Question Very VERY slow boot time after 'intensive' SSD usage

[WhiteNoize55]

Hello everybody!

So I've had issues with my SSD for nearly an entire year. And it's been quite a ride let me tell ya. From corrupted Windows profile, to a corrupted System32, to my GPU's fan deciding to stop working correctly and now I have to use goddamn fans I bought on Amazon (like those handheld/tiny things meant for summer) to cool it down manually, etc...

I already made a post on it back in January but the situation has worsened since then. It did get better a few weeks after my last post after I switched my SSD's drivers, but around summer the troubles came back and now I'm stuck in this hellhole again.

I'll step aside the problems of stuttering and freezes completely blocking me from playing any games released after 2017 in a smooth way, and let me put some spotlight on an issue I've been having after 'intensive' gaming sessions.

So let's say I go through the pain of stutters and freezes, and I enjoy the game I play for like an hour or two before the problem of freezes reach a breaking point where everything I do freezes the computer for 30-45 seconds. When this happens, I close the game and go through my day like normal.
But this is where my SSD pulls out the knife.
When I shut off my computer and boot it the next day, I throw a dice. By that I mean that the SSD has a seizure and decides to stop working correctly. It still boots up Windows, but it will not cooperate while doing so.

Sometimes it boots up normally in around 45-60 seconds, other times it's 3 minutes. And other times it spits on my face and takes 30 minutes.
Let me say this again. 30 minutes. Not 5 minutes, not 10 minutes, but 30.
But not even like 30 minutes from first booting to the desktop screen. No no no, it would be too simple. It takes 30 minutes per steps.

Let me explain this better.
Windows 10 breaks up its booting process in several steps which are:

1. Booting button pressed, motherboard image on screen, access to BIOS
2. Windows little circles circling underneath the motherboard image
3. Black screen -> transition to step 4
4. Windows profile on screen -> loading desktop and other stuff
5. Desktop screen & co.

My SSD, when it has a bad day, takes 30 MINUTES to load from step 2 to 3, to 3 to 4, to 4 to 5. So 30 minutes PER STEPS.

The reason why it took me this long to report this is because, like I said, it's a roll of the dice. Both when it's booting, AND when I shut it down by force.
Sometimes it's a 6 and it boots up correctly and in a timely manner.
Other times it's a 1 and, uh-oh! You shut it down while it was loading System32 or your Windows Profile! They now got corrupted! Hope you like installing Windows 10 again!

I don't know if it's because of the age of the SSD, because it's a bad SSD, maybe it's not even an SSD issue but rather a CPU one. I tried BES and Process Lasso and none of them worked. Maybe it's the HDD and not the SSD. But why would a bad/corrupted/buggered HDD slow down Windows' booting process when I have it installed on my SSD C: drive?

I tried a few things to fix this:

• Update drivers
• Remove temp files
• Chkdsk and other CMD-related things came back with nothing.
• Reinstalled Windows
• Freed up space on my hard drives
• Switching drivers entirely

Every solution that has worked at least once, stopped working. It's like applying a band-aid to a severed head, it's delaying the inevitable.

My PC Specs are:
ASUS TUF B360-PLUS GAMING
Intel Core i5 8500
DDR4 2x8GB RAM
RTX 2060
Samsung SSD 860 QVO 1TB (SSD)
TOSHIBA DT01ACA 100 (HDD)

I don't know what to do. I'm tired. I don't have money to buy an entire new computer because my current guess as to why all of this is happening is: one of my GPU's fan stopped working, so it creates heat in the case. The heat makes it so the CPU stops working well with the SSD, or the heat also makes the SSD stop working correctly. And because of this I have stutters.
This doesn't really explain the boot time issue, but it's a bigger issue than a simple boot time one. Whatever, I just need to get this off my chest.

At this point throw your wildest guesses, this post has already went on longer than it has any right to have.

Thanks.

 

[Lafong]

You have an HDD and an SSD.

Does the PC boot (at all, sooner or later) if the HDD is disconnected?

 

[WhiteNoize55]

You have an HDD and an SSD.

Does the PC boot (at all, sooner or later) if the HDD is disconnected?

So I tried just that a couple of minutes ago, and the result was (sorta) inconclusive.

I disconnected the HDD manually and the boot time was significantly slower. Previously it would be like 40 seconds on a good day to load all the way to the desktop. Now it took 3 minutes. I don't know why. I would've thought that having to load another terabyte of data would've lengthened the boot time but alright.

Next thing I tried was in-game performance. And I couldn't really see much difference in the small amount of time that I tried it on, mainly because the game I wanted to try (in this case payday 3) kept crashing while loading the main menu so I couldn't go in and see how this affected performance.
I did notice however that my icons on my desktop and on my taskbar stopped loading (which is a sign of SSD distress or whatever, it only ever happens to me whenever my SSD is going haywire and there are stutters and freezes).

Ultimately, the test was inconclusive and I'll try again tomorrow with new games and stuff to try. But right now I have some signs telling me that the SSD, and not the HDD, is the smoking gun.
But again, who knows.

 

[Lafong]

Sounds like it never does exactly the same thing 2 or 3 times in a row....either by coincidence or by your efforts.

Very difficult without parts to swap in to test.