Windows 10 weird crash/hang behaviour followed by BIOS not seeing boot SSD

[fezary]

Hi everyone, thanks for stopping by and potentially helping me with my problem

The issue I’ve been having started happening some time ago but definitely after the anniversary update and after I’ve upgraded my graphics card from GTX 770(MSI TwinFrozr) to GTX 1080(MSI ARMOR) and added 8GB of RAM bringing the total to 16GB(these are older DDR3s but all 4 modules are exactly the same). I do have an Oculus plugged in all the time and I’m experiencing the bug with the sensor being put to sleep from time to time(although lately that happens very rarely).

The whole spec looks like this:
MOBO - ASUS Z87-PLUS s1150 Z87
CPU - Intel Core i5 4670K(not overclocked..yet,although I don’t want to overclock it until I find out what is causing these hangs)
GPU - MSI Armor OC GTX 1080
RAM - 2x Corsair Memory Vengeance Racing Red 8GB DDR3 2133 MHz
PSU - Corsair CP-9020048-UK CX 600W
SSD - 250GB SSung 840 EVO SSD Basic
HDD1 - 2TB SEAGATE ST2000DM001 SATA3
HDD2 - 500GB Seagate Barracuda ST3500320AS SATA

So the issue itself is that randomly - I haven’t noticed anything happening that would cause this - the system starts sort of shutting down, first symptom of an incoming hang is the loss of an internet connection, usually the rest of the system is still usable at this point and I can alt+tab through the windows and such, but with time more programs become unresponsive until I can only move the cursor and it’s stuck in “thinking” animation, and now the weird part - eventually I have to do a hard reset of the system but when it starts booting the boot disk is gone(which is the SSD) and I have to completely shut down the computer then turn it on, go to BIOS and restore the boot settings(by completely shutting down the system the BIOS starts seeing the SSD(boot) drive again).

I’ve run lots of diagnostics tools for the SSD, RAM, antivirus, malware, almost anything by now and everything comes up as healthy.
Also the Event Viewer doesn’t show anything out of the ordinary, only that the system was restarted without properly shutting down first which is the result of me pressing the reset button.

Can someone please point me in direction where can I look next for a possible solution to this? Any other tests I can run?
I haven’t tried reinstalling windows yet as somehow I feel like it might be a hardware not a software issue.

Thanks!

 

[Colif]

Do you have latest bios/motherbaord drivers: https://www.asus.com/au/Motherboards/Z87PLUS/HelpDesk_Download/

Windows has no idea why its happening, hence the event 41 error at start up. its likely a hardware problem, see if removing the extra ram makes any difference.

Updating bios might fix ssd disappearing act. Was win 10 a fresh install or an upgrade from win 7? Just wondering what boot method you are using.

have you run a chkdsk /f on the ssd? (that fixes the file system)

 

[fezary]

I did run the chkdsk /f on ssd, it finished in 1 second and didn't report anything unusual.

I don't think I ever updated my motherboard drivers will have to try.

Windows 10 was a fresh install but I did not reinstall it after upgrading my graphics card, although I did uninstall all the drivers and performed a clean install.

The main problem is that it happens randomly and rarely so in the end I will never be sure if it's fixed or if it's waiting round the corner.

Thanks for your suggestions, I'm going away for more than a week now, but I will keep updating this thread if anything happens.

 

[Colif]

You don't need to reinstall windows if you replace graphics card (though I did once as GPU died and took windows with it, but that isn't normal)

Drivers could be cause of crashes/hangs but not the ssd disappearing act. Not entirely sure what would cause that.

 

[Shady77]

I have the exact same problem! I don't have an definitive answer for you, but I think I'm hot on the trail. For me it definitely started after the Windows 10 Anniversary Update; I definitely did not change anything else, and the random but approximately daily crashes started immediately after the update. Subsequent updates have not resolved it.

In putting this note together, I noticed that my crashes seem to coincide with Windows Defender updates. I'm going to try installing a different antivirus program so I can turn off Windows Defender and see if that helps.

One other thing we have in common is that we have the exact same boot disk: Samsung 840 EVO SSD 250GB.
I also have an ASUS motherboard, but a different model: P8H67-M-LE. I have the latest BIOS update (though it is quite old).

My system usually just crashes and attempts to restart on its own, but when I've caught it in the act I see the same symptoms:
1. Web browser won't open new pages.
2. Cursor starts thinking.
3. BSOD. Mine says "UNEXPECTED STORE EXCEPTION", and it attempts to write a crash dump but never gets above 0%.
4. System attempts to automatically restart. BIOS screen displayed for a minute (this is not normal).
5. Black screen with text saying "Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key". This is the state the system is in when I walk up to it if it's crashed when I'm not around.

At this point I have to power down. Powering back up results in a successful boot, as if nothing had gone wrong.

When I jump into the BIOS at step 4 I see that my boot drive (an SSD) is simply not listed (hence the restart failure). If I power it down, then jump into the BIOS on reboot, the SSD is once again visible (hence the successful boot).

I've tried coaxing Windows into writing a crash dump but with no success. I thought it wasn't writing it because the boot drive had disappeared and it had no target, so I tried specifying another one of my hard drives that was still visible in BIOS after the crash, but that didn't work either.

Another interesting point is that I actually have two systems built identically. If they've both crashed, and I restart them at the same time, then their next crash frequently happens at exactly the same time (some random time later). From combing their respective event logs, the only activity I can see that seems to be in common in the minutes leading up to the crash is Windows Update, specifically Windows Defender updates. So my guess is that something that Windows Defender is doing is causing our systems to lose sight of their Samsung EVO SSD boot drives. I'm going to swap in another anti-virus program on one of my systems and see what happens

I'll post an update here with the outcome.

 

[Colif]

Defender is better than nothing but most other AV are much better than Defender

I can see that defender updates could crash PC but not how they cause the BIOS, a completely separate part of the PC to just lose the SSD completely. I could understand it if it was locking ssd but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Question: Are you running Samsung Magician software? the current drivers don't work with Windows 10 until Samsung get them updated as they aren't digitally signed by Microsoft and Win 10 since 1607 refuses to run unsigned device drivers. THat could be the only reason I can see for it effecting ssd in anyway.

I can't test your theory as I have an Evo 850 and I don't use defender anyway. Bitdefender is so much better, I can set it to scan when I want it to, not when it feels like using 100% of my CPU for an unknown time frame.

 

[Shady77]

Well replacing Defender with something better didn't help - still crashing. At least I'm better protected in between crashes...

No, I'm not running Samsung Magician.

Looks like I'm at the mercy of Microsoft for now. They introduced this problem with the Anniversary Update, and I'll either have to hope they fix it, or buy new motherboards. Mine are quite old, so there won't be any BIOS updates to fix anything from the ASUS end.

 

[Shady77]

SOLVED - for me, anyway. Upgrading the firmware on the Samsung SSDs did the trick. The version I had apparently was compatible with Windows 10 up to the Anniversary Update.

 

[fezary]

Hey Shady77, thanks for all your input, I just came back from holidays and the system froze again yesterday.

I've never used Defender so that is definitely not the problem in my case.

I will try updating the firmware on the SSD(any tips on how to do that or bits to watch out for? I've never done this before), sounds like this might be the issue especially that we both have exactly the same disk.

The only problem for me is that I guess I will never know if the fix works as my system does not freeze that often, but let's say that if I don't get a freeze in a month I will consider the issue gone.

Thanks!

 

[Shady77]

Sure! I installed Samsung Magician and updated my firmware through there. It figures out what version to install, just takes a few minutes.

 

[543210]

SOLVED - for me, anyway. Upgrading the firmware on the Samsung SSDs did the trick. The version I had apparently was compatible with Windows 10 up to the Anniversary Update.

Thank you fine Sir! I have been having the same random crashes losing the boot setting. I never thought to update my Samsung 850 Evo SSD's firmware, but it has solved the problem and my headache.

 

[fezary]

Yep, so far it seems like updating the firmware did the trick for me as well. Usually if I had the pc on for long enough - 10+ hours it would hang sooner or later but it has been fine throughout the whole weekend.

I'm gonna mark the firmware update as the solution but if anything changes or I'll have more problems I will continue to update this thread.

Thanks!