Sean's SSD & HDD Troubleshooting Guide

Originally Posted by Moridin 

Hey Sean, been having a serious problem lately with my PC and a couple people believe it might be caused by my SSD failing. First of all here are my specs though:

i7 2600K @ 4.8GHz
EVGA GTX 570
ASUS Maximus IV Extreme P67 (BIOS 3208)
16GB Mushkin Enhanced Redline @ 1600MHz (stock timings)
2x OCZ Vertex 4 128GB (one for OS, one for games)
WD Caviar Black 1TB 7200RPM (mass storage)
Corsair AX1200
Corsair H100
Corsair 800D


For about 2 months now, my PC will randomly shut down, restart itself and freeze at the windows logo screen ("loading windows") as it's booting up.

Everytime it does it, the motherboard shows a code "10." It then shuts down then restarts itself, freezes at the windows logo screen (loading windows), then I have to hold the restart button till it shuts down because it won't do anything. I then push the power button to boot it up again and it's fine.

It doesn't happen every time, and it's completely random on when it decides to do this for some reason. It hasn't done it for almost 2 weeks after I did the Windows repair option that showed up when it happened the previous time. I thought to myself "oh I must have fixed it," but I was very wrong. It happened to me again last night, I was so dissapointed I didn't fix it. I did the Windows repair option again, and turned off the computer.

A couple people have told me it might be my SSD failing. Would the AS SSD program you provided in the first post to see the troubleshooting work with the Vertex 4 SSD? I read in the last pages of the forums at OCZ that Vertex 4's are bugged with that program for some reason.

Before I reset the CMOS in my BIOS (another option I was told I should try) I came here hoping you can tell me if it's my SSD failing, and if that's the reason behind all this trouble i'm having. If you need any other info besides an AS SSD screenshot please let me know. I'm hoping I can get this cleared up soon, everytime I turn on my PC my heart sinks hoping it doesn't happen.

I have a thread on this problem in the motherboard section of the forum because I thought maybe it was my motherboard but now i'm not so sure. Of course, the 800D case has horrendous motherboard mounting for some reason so it might be a shortage to the motherboard? I'm not sure.

Please, any help is appreciated,i'm so lost on this. I apologize if this is in any way confusing, I tried my best to get right to the point with the problem i'm having.

Again, if you need any other info from me on this please let me know. Hope to hear back from you soon.

Originally Posted by Moridin 

I'm sure it never happened when the CPU was at stock. I OC'd the CPU about a couple weeks (give or take) after I built the rig. It ran 12 hours strong in Prime95 with 90% of the RAM (10min FFT's) as well so i'm fairly certain it's stable.

I remember the problem happening as far back as mid May-ish, probably a week or 2 after I OC'd the CPU.

And yeah, as you said it says "PEI core has started" in the manual for debug code 10. When it boots normally without the problem it goes through a bunch of codes, then stays at A0 when i'm in Windows. When it's about to restart by itself and freeze, it will just be stuck at that code 10 and that's how I know it's going to happen. It shuts down and restarts about 7-8 seconds into the boot.

Before I reset the CMOS and my overclock, should I post screenshots with AS SSD and defraggler? Are those safe programs to use?

Also, I heard updating to the latest firmware for my SSD would delete all the data. How can I check which firmware my OS SSD has?

Originally Posted by Moridin 

Alright i'll be home in about 15 minutes and i'll download them and post screenshots.

For AS SSD I select my C:\ drive SSD, and hit the Start for the benchmark?

Do you need info from both AS SSD and Defraggler? If so, what should I do once I download defraggler to get the information you need?