- Jul 10, 2016
- 2
- 0
- 1,510
Hi guys, having a few issues. I normally troll through existing forums to find solutions, but nothing I've found has worked and I've given up hope- which is not like me at all. I'm notorious for out-stubborning my problems, but it's been a week of troubleshooting, scans, and beating my head into the wall. I know it looks like a novel- There's a lot happening on it, and with all of the different symptoms, I feel like it's important for diagnosis- not to mention I'm completely out of options and hope so I'd very much appreciate anyone that has the patience to power through it. Summary at the bottom included as well.
It started with a green ribbon of death, but only when I would open "My Computer". Nowhere else. And if i needed to access any of my secondary drives, I could type in the drive letter and explorer would take me there without hesitation. This also only happened when my computer had been left on for a while.
It would also take forever to shut down. Over 20 minutes, certainly, and I would often give up on it for the night if it had to shut down. If I absolutely had to, I would hit the reset button on my tower (which I know is bad, but it's either that or not access my computer for the rest of the evening).
I looked into both of these issues a few times, but didn't find anything that worked, so I resolved to live with them- they were really just minor annoyances, until recently.
My computer started not opening programs- first was Witcher 3. It would show up in task manager, and I would watch the memory climb up to a certain point and halt. I reinstalled, and it worked fine for a week or so. I went to go play one night (after I had played the previous night, and hadn't done anything on my computer in the meantime), and it wouldn't open. Reinstall didn't fix it. Tried a clean boot, still didn't start. Also tried system file check (sfc) and it said everything was fine.
I wanted to run a virus scan, but Malwayrebytes didn't open either. Again, it would show in task manager, but not open the program. After a reinstall, I got it to work. I tried a virus scan- with both MBAM and BitDefender- and both came up (mostly) clean. A few minor things, but nothing that could cause this.
While this is all happening, the green ribbon happens within about a minute of a computer restart. More and more programs are not starting. The computer won't restart properly at all. There's some snafus where it won't start, and pops up into recovery mode. System tells me that there's nothing wrong that can be fixed automatically, so I restart and it starts up just fine. Weird.
I tried booting into safe mode to run MBAM, and it still didn't start. So i went down that rabbit hole and found that I needed to do an EXE fix- so I tried the manual fix listed here and MBAM started up just fine. Ran another scan, nothing new. Thought the issues might be done, so I hopped back into msconfig to go back to the regular boot, and all of the issues came back. Haven't gotten MBAM to start again, Witcher still not starting. Went back to redo that manual fix, and it didn't work. Same with trying FixExec, no change.
Read on a forum that another guy had similar issues, and it was a secondary drive going bad (I think it was a WD Green drive that would sorta shut itself down but freak Win 7 out in the process. I ran every test on SeaTools, and found no issues. I used chkdsk on my main drive and on the first of the secondary drives. I am still running chkdsk on the third drive- I got a blue screen of death when I went to go check the results from the first scan I ran. "KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR" is what it gave me.
In looking through Event Viewer for the log from the chkdsk results I never got to see, I noticed a couple things. A number of events under iaStorA, reading "Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort0, was issued." My guess is it's related to the disk check, as I'm seeing more while I'm running this current chkdsk.
Another was from bowser- no I didn't mistype that- with Event 8003. Apparently it's fairly harmless if it doesn't happen often, but I don't often have need to trudge through Event Viewer so I have no idea how often it happens.
I also found a number of events from Disk, Event 11- controller error on \Device\Harddisk3\DR3. Unfortunately I can't see which drive that is, as Disk Management won't open either. Wonderful.
I also want to mention- occasionally, when things get bad, I can't click on anything on the right half of the Start menu- My Computer, Documents, Control Panel, anything. Then things stop working altogether, and everything freezes and stops responding. Only thing that interrupts it is hitting the reset button.
A possible guess is that using CCleaner indescriminately had messed with some of the registry settings (yes I've learned my lesson there while going through this) Tried restoring the most recent registry backup, about a month ago (last one for a while) and no real change- so I'm skeptical.
Anyway, TL;DR: I get green bar of death within a minute or so of startup, even on a clean boot. Weird errors in event viewer. Can't open several programs, even in safe mode. Windows takes forever (possibly literally?) to shut down. Occasionally Windows just completely grinds to a halt, can't click on anything system related and all open windows freeze. Tried sfc, virus scans, chkdsk, SeaTools scans, manual and FixExec EXE fixes, clean boot and safe mode, and more that I can't even think of right now. No help. No idea of the green ribbon is even related to the programs not starting. I'd really prefer not to reinstall windows, I don't really have a good way to back up my data right now just in case something happens. Any thoughts?
It started with a green ribbon of death, but only when I would open "My Computer". Nowhere else. And if i needed to access any of my secondary drives, I could type in the drive letter and explorer would take me there without hesitation. This also only happened when my computer had been left on for a while.
It would also take forever to shut down. Over 20 minutes, certainly, and I would often give up on it for the night if it had to shut down. If I absolutely had to, I would hit the reset button on my tower (which I know is bad, but it's either that or not access my computer for the rest of the evening).
I looked into both of these issues a few times, but didn't find anything that worked, so I resolved to live with them- they were really just minor annoyances, until recently.
My computer started not opening programs- first was Witcher 3. It would show up in task manager, and I would watch the memory climb up to a certain point and halt. I reinstalled, and it worked fine for a week or so. I went to go play one night (after I had played the previous night, and hadn't done anything on my computer in the meantime), and it wouldn't open. Reinstall didn't fix it. Tried a clean boot, still didn't start. Also tried system file check (sfc) and it said everything was fine.
I wanted to run a virus scan, but Malwayrebytes didn't open either. Again, it would show in task manager, but not open the program. After a reinstall, I got it to work. I tried a virus scan- with both MBAM and BitDefender- and both came up (mostly) clean. A few minor things, but nothing that could cause this.
While this is all happening, the green ribbon happens within about a minute of a computer restart. More and more programs are not starting. The computer won't restart properly at all. There's some snafus where it won't start, and pops up into recovery mode. System tells me that there's nothing wrong that can be fixed automatically, so I restart and it starts up just fine. Weird.
I tried booting into safe mode to run MBAM, and it still didn't start. So i went down that rabbit hole and found that I needed to do an EXE fix- so I tried the manual fix listed here and MBAM started up just fine. Ran another scan, nothing new. Thought the issues might be done, so I hopped back into msconfig to go back to the regular boot, and all of the issues came back. Haven't gotten MBAM to start again, Witcher still not starting. Went back to redo that manual fix, and it didn't work. Same with trying FixExec, no change.
Read on a forum that another guy had similar issues, and it was a secondary drive going bad (I think it was a WD Green drive that would sorta shut itself down but freak Win 7 out in the process. I ran every test on SeaTools, and found no issues. I used chkdsk on my main drive and on the first of the secondary drives. I am still running chkdsk on the third drive- I got a blue screen of death when I went to go check the results from the first scan I ran. "KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR" is what it gave me.
In looking through Event Viewer for the log from the chkdsk results I never got to see, I noticed a couple things. A number of events under iaStorA, reading "Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort0, was issued." My guess is it's related to the disk check, as I'm seeing more while I'm running this current chkdsk.
Another was from bowser- no I didn't mistype that- with Event 8003. Apparently it's fairly harmless if it doesn't happen often, but I don't often have need to trudge through Event Viewer so I have no idea how often it happens.
I also found a number of events from Disk, Event 11- controller error on \Device\Harddisk3\DR3. Unfortunately I can't see which drive that is, as Disk Management won't open either. Wonderful.
I also want to mention- occasionally, when things get bad, I can't click on anything on the right half of the Start menu- My Computer, Documents, Control Panel, anything. Then things stop working altogether, and everything freezes and stops responding. Only thing that interrupts it is hitting the reset button.
A possible guess is that using CCleaner indescriminately had messed with some of the registry settings (yes I've learned my lesson there while going through this) Tried restoring the most recent registry backup, about a month ago (last one for a while) and no real change- so I'm skeptical.
Anyway, TL;DR: I get green bar of death within a minute or so of startup, even on a clean boot. Weird errors in event viewer. Can't open several programs, even in safe mode. Windows takes forever (possibly literally?) to shut down. Occasionally Windows just completely grinds to a halt, can't click on anything system related and all open windows freeze. Tried sfc, virus scans, chkdsk, SeaTools scans, manual and FixExec EXE fixes, clean boot and safe mode, and more that I can't even think of right now. No help. No idea of the green ribbon is even related to the programs not starting. I'd really prefer not to reinstall windows, I don't really have a good way to back up my data right now just in case something happens. Any thoughts?
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