Author Topic: BSOD and maintenance of external HDs (Read 28060 times)

satrow · « **Reply #25 on:** June 05, 2019, 12:31:57 pm »

Hardware section gives what looks like the correct details for L:, no WD drivers loading (wdc_sam inactive, manual start), 4x WD utilities running plus 4 associated modules loaded - wait, https://www.sysnative.com/drivers/driver.php?id=wdcsam64.sys (note the lack of _ underscore)

'Our' wdcsam64_prewin8.sys (from the crash dump) is dated 16/04/2008 09:39:08, could this be a renamed version of the 'bad' driver listed below?

Name wdcsam64.sys
Info Western Digital External Drive RAID Manager
2008 driver version has known BSOD issues in Windows
Source http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp or
SES driver update: http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/search/1/a_id/5419#

I suspect a collection of the latest WD drivers/software for your specific drive will be needed before an uninstall all-reboot-reinstall routine.

Thoughts Tom?

Boggin · « **Reply #26 on:** June 05, 2019, 01:19:32 pm »

Well according to that article the SES drivers should have already been installed, but you could create a restore point and download afresh from that website.

Drivers can become corrupt for whatever reason.

When I decided to buy ext. HDDs I opted for Seagate because I remembered reading adverse reports about WD - they seem to be more complex than what should be necessary.

satrow · « **Reply #27 on:** June 05, 2019, 03:51:45 pm »

Quote from: Boggin on June 05, 2019, 01:19:32 pm

Well according to that article the SES drivers should have already been installed, but you could create a restore point and download afresh from that website.

They are installed but not loading since the crash.

Quote from: Boggin on June 05, 2019, 01:19:32 pm

Drivers can become corrupt for whatever reason.

No indications from either the crash dump or from MSInfo that any drivers are corrupt.

Quote from: Boggin on June 05, 2019, 01:19:32 pm

When I decided to buy ext. HDDs I opted for Seagate because I remembered reading adverse reports about WD - they seem to be more complex than what should be necessary.

I recall writing (at least) one and some of them are.

Boggin · « **Reply #28 on:** June 06, 2019, 01:13:44 am »

Does Event Viewer have anything recorded for when you plug in an ext. HDD ?

Lady · « **Reply #29 on:** June 07, 2019, 04:52:22 am »

Where should I be looking in Eventviewer, Tom? Under System or Application?

When I had to buy new external HDDs years ago I changed from Seagate to WD because Shane recommended them over Seagate. I must say up till now I have had no issue whatsoever with either brand. The wonderful feature of the WD My Passport is the hardware encrypted password protection, so I feel very safe using them.

So in my own words: do I understand correctly when I say that the drivers of the WD HD are fine but that they are not being loaded after the crash? And what caused the crash, do you know now?

Something else I noticed. I now have both WD HDs connected, I have a white and a black one. The HD in question - the white one - keeps flickering its led-light in like a second interval whereas the black one shows no led activity. It's obvious but I have to say it: I haven't been reading/writing on either of them since I turned on the desktop. So this shows to me that the WD is in a constant activity. Maybe trying to get the drivers?

Boggin · « **Reply #30 on:** June 07, 2019, 05:10:22 am »

Anything would probably be under Errors in Event Viewer.

Whenever I plug in the ext. HDD I use for system images on my Win 7 machine, I get about 5 Disk Event ID 11 errors which appear to have no effect on the system image being created as I've recovered with them as a test.

If drivers aren't loading then it would be under Errors I would expect to see something.

I would just check things with the suspect HDD.

Why drivers should load for one and not the other, I don't understand, but if this is specific to this drive then I would expect something to have been recorded in Event Viewer.

Reliability history may also have something.

EDIT - I forgot to add that plugging the same HDD into a Win 10 machine produces no such errors.

satrow · « **Reply #31 on:** June 07, 2019, 05:43:19 am »

Test them individually between reboots and plugged directly into the rear ports. From Device Manager's Properties sheet for the drives, report back on which drivers they're using.

The 'difficult' drive looks like it's being read incorrectly by the troubleshooter and Device Manager, rare but it can happen after corruption - likely the drive's firmware. Logging's likely to give spurious data/results because of that.

Boggin · « **Reply #32 on:** June 07, 2019, 09:06:30 am »

You could try running WD's Data Diagnostics for Windows on the HDD but also with the HDD plugged in, in Device Manager right click on it and select Uninstall.

Click on Action/Scan for hardware changes where it should reinstall its drivers.

You can either do that in Disk Drives or in the USB section where you will need to find which one it is using.

Have you also tried using a different cable ?

WD Diagnostics - https://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?p=3

Lady · « **Reply #33 on:** June 08, 2019, 11:32:46 am »

I clicked Uninstall in Device Manager and did Action/Scan for hardware changes (on the WD HD).

I downloaded the WD SES Driver.

I downloaded the WD Diagnostics. That looks a LOT better than the WD Drive Utilities that came with the HD. It's now running an extended test. See screenshot. Will report. The SMART status already says Pass, that's a good sign, isn't it?

And a screenshot of the Device Manager's Properties sheet for the WD HD.

A basic question: why can't I remove all firmware from the HD and re-install it? Just like formatting to replace corrupt data.

satrow · « **Reply #34 on:** June 08, 2019, 12:49:29 pm »

Certainly looks better, are the new SES drivers installed?

It might be possible to clear the drive so that it bypasses the WD drivers/SES/Encryption, so it behaves like a standard ext. drive, I'll look into that later, unless Tom finds the time before I get back.

Lady · « **Reply #35 on:** June 08, 2019, 01:47:04 pm »

Quote from: satrow on June 08, 2019, 12:49:29 pm

Certainly looks better, are the new SES drivers installed?

I don't know how to check that.

Quote from: satrow on June 08, 2019, 12:49:29 pm

It might be possible to clear the drive so that it bypasses the WD drivers/SES/Encryption, so it behaves like a standard ext. drive, I'll look into that later, unless Tom finds the time before I get back.

I'm not sure if I understand this correctly, but I definitely don't want to lose the encryption.

Boggin · « **Reply #36 on:** June 08, 2019, 02:07:13 pm »

Reliability history will tell you which drivers were successful or not in installing.

Lady · « **Reply #37 on:** June 08, 2019, 03:44:22 pm »

This is what my reliability monitor looks like. I guess this is what you mean. I don't see anything that looks like a driver.

Please don't forget my system is in Dutch and I've never dealt with any of these things before.

Boggin · « **Reply #38 on:** June 09, 2019, 01:06:52 am »

No, that's the reliability monitor.

Go Start - start to type reliability and press enter when View reliability history comes up.

It may have red crosses or an i for info for certain days.

Click on any day where you have these and more info will come up in the bottom pane and clicking on the blue tech details link will produce more info.

satrow · « **Reply #39 on:** June 09, 2019, 02:14:26 am »

DriverView will show the loaded drivers, for 3rd party drivers like these, set it to hide MS drivers (some MS drivers are created 'on the fly', they'll show as unknown but can be ignored, eg. dump_?????.sys), View > Hide Microsoft drivers:

Lady · « **Reply #40 on:** June 09, 2019, 05:36:33 am »

Nothing is given with reliability in Start.

I have an urgent matter at hand now. I got a popup saying C: was full. I did disk cleanup to free 412 Mb so I could continue. This is really odd. I know C: is very full, I believe the other day I saw it had 5 Gb left. It's an SSD with only Windows 7 on it. I tried to find out how to decrease that volume but didn't know how. A year ago when I had the last BSOD someone told me that it was a driver issue but we couldn't solve it (probably the same thing as we're dealing here with) and in that process someone said that my system partition on C: was almost twice as large as his Windows 8.1 professional. I went through all the programs installed but couldn't free much space there and I don't believe that the programs total more than 100 Gb. I just checked: I have 190 programs occupying 7,5 Gb disk space.It must be something else that takes up so much space. Tom, you know how I clean up the pc each month for my system image backup. So it cannot be the usual clutter.

I made screenshots of the popup warnings but they failed. I have a screenshot of disk management. I remember that one of the warnings said that it happened while something was being written to C:. What I noticed this morning while checking Windows logs > application for errors of the WD HD was that there was an enormous number of the same information and warning. These two (information and warning) show 3 times a minute since I started up the desktop. So that should tell you something, I hope. See screenshot and details. I disconnected the faulty WD HD but these two things continue to come up in the logs up till this moment. So something weird is going on now. Hope you can help me out. Maybe a reboot could fix it and it's just a glitch but first I'd like to hear your comment.

Lady · « **Reply #41 on:** June 09, 2019, 05:45:08 am »

I edited my last post several times.

Boggin · « **Reply #42 on:** June 09, 2019, 06:38:56 am »

I can't really understand what that Code 10 refers to.

Yes, I noticed earlier you only had 5GB free space left in C: and wondered if that could cause problems.

You can free up about 6GB by turning off Hibernate.

Run a cmd prompt as an admin and enter powercfg -h off

Can you also check you see how much space is being taken up by the restore points.

Go Start - type appwiz.cpl and press enter when it comes up.

This will open Programs and Features and when you scroll to the bottom you will see where it totals the number of programs and how any GBs used.

Running Disk Cleanup as an admin will also remove obsolete Windows Updates, but you may have to check its box to include those in the clean up.

satrow · « **Reply #43 on:** June 09, 2019, 07:26:14 am »

"This device cannot start. Try upgrading the device drivers for this device. (Code 10)"

Boggin · « **Reply #44 on:** June 09, 2019, 07:36:38 am »

What do you get when you type view reliability history ?

Have you freed up any space yet ?

satrow · « **Reply #45 on:** June 09, 2019, 08:29:09 am »

A picture might help:

Lady · « **Reply #46 on:** June 09, 2019, 08:40:54 am »

Quote from: Boggin on June 09, 2019, 06:38:56 am

You can free up about 6GB by turning off Hibernate.
Run a cmd prompt as an admin and enter powercfg -h off
I did that.

Can you also check you see how much space is being taken up by the restore points.
I don't know where to find that, I can only see there are 9 restore points.

Go Start - type appwiz.cpl and press enter when it comes up.
This will open Programs and Features and when you scroll to the bottom you will see where it totals the number of programs and how any GBs used.
I don't see it iin Programs and Features on the bottom. I already mentioned it in my last post, I found it in WiseProgramUninstaller. I have 190 programs occupying 7,5 Gb disk space. So that is not much.

Running Disk Cleanup as an admin will also remove obsolete Windows Updates, but you may have to check its box to include those in the clean up.
I wrote that I did disk cleanup, including the Windows Updates.

Re the WD HD: I connected it to my laptop and ran the WD Diagnostic tool, quick scan. It immediately gave an error, saying too many bad sectors. See screenshot. The same with the extended scan. Then I returned to the desktop, connected it there and for the first time there was the popup that the driver had been installed!! I ran the WD Diagnostic tool quick scan and that came out perfect. I don't know how to get the scan report to show you but I made a screenshot so you can see part of it. Now the WD HD doesn't flicker anymore. The led light is constant. BUT I hear and feel the HD inside running, although I closed down Explorer and everything that could make it run. That shouldn't be, right? I will now start an extended scan, but that scan takes many hours. I hope I'll get it finished by tonight. I also changed the cable, same.

Thanks, Tom, for your quick assistance. This was a scary moment. <3

Lady · « **Reply #47 on:** June 09, 2019, 08:53:53 am »

@satrow

Especially for you, satrow, Driver View.

I had a quick glance because I have to run, but here are the screenshots. I think I highlighted the right one.

Oh, and I finally found the Action Center. But nothing seems to be out of the ordinary, no warnings.

Lady · « **Reply #48 on:** June 09, 2019, 04:38:35 pm »

Second post re the available disk space of C:

I raised the amount of free space on C: to 35 Gb or 31% by removing all content of the Library (mostly of Pictures) which I use to store stuff temporarily but which had become totally cluttered because I didn't have time to process things. I moved it to the internal HD partition D:. 31% free space is quite enough, I guess, for C: to function properly, isn't it?

Still these strange two information and warning logs about code 10 have continued up to this point. But I found out something about that. Check the screenshots, 3 in a row. These 3 keep repeating. That must mean something is going wrong with the Prey program. Although it's not a device (code 10 @satrow), to make sure, I logged into the Prey program and logged out again. Or maybe there was something going wrong at their end and they solved it just now. I'll check the logs tomorrow.

Restore points: there are 10 restore points. The last one, which is not in the picture, is of June 7 when I downloaded the SES driver. I found out the different ways to remove them. Shall I remove all restore points but the last one? Look at the list, how strange is that? I make a restore point every month when I make my system image backup. Where are they? There is even still one of 2015, which is crazy. CCleaner only gives the last 3, so that's not helpful. So I have two options: clearing them all, or all but the last one. Clearing them all but the last one also deletes shadow copies I read. That term is new to me. Is that safe? Maybe the shadow copies of so many years are cluttering up the disk space?? I must say, in the past I have tried using restore points in crisis situations but it hardly ever worked and I have my system image backup now.

Re the WD HD: it passed both tests, quick and extended. See screenshot. Can you see whether the driver is correct now? The WD HD is quiet now, the led light is flickering again. The light should be out when not in use. So it's still not ok.

Hope you're still with me.

Boggin · « **Reply #49 on:** June 10, 2019, 12:46:26 am »

Have you thought of contacting WD about sending it back under warranty ?