Clicking HDD when playing games

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ewt123

Commendable
Jul 16, 2016
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I have recently noticed a distinct clicking/arcing sounds when playing Witcher 3 (quiter sound on other games but more prevalent on W3)

The sound starts when the game is playing but disappears when it enters menus such as inventory.

I took the PC to the shop that built it and they tested everything, including waterpump, GTX1080 FE, mother board but not the HDD.

When I returned home, I ignored the noise but then encountered FPS drops every 5 - 10 seconds or so on any game. I checked task manager and found my HDD was constantly up around 80 - 100% usage. I googled this problem and found solutions including disabling Windows Search, BIT, superfetch, pagesys etc. I tried all this but the sound is still there, the FPS drop still occurs and the HDD is now at 50-100% usage.

I am at a loss on what the issue is, I have even re-installed windows and it is still there. Any help?

p.s the other notable occurance was I upgraded to a 1080 end of May, but it played fine for a whole month and only recently (1st week of June) had this problem.

i7 - 5820k
4TB HD Seagate
GTX1080
Gigabyte X99 SLI
16GB 2133hz RAM
 
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Ralston18

Ralston18

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Oct 11, 2014
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Have you run any diagnostic (Seagate) software on the drive?

HDD could be failing. Back up your data as soon as possible. Verify the backup.

But you should also continue to look at the drive activity to determine what application, process, or service may be doing lots of reads and writes.

My primary suspect would be the graphics card drivers...

 
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ewt123

Commendable
Jul 16, 2016
5
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1,510
Good idea, will do. Other than Task manager, is there a better way to see the application, process or service that may be read/writing? Something that you recommend, that could do say create a log so i can play a game and look back?
 
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ewt123

Commendable
Jul 16, 2016
5
0
1,510


Good idea, will do. Other than Task manager, is there a better way to see the application, process or service that may be read/writing? Something that you recommend, that could do say create a log so i can play a game and look back?
 
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ewt123

Commendable
Jul 16, 2016
5
0
1,510
Process name that seems to be at fault is "ntoskrnl.exe.". I searched this previously and this is where I got the disable BIT, superfetch etc. Seems its still up. The HD is now making clicking sounds game or not.

Under resource monitor it is showing stxcon.exe as causing 100% disk usage
 
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Ralston18

Ralston18

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Oct 11, 2014
34,756
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I like to use the Event Viewer logs for troubleshooting.

Once you get a sense of how they are organized it it fairly easy to search for problems. Especially those that do not necessarily crash the system.

Look for some error or string of related errors that keep repeating especially if you can tie them to some event or system change: e.g., moving to a menu.

As for stxcon.exe I googled that and found far more information than I would have liked. One website suggested up to nine sources for that file name. One being Seagate.

Back up any important data.

Then look at the logs to see if you can determine the real source/importance/purpose of stxcon.exe with respect to your computer and setup.

Next stop the process. However a corrupted file or failing disk can manifest in all sorts of ways. Just be prepared for the worst (that being a dying drive) and hope that maybe the logs will turn up another problem that can be fixed.
 
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ewt123

Commendable
Jul 16, 2016
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1,510
Thanks Ralston. I took it to the shop as its under warenty and apparently it was a faulty GPU. They've replaced the card but I still have a sneaking suspicion the HDD is on its way out too.
 
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