Windows 10 system intermittent freeze problem

[Neto]

Still doing the same thing.
Looking in the Event Log. See several errors to do with iaStorA. (Intel Rapid Storage Driver)
Is it logical that an SSD would do the freeze, and the HDD not?
Will try it this afternoon, to do what I saw on a u-tube video.
(Then the next step will be to order another SSD, I guess.)

What are the exact iastor errors? (If you install Intel Rapid Storage / RST, it should show you detailed error messages.)

If the SSD freezes but the HDD does not, I would guess the SSD has gone bad. How full was it? If customers keep their SSD at or near capacity it significantly shortens their life.

I downloaded the Intel Rapid Storage tool at noon today, but I didn't get to it this afternoon. Hauled some of my son's stuff out to his shop, renewed registration on all of the vehicles and trailers, then got a call for some service work, so I didn't get back to this project. But I left my notes up at my shop (about the iaStorA errors). I also hadn't copied it all out word for word.

The customer hasn't done anything on this computer yet - I am in Ohio, and he is in Kentucky. It's a 1 TB SSD, and so it's not full at all. In fact, the HDD I put the image onto is only 500 GB. If the SSD would have just gone completely bad, then I'd not have spent so much time on it already. I should have just ordered another, and try that. At this point, I will probably wipe it, and put the preliminary image back on, and make sure that it isn't freezing then. If that works, then I'll have to do all of the final configuration over again, and then install Office 2019 Pro Plus again, and hope that doesn't mess it up. I think I will do that early in the process this time, so I don't get all of that time into it again. I usually try to do invoicing on Fridays, but need to get this finished up and shipped out, one way or another. (We had a one night & one day 'vacation' last Friday afternoon through Saturday afternoon, so that put me farther behind. Self employment is not all it's cracked up to be.)

[Pelerin]

Is almost suspect it’s a software issue not the SSD. Possibly another peripheral driver? Have you tried voting to safe mode and seeing if the issue persists?

You could try process monitor or some of the suggestions here for tracking down hung processes. If the OS itself is hanging you might not be able to use the tools (like the task manager wait chain) as it happens but you might be able to have some of the other tools log what’s happening (I haven’t had the chance to explore them myself).

[Neto]

Is almost suspect it’s a software issue not the SSD. Possibly another peripheral driver? Have you tried voting to safe mode and seeing if the issue persists?

You could try process monitor or some of the suggestions here for tracking down hung processes. If the OS itself is hanging you might not be able to use the tools (like the task manager wait chain) as it happens but you might be able to have some of the other tools log what’s happening (I haven’t had the chance to explore them myself).

I'll need to check my notes, or test in Safe Mode again, but I think it did it there as well. (My notes are up in my shop, up the street.)

The software angle seems to be eliminated by the fact that an HDD, imaged/cloned directly from this SSD, does not experience this issue. However, another possible factor I thought of while laying awake last night, is that for an image to be applied on an SSD, it must have been produced from a drive that is smaller or equal in size as the SSD itself. The image I started with was produced on a 1TB drive, which is also the rating for the SSD. In the past, when I attempted to image to a smaller SSD from a larger capacity HDD, the imaging process itself failed, that is, the destination drive (SSD) was rejected. (To get around this, in the past I've imaged to an HDD of equal or smaller size as the SSD, then taken an image from that, and apply it to the SSD.)

[Josh]

As of late I’m getting NVMe SSDs (WD Black is a good choice - $69 for 1TB on NewEgg) and putting them on NVMe PCIe adapters (about $12 on Amazon, with heatsink). Generally speaking, the driver suppprt is a little more robust for direct NVMe and if you have UEFI boot it boots a little faster too. Both Samsung and WD have utilities to check for errors/failures.

[Neto]

As of late I’m getting NVMe SSDs (WD Black is a good choice - $69 for 1TB on NewEgg) and putting them on NVMe PCIe adapters (about $12 on Amazon, with heatsink). Generally speaking, the driver suppprt is a little more robust for direct NVMe and if you have UEFI boot it boots a little faster too. Both Samsung and WD have utilities to check for errors/failures.

Thanks. I've heard of those adapters, but have never used one. I should look into that. What brand are you using? I am assuming that this method still results in faster access than an SATA SSD.

(In the case of the word processors I was building, there is no support structure for expansion cards. I did also design an add-on support bracket, but those were not cheap to have custom made, so it results in that additional cost to the customer, and on the older word processors I didn't have the mounting holes for that bracket pre-punched in the main back panel that all of the components are attached to. So I have to drill them, and to do that safely I have to almost completely dismantle the system, to be sure no small metal shavings get onto the circuit board, or POOF!)

[Neto]

Hopefully this will be my last update about this. I tried the process I saw in a you-tube video

Fixed: iaStorA and Kernel-PnP errors, hangs, crashes, and freezes on Windows 10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa_BO3jocGA

but it didn't help.

In the process of messing around between each time I made additional changes or rebooted another time, I looked at the size of the 1TB SSD compared to the 1TB Seagate HDD, and saw that Windows showed the SSD as being 3 GB SMALLER than the HDD. [WD SATA SSD: 997.142.294.528 (928); Seagate HDD: 1,000.203.087.872 (931)]

So I applied the image of the finished SSD to a 500 GB HDD, created an image from that, then applied it to the SSD. I then messed around on it for around 20 to 25 minutes, and it never froze again. I checked the Event Viewer, and there were no more warnings about iaStorA. I will test more next week, but today is my birthday, so I went home a bit early. (68. Time to get out of this business - it's too taxing for my old brain.)

[Josh]

Newer motherboards should support NVMe in an onboard M.2 slot.

When I’m back at the office I’ll look up the orders I placed for SATA SSDs, NVMe, and adapters.

[Neto]

Newer motherboards should support NVMe in an onboard M.2 slot.

When I’m back at the office I’ll look up the orders I placed for SATA SSDs, NVMe, and adapters.

Within MSI, the next chipset, 250, started the M.2 slot on most models. (I think I mentioned it above, but this particular board is a 150 chipset, and I originally built this computer in Summer of 2017.)

[Neto]

Not out of the woods with this yet. Not fixed.

Turned it on & left it go unattended this morning.
10:09:20 Cleared Events in Event log
10:10:33 DistributedCOM
10:11:51 iaStorA Event log text: "Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort0, was issued."
10:11:51 DistributedCOM
10:19:09 Kernal General
10:22:30 iaStorA
10:48:09 DistributedCOM
12:00:00 Information: "The system uptime is 75303 seconds."
10:09:38 iaStorA
1:34:01 iaStorA
3:34:01 iaStorA
3:42:49 iaStorA
5:21:04 DistributedCOM (This is when I returned to the shop, and woke it.)

I then opened various things, closed them, did other things, etc., until 5:34, when it froze, and threw another iaStorA event Warning.

Any ideas? I guess I'll order another SSD, and see if that makes a difference, probably also starting over with my standard working system image.
[It takes 8 to 10 hours to perform all of the configuration changes I make for the system lock-down. That's why I use a standard image for each computer I build. As I said above, I have run the image I got from the completed SSD configuration (after installing the requested programs, changing Windows license code, doing registration, changing the system name & serial number, etc.) on an HDD, and it has never froze up.

[Josh]

You could try turning off Intel RAID and just run the SATA port in AHCI mode. It makes a difference with oddball SSDs.