Question Desperate for help, failing PSU? NVME? Virus?

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
K

kevmachine

Distinguished
Nov 25, 2010
143
3
18,695
Hello, about 5 days ago I woke up and noticed my pc had restarted overnight. I thought that it was weird because I have it on 24/7 and never shut it down but I thought maybe it was an update or something. Later It crashed on me when playing a game, which never happened since I owned it. Since then it has crashed dozens of times and I started trying to trouble shoot it. What I have come to notice is, when launching a program off my 2nd nvme, it tends "not always" to crash, and when I say crash I mean no screen, no bsod just the pc shuts completely off and restarts itsself.

I do some transfering of large files, and I had a 40gb file on this nvme, and when ever I copied and pasted it, because I was trying to move stuff off the drive onto my other nvme, as soon as I clicked paste, the very moment, it would crash. I then thought it must be the hard drive... I experimented, by copying the file and pasting it on the same drive in a new folder. it worked no crash... I tried deleting that 2nd copy, no issues.

I even thought maybe its the other nvme failing and I tested that same thing, no issues, but as soon as I copied and pasted from my 2nd nvme J: to my C: it crashed. I thought maybe it was a corrupt file. i transfered something smaller, a game off my J to my C drive, that worked! now im not so sure what it is... I reset my mb to factory no overclocks, ran memory test came back fine. even reseated my ram and gpu seeing how games would crash sometimes and no luck still crashed. very strange why would my pc crash the moment I clicked paste to transfer files from one drive to another? does that pull power from the psu in a specific way that could indicate a bad psu?

I just launched a game on the J drive, the drive I suspected was bad and it crashed in about 5 seconds, well the pc crashed. I unistalled it and gonna install it on another drive to see if it works. I am at a loss. any help or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
Took out my other nvme again and hasn't crashed in over 4 hours. I had 3 nvme's installed running perfect for 6 months. so as long as I have 1 nvme installed it works fine, if i installed one or the other nvme it crashes, so both of the two other nvmes failed at the exact same time? I find this highly unlikely. the slots work fine on the motherboard because I tried the single nvme in all 3 of them one at a time with no crashes within the time frame and operations where normally it would crash. I don't know if its a motherboard, psu or both the other nvme's somehow failed at the exact same time and are causing the pc to shut down. I was told above that nvme's don't use much power, I don't think its a psu because I ran cinibench r23 10 time's in a row with 0 issues, and that has to use lots of power enough to if it was the psu cause it to shut down but it didnt. the 1 nvme I have windows on is gen 3, and my other two nvme's are gen 4. not sure if its a pcie lane issue or what. at this point I have 2x 2tb firecudas sitting on the desk, the pc won't accept either of them without crashes. the crash seems to be most prevelent when those nvmes are active, downloading, moving files, installing, opening programs on those drives ect. but the drives themselves are 5 months old and lightly used and the odds of both failing at the exact same time seem's odd and unlikely. I set the nvme speeds to gen 3 in the bios but didn't help. for now system runs fine with just the 1 nvme installed. I contacted my motherboard company for any help insight. has anyone heard of this before?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
OHHH I am sorry I didn't know what you meant this entire time lol, your talking about the MSFT XVDD, Disk drive? I have no idea what that is but it makes sense what you were saying now before, ill look into it.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Karadjgne said:
How did you install Windows? Was all drives disconnected except OS nvme? If you have a single flaky drive, and it was active when windows was installed, it's tied to windows and C drive. When it flakes, it'll hit C too.
Click to expand...
Hmmm good question, I am not sure if they were removed or not during the installation. I might of had one of the firecuda's in there during installation but can't say for sure. I just managed to get the pc to crash 4 times in a roll by doing the following

1 open up steam
2 download a game
3 wait a few moments for the download speed to ramp up
4 click on firefox once, as soon as I click the firefox icon at the bottom of my screen it shuts off

I repeated this 4 times and it crashed everytime. steam was downloading to D drive, and firefox is installed on C drive the drive.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
quick update. I pulled the firecuda I had installed all day out and put the other one in, and the bios doesn't even pop up the computer keeps clicking like a reset sound infinite loop over and over couln't even get to the splash screen. I took it out put the other firecuda in and it booted up normally thou stiill crashes with this setup randomly So I am not sure, I guess both my nvme's failed at the exact same time for some reason, or the motherboard is toast.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Yeah, having drives connected during windows install basically acts like all the drives (according to windows) are C drive with partitions relabeled D, E, F etc. Take one out and part of windows goes missing. Which it doesn't like. Best to always remove data line or physically remove (m.2) all drives except the primary OS drive before installing. Then all drives are treated as extra storage, not essential storage.

Have you run CHKDSK and/or sfc /scannow on the individual drives yet?
 
  • Like
Reactions: kevmachine
Upvote 0 Downvote
Tommorow ill give it a go. I have run it on the main OS drive but not on the others, at the moment the only way my system is stable is with just my OS NVME installed no other nvmes. If I install 1 of my other NVMES with my OS nvme I get random crashes mostly when downloading to the secondary drive likes to cause the crash almost always. if I install the 3rd nvme drive my system won't even get to the bios screen it just is black then restarts over and over again. I still find it hard to belive both my nvme's went bad at the same time. both are about 6 months old 2tb with 80% life left each. I will do more testing tommorow im burnt out. Thanks for all the help everyone.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I am pretty sure its either PSU, somehow both nvme's went bad at the exact same time, or motherboard. not a driver issue, even in safe mode it crashes and I have tried all newest drivers multiple times no luck. not a heat promblem already tested that. It likes to crash always when downloading to the drive, but I can boot a game off the drive sometimes and play for over an hour before it crashes.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Wait. Both nvme are only 6 months old? , yet have 80% left? It took my OS drive 3 years to get to 98%. Drives have redundancy built in, usually @ 7-13% that's hidden, so not only have you used up that 20% life in 6 months, but also an extra @ 10% on top of that.

That's insane amount of usage. That puts those drives lifespans usable at closer to 8-9 months, not the expected 5-15 Years. The average TBW (Terabytes Written) for a 250Gb ssd is 60-150TB. And is larger for larger drives, a 2Tb Samsung 860 evo has a TBW of 1200 TB. Even the 1Tb version is 600TB. To use up 30ish % of a 1Tb ssd, you'd have had to have written approximately 180,000GB of data.

That's insane in 6 months, even with large file transfers, because most of what happens with a pc doesn't even include storage access, it gets accessed once, then it's stored in the ram cache and used from there, repeatedly if necessary. And that's Read, not Write.

So either you bought the worst junk nvme ever manufactured, in a seriously small size with uber low TBW and are close to maxing that size with every large file dl or transfer, or you have something seriously wrong with how the drives are setup to be used.
 
  • Like
Reactions: kevmachine
Upvote 0 Downvote
Karadjgne said:
Wait. Both nvme are only 6 months old? , yet have 80% left? It took my OS drive 3 years to get to 98%. Drives have redundancy built in, usually @ 7-13% that's hidden, so not only have you used up that 20% life in 6 months, but also an extra @ 10% on top of that.

That's insane amount of usage. That puts those drives lifespans usable at closer to 8-9 months, not the expected 5-15 Years. The average TBW (Terabytes Written) for a 250Gb ssd is 60-150TB. And is larger for larger drives, a 2Tb Samsung 860 evo has a TBW of 1200 TB. Even the 1Tb version is 600TB. To use up 30ish % of a 1Tb ssd, you'd have had to have written approximately 180,000GB of data.

That's insane in 6 months, even with large file transfers, because most of what happens with a pc doesn't even include storage access, it gets accessed once, then it's stored in the ram cache and used from there, repeatedly if necessary. And that's Read, not Write.

So either you bought the worst junk nvme ever manufactured, in a seriously small size with uber low TBW and are close to maxing that size with every large file dl or transfer, or you have something seriously wrong with how the drives are setup to be used.
Click to expand...

No these drives are used alot, thats why I bought these specific drives with a high TBW, they are kept cooled with heat plates and fans 24/7 while used and never overheated at least not to my knowledge. I did some more experimenting. I had all 3 of my nvme's installed and I got the same pc turns on and the shuts off before bios screen no restart that I had previous. However I tried removing the gpu just for a test and the pc didn't turn off thou I cant see the screen now I assume its either in the bios screen or booted into windows. Friend was busy so didn't get a chance to test the nvme in a different system yet. I feel like its the motherboard now.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0 Downvote
Hi

Would you first verify that it's not a software problem by checking the shutdown cause in Event Viewer?(which probably isn't; just in case)

It's very odd that a storage cause sudden shutdowns so I recommend you to Turn Off the "windows page file" to minimalize the storage effects on the system and check the results.

Also if you're using any sort of RAID configuration, can you disengage the RAID and set all drives on AHCI mode?
 
  • Like
Reactions: kevmachine
Upvote 0 Downvote
henterpriser said:
Hi

Would you first verify that it's not a software problem by checking the shutdown cause in Event Viewer?(which probably isn't; just in case)

It's very odd that a storage cause sudden shutdowns so I recommend you to Turn Off the "windows page file" to minimalize the storage effects on the system and check the results.

Also if you're using any sort of RAID configuration, can you disengage the RAID and set all drives on AHCI mode?
Click to expand...

Event viewer was showing the exact same thing everytime the system shutdown. It was mainly event id 15 TMP, followed by some event id 55 Kernal Processor power but that was infomation not error thou sometimes its up to 20 of these listed all in a row, then 7017, 7010, 7005, 7027, 7036, 172 and then kernal power 41 (63). its not always the same but those are the ones I see most commonly and usually in that order.

I will try the page file thing thanks. and as for raid, I have 4 internal sata drives dont' worry they are not on the ports that share the bandwith thing that disables some things if that makes sense and I tried with them not even installed didn't help So I have raid on for those but nvme raid is off. I guess I can try all raid off also.


Update, just disabled windows page filing, and turned raid off and set it to ahci and it was the same, with all 3 nvme's installed, would not boot to bios just shut off and restarted in a loop. Pulled out GPU and pressed power on and it did not shut down, thou I could not see what was on screen the system stayed running. Its not the gpu I don't think as Without the 2 nvme's installed I have been playing games fine for hours no issue. I really think its either A - somehow both nvme's went bad at the same time or B- there is something wrong with the motherboard be it software or hardware related, could be the power delievery to all those nvme slots pcie lanes, with all them going at once it may be too much for what ever is going on with it. The odd thing is when I pull out the gpu and boot it doesn't go into that strange restart loop before bios screen. If I had onboard graphics I could probably see what was going on lol. Does this sound like a PSU issue? I mean without the other nvme's installed the system runs perfect, gaming all day today no issues. Unless there is a certain part of the PSU that supplies power to those nvme slots? and there just isn't enough power to run all them plus the gpu at once. thou it was running fine for 6+ months like this. what about the pcie bitfurication I think I spelt that correct, I never adjusted this before I think its set to auto, but could this be the issue?
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0 Downvote
just had a crash with my single OS Nvme installed so it would seem I get this crash even with my samsung 970 installed alone, thou it took almost 2 days for it to crash. I was simply exiting a game and when I quick exit to desktop the pc shut down. So with 1 nvme installed it crashes rarely I assume every couple days to a week. with 2 nvme's it crashes every 5-15 minutes and 3 nvme's it won't even boot to bios.

checked the event viewer and there was no errors or warnings up to the point where it crashed, it seem's it just literally shut off itself immediately.

Edit -= just crashed again, what the hell lol.
Edit -= just crashed again doing the exact same thing, played the same game for about an hour, and as soon as I clicked quit the pc shut off.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0 Downvote
You have the latest bios, somrthing mentioned in the description is this,
Change default status of AMD PSP fTPM to Enabled for addressing basic Windows 11 requirements
Click to expand...
See if this is enabled in the bios and see if disabling it might help since you're stil on W10. Needs to be enabled if you're thinking about upgrading to W11.

You also mentioned 64gb of ram where the speclist i asked for says you have 16gb? Only one stick in use right now? What slot?

Might even see if bios F34 is a better and more stable version.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Vic 40 said:
You have the latest bios, somrthing mentioned in the description is this,

See if this is enabled in the bios and see if disabling it might help since you're stil on W10. Needs to be enabled if you're thinking about upgrading to W11.

You also mentioned 64gb of ram where the speclist i asked for says you have 16gb? Only one stick in use right now? What slot?

Might even see if bios F34 is a better and more stable version.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the continued help. I have all 4 sticks in atm and they are showing in hwinfo summary. I believe when I sent you the first report I only had 1 stick of ram in because I was actually testing that at the time. I tried all my ram slots with multple variations of sticks, none seemed to stop the crashes.

The bios I was running on for 6 months with no issues was F28 I think not 100% sure thou, but when the crashes started I upgraded to the latest bios and it was still crashing, I since tried 2 other bios versions to see if it stopped the crashes. I am on F22 atm I believe but it still crashes on me.

I will go have a quick look in the bios see if that option is there, thou I don't know since im on an older bios version, I will prep a usb for the F34 bios haven't tried that one yet.

Edit -= That bios entry was disabled, I just enabled it.
Something new to add to the list, this happened to me twice now just in the last 48 hours, not sure if it helps with diagnosing or not. But I just restarted my PC to check that bios settings, I restarted from windows and it never came on. I presseed the power button on my case and it wouldn't turn on. I checked the switch pulled it out and back in and still wouldn't turn on. I had to flick the switch on the psu, don't know what its called but it kills power for when working on pc, flicked it off and back on and then pc fired up when I pressed the power button. This happened to me twice now just yesterday this happened.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0 Downvote
That is weird, you have doubts about the psu yourself, maybe good to see what a better psu would do for you.
kevmachine said:
Bringing the gpu and psu to a friends house to test on his rig, he has no crashing issues at all so might help narrow it down. I can also run cinibench r23 fine and heaven benchmark 2009 no crashes.
Click to expand...
What other hardware was in that pc? Like motherboard, cpu and maybe even ram.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
crashed about 6 times now trying to type this up... very humid in here tonight also 87 percent, which makes me think it could be a faulty hardware. didn't get to test my psu out on his system yet. but he has a ryzen 7 2700x, 32gb ram and a gtx 1650. my pc hiccups like freezes for a moment before it crashes now its soo odd. it will hiccup then 30 seconds later it crashes.

underclocking and undervolting seems to has stabilized my system for now.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Vic 40
Upvote 0 Downvote
Thanks for the help. I will look into those models, my budget is kinda tight so i might wait till I have more funds. I still just don't know why the nvme's were casuing the failures to happen faster, I really hope there wasn't a power surge that messed up my psu and the nvmes.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom