[RayGo]

Hi Macboatmaster,

I should have mentioned that the 51 errors reported in Windows Logs > Applications since January 21 is a tiny fraction of the actual number of hang-ups I have had during the period. Apparently an error isn't logged unless it persists for longer than the typical one or two minutes.

Also, using Resource Monitor with the Disk tab pressed, I now see that disk E is the one that hangs. Capacity is 1TB. Used space is 107GB. Recently defragged.

RayGo

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Your 14 was not visible when I started typing my 15.

You have answered most of the queries.

To SAVE me an awful lot of typing may I refer you to the guide for your SSD drive for installation

http://www.ocztechno...ABC-for-OCZ-SSD

Also to save me looking at your motherboard specs is this motherboard UEFI or the traditional BIOS, as if it is UEFI we are talking about a GPT partitioned drive and if it is the traditional BIOS we are talking about an MBR partitioned drive.

Did you configure AHCI mode for the port on the motherboard controlling the SSD and DID you ensure the other drive was NOT connected when you installed to the SSD

Goodnight I am sure we will solve it.

If you decide to make any changes yourself would you kindly include them in your post, so I know where we are

Re your last, and I AM NOW going - sort as I said please so we only have the last three days -

Edited by Macboatmaster, 21 February 2013 - 07:28 PM.

[Macboatmaster]

Your 14 was not visible when I started typing my 15.

You have answered most of the queries.

To SAVE me an awful lot of typing may I refer you to the guide for your SSD drive for installation

http://www.ocztechno...ABC-for-OCZ-SSD

Also to save me looking at your motherboard specs is this motherboard UEFI or the traditional BIOS, as if it is UEFI we are talking about a GPT partitioned drive and if it is the traditional BIOS we are talking about an MBR partitioned drive.

Did you configure AHCI mode for the port on the motherboard controlling the SSD and DID you ensure the other drive was NOT connected when you installed to the SSD

Goodnight I am sure we will solve it.

If you decide to make any changes yourself would you kindly include them in your post, so I know where we are

Re your last, and I AM NOW going - sort as I said please so we only have the last three days -

Edited by Macboatmaster, 21 February 2013 - 07:28 PM.

[RayGo]

Hi Macboatmaster,

It appears that only the multiuser interface of Notepad cannot be repaired. There are only two instances of Cannot repair, and they both reference notepad.exe.mui.

Also to save me looking at your motherboard specs is this motherboard UEFI or the traditional BIOS, as if it is UEFI we are talking about a GPT partitioned drive and if it is the traditional BIOS we are talking about an MBR partitioned drive.

This MOBO uses the UEFI. I'm not aware of what GPT is. Maybe the reference you cited at http://www.ocztechno...7557&viewfull=1 will tell me. All the drives are NTFS.

Did you configure ACHI mode for the port on the motherboard controlling the SSD and DID you ensure the other drive was NOT connected when you installed to the SSD

No to both parts of that question. Maybe the cited reference will explain what that's all about.

I cannot now look at the event logs, but will when I return about 1700 hrs UK time

That's noon here. It works well for me. I'm retired and often get up about that time.

6. Would you please see my post 11 and answer the two queries re the problem and the install of the OS to the SSD

Post numbers are not visible while I am composing a reply. I'll end this message and then go find your #11.


Many thanks for all your help.

So far you've taught me about TRIM and the use of Windows Logs and I may be about to be introduced to SSD prep and GPT.

RayGo

[Macboatmaster]

I am like a dog with a tasty bone - but I am going after this.

UEFI Unified Extensible Firmware Interface is the modern day BIOS.
UEFI uses the Globally Unique Identifier partitioning table.

If you left UEFI in that setting and did not enable legacy boot, the installation of Windows 7 64 bit has made the GPT partitions.
You cannot see them all, but one of them is FAT32 as UEFI cannot boot from a NTFS file system, it must boot from a FAT32 file.
Do not bother yourself too much about it now, basically the concern I had, was if you had enabled legacy boot to install to the SSD.
AND yes the answers are in the link and you should have enabled ACHI and after installation downloaded the latest chipset and HDD controller - and that is only the start of the procedure for using an SSD to the greatest of benefit.

Edited by Macboatmaster, 22 February 2013 - 06:59 AM.

[RayGo]

Hi Macboatmaster,


Quoting from your post #11:

Addressing the problem, have you had this problem since you installed the OS on the SSD, or has it arisen after that.
In other words was it OK at first.

When you first prepared the SSD for the installation of the operating system, would you please explain briefly how you did this, and what you used to install the OS on the SSD

I think I have answered these questions. I am about to read the reference you gave me about SSD prep. That may shed some light on the problem.

Thanks again.

RayGo

[RayGo]

Hi Macboatmaster,

I read the material at http://www.ocztechno...ll=1#post567557 about the 2.5" OCZ-VECTOR ATA SATA SSD, but I'm not sure it is relevant to the problem I've been having.

While using this PC for several hours, I've been watching the Disk function in Resource Monitor. The C drive is in a frequent state of I/O with Que Length rarely exceeding 0.01. The E drive usually bumps along with Que Length well below 1.0, but when an application hangs, a blue line always appears on the E disk graph and the blue line is steadily at maximum scale. The blue line max always happens when the PC is hanging, and it doesn't matter which application is not responding. What is the significance of the blue line, and in what units is it calibrated?

I think this points to a problem with a conflict or a bottle-neck on the E drive -- not the C drive SSD.

Thank you.

RayGo

[Macboatmaster]

I honestly am not too sure at this stage, if the problem is the E drive or the SSD.

The guide I sent you is only of course a general over view, but the principles of the page file, indexing and the restore points are I think IMHO very relevant.

The access speed to an SSD drive is so fast, as of course their is no disk to spin and no read write head, that indexing is not required.

It is in fact, counter productive, as the indexing of the drive, will in itself result in constant writes to the drive, which is of course not the purpose of running the OS on an SSD.

To some extent, with the amount of ram you have the same overall general principle may be applied to the page file, which is of course disc space, used as ram.

RESOURCE MONITOR
In simple terms if you hold your mouse on the process it will show you what the process is. If you click the column headings on the disk activity window it will sort them, just as it did in event viewer.

Edited by Macboatmaster, 22 February 2013 - 07:56 AM.

[Macboatmaster]

Re Resource Monitor - activity depending on where you look is in KB`s per second.


see screenshot please.

OR if you wish it the technical guide from Microsoft

http://technet.micro...d883276

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Edited by Macboatmaster, 22 February 2013 - 08:10 AM.

[Macboatmaster]

The link on the last post will not stay on the Microsoft page

On resource monitor click help, then click the link on that page, then click on

Resource Availability Troubleshooting Getting Started Guide for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7

Edited by Macboatmaster, 22 February 2013 - 08:44 AM.

[Macboatmaster]

I have been doing some more examination of the part of the logs you sent.

These if they have occurred recently, as well raise a concern in my mind

In Windows Logs System, I see 4150 error listings since January 21, 2013.
I didn't examine them all, but the vast majority during the period say.
The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort1.
Source is atapi Event ID is 11
The following occurred several times each:
The cpuz135 service failed to start due to the following error: The system cannot find the path specified. Source is Service Control Manager
The following fatal alert was received: 40. Source is Schannel
The Spybot-S&D 2 Updating Service service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 2 time(s).
The following corrective action will be taken in 60000 milliseconds:
Restart the service.

I think you should check if there is a recent occurrence of the same and taking them in turn

1. controller error on device\ide\port1
2. cpuz135 - Could be CPUID software have you installed I cannot find it on Speccy.
3. Spybot Search and Destroy - if you DO have it UNINSTALL it. Use either SAS which you mention or another spyware adware scan - Spybot S&D especially with Tea Timer will cause you problems

Edited by Macboatmaster, 22 February 2013 - 11:24 AM.

[RayGo]

Hi Macboatmaster,

Thank you for your replies.

The guide I sent you is only of course a general over view, but the principles of the page file, indexing and the restore points are I think IMHO very relevant.

We addressed these topics earlier. Indexing of all drives is off. Page file size is 16.3GB. That is equal to size of RAM plus 300MB for overhead. System Restore is set to 1%, its lowest possible value.

RESOURCE MONITOR
In simple terms if you hold your mouse on the process it will show you what the process is.

If the Image column width is insufficient to show the entire location of the image, holding the mouse on the entry does display the entire location. In my case, I have made all the column widths great enough so that hovering isn't needed. Did I misunderstand you?

Re Resource Monitor - activity depending on where you look is in KB`s per second.

I was asking about the blue line that appears on the graph of the E disk activity. It always maxes out when an application hangs. What does that blue line tell me? Is that KB/sec? The green line on that same graph shows continuous activity, but it is not always at max. IOW, the blue line is indicating an anomaly while the green line looks fairly normal. How do I interpret that. I think the blue line indication is at or near the root of the problem because the blue line always maxes out when an application hangs.

On resource monitor click help, then click the link on that page, then click on
Resource Availability Troubleshooting Getting Started Guide for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7

I'm studying that now.

I have been doing some more examination of the part of the logs you sent.
These if they have occurred recently, as well raise a concern in my mind
I think you should check if there is a recent occurrence of the same and taking them in turn

1. controller error on device\ide\port1

The most recent Application Error was logged yesterday 2/21/2013 1:13:57 PM:

The program DllHost.exe version 6.1.7600.16385 stopped interacting with Windows and was closed. To see if more information about the problem is available, check the problem history in the Action Center control panel.
 Process ID: d88  
 Start Time: 01ce105f12fc9e49
 Termination Time: 34934
 Application Path: C:\Windows\system32\DllHost.exe
 Report Id: 5cb0ed4b-7c52-11e2-a1cc-50465da74f50

Source Application Hang

The next previous one was on 2/20/2013 3:55:58 PM


2. cpuz135 - Could be CPUID software have you installed I cannot find it on Speccy.
CPUZ is a utility that checks RAM. It repeatedly exercised RAM for about an hour and detected no problems. I deleted CPUZ some days back.


3. Spybot Search and Destroy - if you DO have it UNINSTALL it. Use either SAS which you mention or another spyware adware scan - Spybot S&D especially with Tea Timer will cause you problems
I deleted Spybot Search & Destroy some days back. Teatimer was never installed.

In the hour or so of use today, the PC hung only once, and that was for less than a minute. When I sorted the write activity to the E disk in Resource Monitor, the application doing the most writing per second changed several times. None of the most active processes was related to the hung application (WinRAR).

Thanks again.

RayGo

[Macboatmaster]

Re CPUID and Spybot

Hope you appreciate that I had NO WAY of knowing that you had dealt with them.

WinRARthere is one simple test I think - uninstall it

Blue Line - the disk active time
The top graph shows you the transfer rates between the storage and the system for the past minute. The green portion is the current overall I/O, while the blue line displays the disk active time for that period. The remaining graphs show you the queue length for each disk in your system.


re holding mouse - when I held on mine a minute ago, my second highest activity was BING Weather reporting with the full address.

If that is shown on yours , - not BING but the full address of the activity without holding the mouse, then, that is great.
I must look again because I cannot get mine to show, perhaps I have too many columns - I have all seven - right click on white of the column headings select columns

Edited by Macboatmaster, 22 February 2013 - 03:41 PM.

[RayGo]

Hi Macboatmaster,

Hope you appreciate that I had NO WAY of knowing that you had dealt with them.

I hope you don't think I was being critical. I just wanted you to know I had already deleted them. I seldom use smilies. I'm sorry if you think I was being impatient.

WinRARthere is one simple test I think - uninstall it

I use that utility fairly often. I don't think it caused the hang. It just happened to be the application that I was running when the underlying problem occurred. Did you mean uninstall then re-install?

The green portion is the current overall I/O, while the blue line displays the disk active time for that period.

That's what's confusing me. If the green line shows fairly normal activity -- amplitudes in the lower quarter of the graph while the blue line is maxed out, what is the blue line measuring? I'm particularly focusing on the blue line because it's the only reliable indicator of some kind of anomaly when the system hangs. And, it's only on the E disk. I never see the blue line on the C or D disks.

I must look again because I cannot get mine to show, perhaps I have too many columns - I have all seven

I run Resource Monitor in full screen, and I make Read, Write, and PID columns narrow. That leaves plenty of room for Image and File.



Note: I'm still getting a significant number of errors in Event Viewer > Windows Logs > System as follows: The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort1. The Source is adapi. I see 32 identical such errors in the last 64 minutes. Is that leading us to a culprit?

Thanks again for your help.

RayGo

Edited by RayGo, 23 February 2013 - 12:40 AM.

[RayGo]

Hi Macboatmaster,

I did a Google search for, "The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort1". One of the hits showed a case where a user's SATA port was failing, so I downloaded a disk check utility from Western Digital:

Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows
File Name: WinDlg_124.zip
File Size: 901 KB
Version: v1.24
Publish Date: 7/2011
Release Notes: WinDLG_v1_24_Release_Notes.pdf
From:: http://support.wdc.c...3&sid=3&lang=en

It showed "Pass" for SMART status on all three physical drives. I performed Quick Check on the two 1TB HDs. The checks took two minutes each and both passed. The quick check on the SSD was only 1/4 finished after 26 minutes, so I aborted. I'll do it again later. The estimated time for the full check on the HDs is over two hours each. I'll do the full check on the E drive as soon as possible.

N.B., The Data Lifeguard Diagnostic utility has an innocuous-looking button mixed in with the Quick Check and Show Results buttons that, if pressed will write all zeros to your disk! I don't know whether it gives a confirmation info message before it wipes your disk. I didn't click to find out. I did get a scare, though. Neither the D nor E disk was available in Windows Explorer until I closed the disk utility.

When I do the tests, I'll give you a quick shout, if I see any errors.

RayGo

[Macboatmaster]

I agree that this must be your first course of examination

Note: I'm still getting a significant number of errors in Event Viewer > Windows Logs > System as follows: The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort1. The Source is adapi. I see 32 identical such errors in the last 64 minutes. Is that leading us to a culprit?

as I mentioned previously

I think you should check if there is a recent occurrence of the same and taking them in turn
1. controller error on device\ide\port1

Which devices are connected IDE. as against SATA or which devices have been configured IDE mode when installed.
By that I mean you connect a SATA drive, but if you configure IDE mode, it will shown as that, albeit it is a SATA drive.

Check device manager to see which device is registered as connected port 1.
That is in device manager

Do not be confused by it listing source as atapi and auto0matically thinking that it must be a DVD/CD drive

See my screenshot please, on the entry in device manager click the entry IDE/ATA/ATAPI controllers to expand, then right click on the entries, then click to show as per my screenshot and if you click on the Events tab and then click all events, this will open the Management console and you should then have confirmation of the failure of that controller in respect of the mentioned device


I would proceed as follows
1. Check the connections for all drives to the motherboard and the drive, and the power connections to the drives from the PSU

2. Does the SSD drive have its own power connection from the PSU, rather than a split off from another connector

3. Go to the motherboard site and download and install, the latest chipset drivers and any SATA drivers (ensure you do not click on RAID drivers in error)

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