Question WD_Black SSD Random BSOD When Opening Some Programs

Jan 3, 2025
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So I purchased this SSD back in December to have some additional and faster storage to my 500GB boot drive and my 2TB HDD.

WD_Black

PC Specs:
ZOTAC Gaming GeForce RTX™ 3090 Trinity OC 24GB
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16-core, 32-thread unlocked
CORSAIR Dominator Platinum RGB 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 3600
TUF GAMING X570-PRO WIFI II (The new SSD is installed in the bottom M.2 slot under the GPU with the heatsink installed)

I installed it, formatted it, and things seemed to work great! I installed a steam game on it and tried it out (Enshrouded).

When I went to play the game, the game would immediately cause a BSOD. Everytime I tried it, it would cause this.

I uninstalled the game and installed it on my boot drive and it worked great. I was afraid I'd have to return it, but when I tried other games on the new SSD, it worked fine, so I figured it might be just an issue with Enshrouded for some odd reason.

I tried Skyrim and it worked fine, but then randomly when I'd try to play it, it would cause a BSOD. When the pc rebooted, I would try again and it would be fine and has been ever since.

It's really random when this happens and some games or programs are completely fine.

It has been fine for a couple of weeks now, but tonight I installed Unreal Engine and opened up some projects. The first one worked fine, the second project opened up, but while I was letting things compile, I walked away. When I returned, the computer had restarted. I was concerned about that, so to confirm the issue, I opened up the first project that worked previously and even that caused a BSOD.

I've tried reseating the SSD and I made sure it was secure. Next thing I may try is to swap the boot drive and the new SSD to see if it's the M.2 slot on the mobo. The problem is, the issue is not guaranteed to happen again.

Does anyone know what this might be?

Please let me know if you need more information. Thanks!

UPDATE: 1/4/2025 - 11:36 AM Eastern
After troubleshooting for a while, I finally tried putting the problem SSD into the M.2 slot where the boot drive was and the boot drive into the M.2 slot where the problem SSD was to rule out a faulty M.2 slot. The issue still persisted even when I did that, so I concluded that it was a faulty SSD. I am returning it and getting a Samsung 990 Pro 2TB. That should be here next Friday, so I will try to update this thread the following weekend with a conclusion (hopefully).

If you find this thread because of a similar issue, hopefully there will be some good troubleshooting steps below that will fix your issue.
 
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So I purchased this SSD back in December to have some additional and faster storage to my 500GB boot drive and my 2TB HDD.

WD_Black

PC Specs:
ZOTAC Gaming GeForce RTX™ 3090 Trinity OC 24GB
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16-core, 32-thread unlocked
CORSAIR Dominator Platinum RGB 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 3600
TUF GAMING X570-PRO WIFI II (The new SSD is installed in the bottom M.2 slot under the GPU with the heatsink installed)

I installed it, formatted it, and things seemed to work great! I installed a steam game on it and tried it out (Enshrouded).

When I went to play the game, the game would immediately cause a BSOD. Everytime I tried it, it would cause this.

I uninstalled the game and installed it on my boot drive and it worked great. I was afraid I'd have to return it, but when I tried other games on the new SSD, it worked fine, so I figured it might be just an issue with Enshrouded for some odd reason.

I tried Skyrim and it worked fine, but then randomly when I'd try to play it, it would cause a BSOD. When the pc rebooted, I would try again and it would be fine and has been ever since.

It's really random when this happens and some games or programs are completely fine.

It has been fine for a couple of weeks now, but tonight I installed Unreal Engine and opened up some projects. The first one worked fine, the second project opened up, but while I was letting things compile, I walked away. When I returned, the computer had restarted. I was concerned about that, so to confirm the issue, I opened up the first project that worked previously and even that caused a BSOD.

I've tried reseating the SSD and I made sure it was secure. Next thing I may try is to swap the boot drive and the new SSD to see if it's the M.2 slot on the mobo. The problem is, the issue is not guaranteed to happen again.

Does anyone know what this might be?

Please let me know if you need more information. Thanks!
Which BSOD? Does it reference to disks at all ? Were windows installed while all other drives were disabled.?
 
Which BSOD? Does it reference to disks at all ? Were windows installed while all other drives were disabled.?
I tried replicating the issue this morning, and it didn't crash on me even though I opened up the same UE project that caused it to crash last night. It usually happens to quickly for me to read, but I will try to see what BSOD it is.

This is the error I get in EventViewer after a BSOD.

Dump file creation failed due to error during dump creation.
Source: volmgr
Event ID: 161

Would you recommend trying to swap my boot drive and the new ssd to see if I still get the issue? That way I can rule out the MOBO.
 
I tried replicating the issue this morning, and it didn't crash on me even though I opened up the same UE project that caused it to crash last night. It usually happens to quickly for me to read, but I will try to see what BSOD it is.

This is the error I get in EventViewer after a BSOD.

Dump file creation failed due to error during dump creation.
Source: volmgr
Event ID: 161

Would you recommend trying to swap my boot drive and the new ssd to see if I still get the issue? That way I can rule out the MOBO.
That error is "Critical Kernel power" so it's mostly windows.
 
Which BSOD? Does it reference to disks at all ? Were windows installed while all other drives were disabled.?
I was able to capture the error. I opened up the Unreal Engine project that gave me the BSOD before. Not sure if it's relevant, but my unreal projects were on my boot drive before I got my new SSD. I transferred them over to the new SSD.

IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL

Seems like a memory issue, but it's still odd that Enshrouded doesn't work on my new SSD at all, but fine on the boot drive.

For consistency I'll try enshrouded again since that seems to always give me a BSOD
 
I was able to capture the error. I opened up the Unreal Engine project that gave me the BSOD before. Not sure if it's relevant, but my unreal projects were on my boot drive before I got my new SSD. I transferred them over to the new SSD.

IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL

Seems like a memory issue, but it's still odd that Enshrouded doesn't work on my new SSD at all, but fine on the boot drive.

For consistency I'll try enshrouded again since that seems to always give me a BSOD
Yes, that's memory issue but virtual memory on disk is also included. Where is your vm located ?
 
So I purchased this SSD back in December to have some additional and faster storage to my 500GB boot drive and my 2TB HDD.

WD_Black

PC Specs:
ZOTAC Gaming GeForce RTX™ 3090 Trinity OC 24GB
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16-core, 32-thread unlocked
CORSAIR Dominator Platinum RGB 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 3600
TUF GAMING X570-PRO WIFI II (The new SSD is installed in the bottom M.2 slot under the GPU with the heatsink installed)

I installed it, formatted it, and things seemed to work great! I installed a steam game on it and tried it out (Enshrouded).

When I went to play the game, the game would immediately cause a BSOD. Everytime I tried it, it would cause this.

I uninstalled the game and installed it on my boot drive and it worked great. I was afraid I'd have to return it, but when I tried other games on the new SSD, it worked fine, so I figured it might be just an issue with Enshrouded for some odd reason.

I tried Skyrim and it worked fine, but then randomly when I'd try to play it, it would cause a BSOD. When the pc rebooted, I would try again and it would be fine and has been ever since.

It's really random when this happens and some games or programs are completely fine.

It has been fine for a couple of weeks now, but tonight I installed Unreal Engine and opened up some projects. The first one worked fine, the second project opened up, but while I was letting things compile, I walked away. When I returned, the computer had restarted. I was concerned about that, so to confirm the issue, I opened up the first project that worked previously and even that caused a BSOD.

I've tried reseating the SSD and I made sure it was secure. Next thing I may try is to swap the boot drive and the new SSD to see if it's the M.2 slot on the mobo. The problem is, the issue is not guaranteed to happen again.

Does anyone know what this might be?

Please let me know if you need more information. Thanks!
Proper bios and chipset driver?

Post a screenshot from crystal disk info for this wd disk.
 
Proper bios and chipset driver?

Post a screenshot from crystal disk info for this wd disk.
It should be. My brother works with computer for a living and he helped me make sure I get the right drivers. I got my mobo last year and made sure to update the bios as well.

What's weird, we couldn't get crystaldisk to show any info for any of my drives. Even from a fresh reinstall of windows.
 
Yes, that's memory issue but virtual memory on disk is also included. Where is your vm located ?
Virtual Memory Location

D: WD_Black - The problem SSD
E: HDD - Hard drive

The C drive isn't listed here. That's the boot drive.

Note:
I uninstalled Enshrouded from my C drive (boot) where I know it works and reinstalled it back on my D drive. The game will start, but then my computer will restart before it can get anywhere. No BSOD or anything.
 
What should the initial size be?

I'm guessing this probably won't fix my issue, but is just a good practice?
Initial size is not too important. VM is emptied when you restart. No, it wouldn't solve your problem unless disk is faulty or on too slow disk which is in sleep mode when accessed, that's mostly the case with mechanical HDDs which may take few seconds to restart and initialize. Did you run all hardware tests, disks, RAM etc?
 
Initial size is not too important. VM is emptied when you restart. No, it wouldn't solve your problem unless disk is faulty or on too slow disk which is in sleep mode when accessed, that's mostly the case with mechanical HDDs which may take few seconds to restart and initialize. Did you run all hardware tests, disks, RAM etc?
I ran my memory check and everything came back fine.
I ran chkdsk, sfc /scannow and the DISM commands to check health and all came back fine.

Though, I did just try swapping my two SSDs on the MOBO. The unreal project I tried gave me a new error.

KERNEL MODE HEAP CORRUPTION

More and more I think I need to get a new SSD. Since swapping them and still getting a BSOD means it's probably not the M.2 slot.
 
It should be. My brother works with computer for a living and he helped me make sure I get the right drivers. I got my mobo last year and made sure to update the bios as well.

What's weird, we couldn't get crystaldisk to show any info for any of my drives. Even from a fresh reinstall of windows.
You might want to get bro involved and verify your up to date just to get it out of the mix.