Time for a new boot HDD?

Synthesis

For almost a year, I've been using a WD Caviar Black 1 TB Drive as my boot drive. I've been extremely please with the purchase, which I made after some discourse in this very section.

A week ago, I got a blue screen error while playing WoW (WoW itself was minimized, I was checking my browser), listed as PFN_LIST_CORRUPT.

Kind of unusual, since I very seldom get blue screens, but I thought it might just be because I was running WoW simultaneously. Nonetheless, I decided I should also run a disc check upon restart. Automatically attempt recovery of bad sectors, etc.

I finally got around to doing this, and about five hours later, it looked like it was about to finish--it was at 99% completion on what I think was the fifth and final step (it was at 16000000 or so of 160000000 or so clusters), when I live to get a drink. When I'm back....'nother blue screen.

This one has no listed cause, other than STOP: 0x0000007E. The fact that it happened during the very last stage of the disc check, without Vista actually running, is what worries me. So far, the drive seems to be behaving completely normal otherwise. Is this thing on its way out, or am I overlooking something?

ronya

I think your computer finished checking, then booted Vista, which then choked on something and BSOD'ed. I doubt it's your hard drive (unless you noticed any interesting errors? You did see most of it).

I doubt it's anything significant, so just back up your data (as it already should be...) and ignore it unless it recurs. Maybe Warden was messing around with something low-level.

Your Events log (see compmgmt.msc) should have logged both errors, if you need more detail.

Synthesis

ronya wrote: »

I think your computer finished checking, then booted Vista, which then choked on something and BSOD'ed. I doubt it's your hard drive (unless you noticed any interesting errors? You did see most of it).

I doubt it's anything significant, so just back up your data (as it already should be...) and ignore it unless it recurs. Maybe Warden was messing around with something low-level.

Your Events log (see compmgmt.msc) should have logged both errors, if you need more detail.

I thought it was that (I hoped it was that), but when I checked the error log (the one attached to the solution center for Vista), it didn't register that crash.

I'll check again, in any case. In the Computer Management screen, is there a way to tell which events actually caused a blue screen?

ronya

Look at timestamps, I guess. Whatever triggered it likely either happened just beforehand, or didn't leave a timestamp (Warden?).

Synthesis

Well, under the Administrative Events, the closest thing to the time frame was a Task Scheduler failure to start, labeled as a 'Service Critical Error'--not sure if that means it's cause a blue screen.

I know I'm able to restart without a crash (had to do it to update my video drivers today). I guess I'll try another check disk and, when I wake up, see if I get another blue screen. If so, it might be the Check disk process. Though it's very strange it'd happen at the very, very end.

theantipop

I did a quick search and that stop error seems to indicate a driver error. What I would do is download and create an Ultimate Boot CD and disk check with that as well as run a memory check. That way windows doesn't enter the equation and you can check hardware independently.

Synthesis

Ah, okay, I'll check that out.

Fortunately, I was able to do a stable test last night (restarted and everything) without a BSOD. So, whatever the cause, it isn't happening every time.