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Windows 8 crashed, now SSD (boot drive) is missing in bios - help please.


Deckard6

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I have a Corsair Neutron GTX 120gb SSD in a new computer (all parts brand new), I did a clean install of Windows 8 on it, and it worked ok'ish for a week, one or two odd moments with tiles/apps closing of their own accord, then it crashed (while i was out of room) and said something like - error loading OS or cant find/load MBr (black screen), something like that ( sorry i dont remember exactly what it said).

 

i tried lots of things to recover with win8 install disk but no luck.

 

On looking in Bios, the SSD was no longer showing.

 

I ran HD tune software and it failed one of the health checks, i think it was Raw Read Error Rate, but cant be sure as i didnt write it down.

 

To "fix" it i eventually had to remove the SSD, plug it into another PC, format it (both the small 100mb (?) partition and the main 100+gig partition, reinstall it in my main pc, and it showed in bios again.

I re-installed windows 8, clean install on the SSD again, it worked great for another week, then it crashed again,

this time as i was sat in front of it -

 

Blue screen of death,

"KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR (fastfat.SYS)"

 

then black screen - "error loading OS",

and on looking in Bios the SSD is again missing.

 

Can anyone help please? Any ideas?

 

Many Thanks,

Deckard6

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I found this which might be relevant to your problem:

 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/810091

 

What struck me was the fact that you mentioned that your SSD would not be seen in the BIOS. Now the BIOS has naff all to do with whatever OS you have loaded or crashed. If however you have a RAM issue then that would make some more sense.

 

Another thing that got my "spidey senses" going was that you stated you have "a new computer (all parts brand new)".

 

There is a very well known - and documented - phenomenon which has a few names but basically means the same thing; the names are:

 

1) Infant Mortality Syndrome

2) Bathtub Curve

3) Burn In period.

 

What this basically means that computer components are most likely to fail in the first few hours/days of use. The rate of failure then drops dramatically and picks up as the component gets "worn out".

 

Test out the RAM modules individually.

 

Another thing to consider is that in the event of a crash, one should always turn off the computer completely - pull the electrical chord - and leave it for 30 seconds at least before attempting to reboot.

 

Personally I have nothing good to say about Win8, but that is another matter.

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Hello, thanks for replies so far, much appreciated.

 

Stumbling around i made some progress before finding your replies so i have yet to implement your suggestions, but i will try to tomorrow.

 

This is what i did to get up and running again to the point im now at.

 

Update bios from (F1) to latest version (F3) even though it didnt mention any tweaks or changes for SSDs etc,

after this my SSD appeared again in bios,

i let windows go through a couple of repairs on booting,

and after 10 mins it was back working again.

After this i downloaded latest motherboard driver suite (578 meg) and installed it. Not sure that was a great idea, as since it has come up with warnings saying something like Catalyst Control suite is not responding etc (or similar).

 

My main worry is that i have some kind of intermittent fault on my new hardware, possibly the SSD or motherboard, and that this cycle of crashes and SSD going missing in Bios will repeat itself.

 

I let Memtest run for 8 hours on PC (via booting from USB stick) and it found no errors with RAM. But i didnt remove one of the two strips and test them one at a time in the same socket, will this have impaired the test?

 

Are there any simple tests/ any reliable free software i can use to test motherboard and/or SSD? I dont want to run a test on SSD that will delete all data etc.

 

Also,

when i installed windows 8 it made a small partition on the SSD (about 100meg) and it was FAT file system (i think that was my fault making it backwards compatible with old operating systems?), the rest of the drive 111gig? is NTFS. would you/ can i convert the FAT partition to NTFS without ruining things, as windows system backup is not working as it says it only works on NTFS partitions.?

 

Someone on techguy site said i should optimise win8 for SSD....

I didnt do this originally as before installing windows 8 i read a few sites that said just enable ACHI (is that what its called?) in bios and leave the rest to windows 8.

 

I have now disabled windows search (at start-up) and turned off Indexing of C Drive (My SSD), was this good/bad idea?

 

I will have a good look at both your suggestions asap, and try running an ATTO benchmark (i will look up how to do that) and post result as soon as, but need sleep now as gone 2am and work in morning.

 

Any further advice gratefully received?

Thanks very much for taking time out of your day to help.

cheers.

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  • Corsair Employee
We will be releasing a new set of tools shortly which will have the ability to run Firmware updates on all of SSD's that are in production. But I suspect this may be a driver issue. I would make sure that the controller is running in AHCI mode.
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