Miles Johnson

Blue Screens and SSDs

Over the past weekend I spent 3 days troubleshooting a constant blue screen of death problem. It was like no problem I've ever dealt with as the symptoms were very unusual. When I was using the computer, whether playing a game, browsing the internet or simply just working, it would freeze up. It wouldn't freeze in the usual sense, it would freeze up program by program (when I clicked to each one) until I couldn't do anything except move my mouse and wait for the unavoidable BSOD. It would even BSOD while my computer was idle, weird!

Like any competent PC owner, I tested all the hardware piece by piece. I started by disassembling the computer, cleaning everything, checking for damage, and reassembling; all good. I checked all drivers and updates. I tested each memory stick one by one. I monitored the temperature and voltage, and found nothing out of the ordinary. That only left the video card, power supply, hard drives (1 SSD, 2 HDD) and possibly the motherboard. I ruled out the power supply by monitoring the voltage. I ran disk cleanup, disk check and defragment on all the drives and they all passed. I never tested another video card as I believed it wasn't a video issue, since the symptoms had nothing to do with display. That left me with the MOBO, which I was really hoping wasn't the problem.

Before I went any further, I queried all my tech knowledgeable friends for a solution... they had none. They all suggested doing a system wipe, which I think is absurd until you determine whether it's a hardware or software issue. So I enabled BSOD logging which would allow me to read the dumps and discover a solution. However, another problem arose when the BSOD dumps were never written during a crash, and the administrative event logs weren't helpful either. I was at a loss at this point and really didn't want to spend money building a new system.

Since BSOD logs weren't being generated, a friend suggested waiting for a BSOD to occur and to write down the error message that appears. So I did. The following is a summary of the BSOD.

A process or thread crucial to system operation has unexpectedly exited or been terminated. Stop: 0x000000F4 (0x0000000000000003, 0xFFFFFA800C13D060, 0xFFFFFA800C13D340, 0XFFFFF800039D9350).

At a glance it doesn't come off as helpful, but that didn't stop me. I Googled around using "BSOD 0x000000F4" as my term coupled with each piece of hardware I was utilizing, until I found something. It just so happens that my Crucial M4 SSD that I installed a little over a year ago was the culprit. After 5,000 hours of on-time, the SSD will crash unexpectedly. The math since installation checks out: (12 average hours a day * 30 days a month) * 14 months = 5,040. With a little firmware update from the Crucial guys, I've been BSOD free for a couple days now.

I felt the need to blog this as I'm sure it would be helpful to others who encounter such weird issues, especially with new tech like SSDs. You've been warned!