatically reconnect if it gets disconnected for some reason.
driver bugs, update the chipset drivers for your CPU

some drives just have errors in the electronics logic of the drive for its sleep states. It is common for older devices to have problems. Windows 7 and before had many of the sleep states turned off by default because of all the problems. Windows 8 turned them on assuming the devices were not in use anymore.
(big mistake)

so after going doing the various BIOS update, chipset drivers update, motherboard drivers updates. If you still have the problem, most people go to the windows power management setting and turn off the sleep for the device that was not waking up.

you can also look to see if your system produced a memory dump file
generally it will be in the
c:\windows\minidump directory (but the directory location can be set by the user so it can be anywhere)
m
2
l
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October 13, 2014 9:01:56 AM

johnbl said:
-a blue screen at idle often indicates a low power sleep problem in the hardware (driver or hardware)
if the machine auto reboots and can not find the OS, I would expect that the problem is in the drive subsystem.

SO, I would look for a bugcheck that indicated a kernel inpage error

something like this happens: your system goes idle, after 20 mins your drive goes to sleep, sometime later
a task is automatically run and needs to get something from your hard drive. The system tells the drive to wake up but does not get a response.
The system issues a kernel in page error bugcheck, and displays the error, tries to write the memory dump but the drive sill will not respond so the memory dump is not written. The machine reboots, but the drive is still not responding so it can not find the OS. You then power cycle the machine and the machine works.

so, causes of a drive not waking up:
BIOS bugs, update the BIOS
poorly connected SATA cables, sometimes you can have bad connections on you sata connectors from your hard drive to your motherboard.
Connections where they are just connected and the thermal expansion of the connector makes and breaks the connection.
to fix this unplug the cables and plug them back in, or replace the cables with a better quality one. You can also enable hot swap in your BIOS for the SATA port where your OS drive is connected. This will let the drive automatically reconnect if it gets disconnected for some reason.
driver bugs, update the chipset drivers for your CPU

some drives just have errors in the electronics logic of the drive for its sleep states. It is common for older devices to have problems. Windows 7 and before had many of the sleep states turned off by default because of all the problems. Windows 8 turned them on assuming the devices were not in use anymore.
(big mistake)

so after going doing the various BIOS update, chipset drivers update, motherboard drivers updates. If you still have the problem, most people go to the windows power management setting and turn off the sleep for the device that was not waking up.

you can also look to see if your system produced a memory dump file
generally it will be in the
c:\windows\minidump directory (but the directory location can be set by the user so it can be anywhere)




Regarding the low power/ sleep problem. I had a crash happen while I was in the middle of a game, wouldn't that rule out a sleep problem? The game just stopped loading and crashed. Also, I turned my sleep settings to "off" because I was having issues with my monitors not waking up with the PC after sleep, so my PC shouldn't automatically go into sleep mode.

Another thing to note is that I have recently had some issues with that outlet I'm connected to. Do you think this could have been caused by a very brief power interruption?

Thanks
m
0
l
October 13, 2014 11:17:25 AM

Depends on the bugcheck code, but I have see some strange problems that were isolated down to failing power strips that the machine was plugged into. I recall one case where a guys machine would reboot when his refrigerator's motor turned on.

wolfenburg said:
johnbl said:
-a blue screen at idle often indicates a low power sleep problem in the hardware (driver or hardware)
if the machine auto reboots and can not find the OS, I would expect that the problem is in the drive subsystem.

SO, I would look for a bugcheck that indicated a kernel inpage error

something like this happens: your system goes idle, after 20 mins your drive goes to sleep, sometime later
a task is automatically run and needs to get something from your hard drive. The system tells the drive to wake up but does not get a response.
The system issues a kernel in page error bugcheck, and displays the error, tries to write the memory dump but the drive sill will not respond so the memory dump is not written. The machine reboots, but the drive is still not responding so it can not find the OS. You then power cycle the machine and the machine works.

so, causes of a drive not waking up:
BIOS bugs, update the BIOS
poorly connected SATA cables, sometimes you can have bad connections on you sata connectors from your hard drive to your motherboard.
Connections where they are just connected and the thermal expansion of the connector makes and breaks the connection.
to fix this unplug the cables and plug them back in, or replace the cables with a better quality one. You can also enable hot swap in your BIOS for the SATA port where your OS drive is connected. This will let the drive automatically reconnect if it gets disconnected for some reason.
driver bugs, update the chipset drivers for your CPU

some drives just have errors in the electronics logic of the drive for its sleep states. It is common for older devices to have problems. Windows 7 and before had many of the sleep states turned off by default because of all the problems. Windows 8 turned them on assuming the devices were not in use anymore.
(big mistake)

so after going doing the various BIOS update, chipset drivers update, motherboard drivers updates. If you still have the problem, most people go to the windows power management setting and turn off the sleep for the device that was not waking up.

you can also look to see if your system produced a memory dump file
generally it will be in the
c:\windows\minidump directory (but the directory location can be set by the user so it can be anywhere)




Regarding the low power/ sleep problem. I had a crash happen while I was in the middle of a game, wouldn't that rule out a sleep problem? The game just stopped loading and crashed. Also, I turned my sleep settings to "off" because I was having issues with my monitors not waking up with the PC after sleep, so my PC shouldn't automatically go into sleep mode.

Another thing to note is that I have recently had some issues with that outlet I'm connected to. Do you think this could have been caused by a very brief power interruption?

Thanks


m
1
l
October 14, 2014 7:46:47 AM

All I had time for was to check that my cables were secure and ran Chkdsk & sfc.exe, it took forever but everything checked out A OK. After that I freed up some space on my HDD so I wasn't in the red. Everything seems fine.... For now
m
0
l
!