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!

Upgrading My Desktop: Transferring the OS to the SSD

After preparing my new SSD, the hard part (or rather easy part) was transferring the current Windows 7 operating system and all its contents (users, documents, etc) off the old HD and into the new SSD. What I wanted to achieve was to mirror the contents of my C: drive onto the SSD and simply swap out the drives and re-use the old SATA cables. To create the C: image I used Acronis True Image Home (free trial) -- which according to the internet, is one of the better products to do this with. The paid version of Acronis comes bundles within a "Clone disk" tool that would of made this process far easier (in case you want to do that).

1) Creating the backup

Before creating the image, I ran the disk cleanup utility on my C: drive to clear out any unneeded or temp files. This is also a great thing to do, as you can lower the filesize of your drive so that it will fit on the new SSD (since they are much smaller in size; this can be a problem). Once the disk cleanup was done, I simply ran the Disk and partition backup command under Backup and Recovery within Acronis. This created a backup file that I will later use in the SSD.

2) Restoring the backup to the SSD

With my shiny new backup, it was now time to restore it to the SSD. This was rather simple, actually it was extremely simple to do. Within Acronis next to each backup is a Recover button that can be used to restore the backup. All I had to do was set the destination for the SSD, and presto, I now have a mirrored drive. A few things to note however: the SSD must be large enough to house the backup and the SSD must not have a drive letter assigned to it so that swapping can easily be done.

3) Swapping out the drives

Now that the drives are mirrored, the easiest step is swapping them. This can be done by shutting down the computer, taking out the old C: drive, plugging its SATA cable into the SSD and inserting the SSD into the computer. When swapped, fire up the computer and let it boot. When it reached the desktop it recognized the SSD and installed new hardware. It then asked to restart the computer to apply the new changes. Once restarted, I noticed that everything was multitudes faster, and is just too beautiful for words to explain.

Since I now had an extra 300GB HD, I decided to plug it back in and re-format it. This drive is now used to store all my Windows backups and restore points. I felt it could still be useful, and in the event that something happens, I have a backup to fix the problem.