Solid State Drives (SSD)

[Apav]

Hey guys,

First off I'd like to apologize since this will probably be pretty long. But you have no idea how much it will mean to me if you can help me, I'd greatly appreciate it! I have a Lenovo Y580:
i7 3610QM
GTX 660m/Intel HD 4000
8GB Ram
Seagate 500GB 7200 rpm
Crucial M4 64GB mSATA SSD (system drive)
***Edited to remove Crucial competitor***

Today my laptop BSOD'ed twice, and after each time went to Intel PXE where it would hang on the "no bootable disc" line. After turning the laptop off via power button and booting up again it boots to windows fine. The first time it happened I was in Guild Wars 2. Now the rest of the times it happened (about 5 times now already) it has been with me either surfing the web or just on the desktop downloading.

I really don't know what to look for here. Maybe it's because I changed my drives up? I put my 500GB 7200 RPM in the ODD bay, I put a ***Edited to remove Crucial competitor*** in the HDD bay, and I have a 64GB Crucial M4 mSATA as my system drive. However, it has been nearly 2 weeks since switched my drives around and I haven't had a single problem until today. As this has only happened today, I can think of a few factors that might of lead to the BSOD.

1.) All day my computer has been "locking up" where it freezes for a few seconds. I am able to move my mouse during some of the lockups, just not click on anything. It locked up once while I was typing this actually. I have never had this happen to me before.

2.) When I turned my computer on this morning, I got a driver failed notification. The driver that failed was "avast! Firewall NDIS Filter Miniport #466." (I use avast internet security 2012) Every time I have restarted I get that notification.

3.) I have been gaming a lot lately, and my M4 (my system drive) has hovered around 65C constantly, reaching as high as 66-67C. ***Edited to remove Crucial competitor*** has my games on it, but it doesn't have a temperature sensor. I can only imagine though, since it is right next to my M4 and because how hot my HDD got, that it's getting the same temps as my M4.

4.) I have been downloading Phantasy Star Online 2 (Japanese mmo, everything is in Japanese) all day (before the first BSOD) via it's installer. Really don't know if that has anything to do with it, but the first BSOD started maybe an hour after I started downloading it. Then the second maybe 2 hours after that.

How can I tell if it is my M4 or my ***Edited to remove Crucial competitor*** giving me issues? My system is locking up a lot now. Just now, it froze, then went to a black screen where I couldn't do anything but turn the power off. Since I only have my games stored on my Vertex 4, do you think this probably is coming from my M4 where Windows is stored?

I cannot upgrade my firmware (***Edited to remove Crucial competitor***) because I have to be in IDE mode (only settings for me are AHCI or Compatible. When I boot off of my firmware disc it doesn't even detect any drives in AHCI, when I boot in compatible it detects them but fails to write anything).

Just want to make sure, but these lockups and BSOD's have nothing to do with Avast! or any viruses, correct?

If you need any more info, please let me know. I really don't know what to look for or if I should be concerned so I really appreciate the help!

Thanks!

[catalinus]

There can be a lot of things - but obviously you should test the disk part by removing all but the M4 drive. (also as a side-note I belive the "Compatible" mode is the same as IDE).

[Apav]

Ah, then the issue with the firmware upgrade is because my ODD is connected to my laptop via USB 3.0. I just checked, and both drives need to be directly connected to a SATA connector. On a side note, if I try to boot to Windows in compatible mode it instantly BSOD's. 

So what I did just now was I backed up my files ***Edited to remove Crucial competitor***. Then I restarted, and used disk management to create a new volume. So far no BSOD's, but the lockups are still a regular occurance. I will try removing the drives and see if the lockups are still there. 

I know Crucial is a lot more reliable than ***Edited to remove Crucial competitor***, and I never had this problem before I installed my* **Edited to remove Crucial competitor***. But I don't know how a drive which only my games are on can still cause lockups on Windows (which is on a completely different drive)?

[Apav]

It BSOS'ed again, I was able to catch it in time to take a picture:

Don't know if that helps, but let me know if you need to know anything more!

***Edited to remove Crucial competitor***

[BradTheCru]

Have you viewed this page from Microsoft?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977178

I know your drive isn't 1TB, but since the error matches, it might be worth a shot.  Other research I have found says that it could be multiple issues.  The primary causes of this error are virus/malware, drivers, memory, and disk corruption. And there can even be combinations of those so a thorough check of all is required. Added possible causes are
hardware errors such as damaged motherboard or other hardware.  The reason I bring this up is you mentioned Avast in your original post.  That might be something to look at as well.

[catalinus]

---

BradTheCru wrote:

Have you viewed this page from Microsoft?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977178

I know your drive isn't 1TB, but since the error matches, it might be worth a shot.  Other research I have found says that it could be multiple issues.  The primary causes of this error are virus/malware, drivers, memory, and disk corruption. And there can even be combinations of those so a thorough check of all is required. Added possible causes are
hardware errors such as damaged motherboard or other hardware.  The reason I bring this up is you mentioned Avast in your original post.  That might be something to look at as well.

---

I believe that one could be FAR more relevant than it looks by just the 1TB reference:

When you resume a computer from sleep or from hibernation, the SATA hard disk drivers require the SATA hard disks to be ready within 10 seconds. However, a large SATA hard disk may take longer than 10 seconds to be ready. In this situation, the resume operation times out.

[Apav]

Hmm, that is interesting because that is the same error, however whenever I get a BSOD it never occurs after I wake my computer up from a sleep state. It is usually at random times. I put my games on my HDD and they play fine without any BSOD's. Maybe I'm just getting lucky and it hasnt happened to me yet. 

I did put my computer to sleep a couple times yesterday, but the BSOD never happened right after I woke it up. Maybe I these lockups are happening when my HDD wakes up from a power saving state? I remember I do have this on in my Lenovo Energy Management app:

Smart Power Saving Hard Disk:

When the system is not reading or writing from the disk, the hard-disk will enter a power saving state. 

Edit: Here's an update!

It was on, so I switched it off. I then ran ChkDsk on the HDD to check for any bad sectors on the disk. I dismounted it, it ran for about a minute, then, BSOD! What can I do with my HDD? Maybe this problem is being caused by since it is in a HDD caddy in the ODD bay and the SATA connector is loose?

At least I now know what the problem is. 

Edit: I took the HDD out of the caddy in the ODD bay and left it out. So far no lockups yet. How bad does this look?: