Never ending busy mode; what is going on?

[frogbeastegg]

NB: I run a dual hard drive set up; primary for windows and core programs, secondary for games and frippery.

At the start of last week I was browsing the internet when my cursor turned into the 'busy' hourglass. Several minutes later it was still 'busy' and I still couldn't do anything like call up task manager, minimise my browser window, open the start menu, etc. I had to do a hard reboot. The PC then would not start up. It kept giving me an mesage about an "intel boot agent" right before the windows splash screen should have appeared. I turned the PC off, let it sit for a bit, turned it back on, and it behaved as though the hard drive didn't have windows present. I brought a new hard drive, replaced my old primary, installed windows and set the basics back up. The next day I connected up my old primary drive and recovered my important files from it. The PC was fine until today.

This morning I reconnected the secondary hard drive. Everything was ok; I wiped it and began to reinstall my games. Everything was fine until, after installing Sword of the Stars and its expansions, the PC went into busy mode again. It didn't end. Reboot required. Fortunately no damage appeared to have been done. Not longer after it went into busy mode again, and again I had to reset.

I mention Sword of the Stars by name because there's a bit of a theme and I don't want to leave out information which might help solve the problem. My PC had been running without a single issue for 2 years and 4 months, since the day I built it until several days after I first installed SotS. Then I got the busy mode which forced the new hard drive and reinstall. After the reinstall it was fine for a week, until SotS was installed.

It's probably not SotS fault but there's definitely something wrong.

The busy modes were prompted by:
1. Reading a favourite web page and doing nothing else (this is the one which required a reinstall)

2. Pressing the pause button on a download window whilst a game (SotS, coincidentally) installed. Both installer and downloader were running in tiny windows so I didn't need to minimise a window or anything at all in order to press that pause button.

3. Trying to move a single entry in my start menu while JKdefrag ran.

Virus scans come up clean.

Nothing unusual, and nothing I haven't done hundreds of times in the past without problems. I used to be able to do three or more things at once without the least hint of trouble or even slowdown.

PC specs:
Windows XP home
Intel E6600 Core2Duo
MSI Intel 975X PCI Express Motherboard
BFG GeForce 8800GTS 640MB
2GB Corsair DDR2 RAM
1 76GB raptor hard drive (my brand new primary)
1 160GB western digital caviar hard drive, about 2 1/2 years old. (the original primary was identical to this)

[caravel]

NB: I run a dual hard drive set up; primary for windows and core programs, secondary for games and frippery.

At the start of last week I was browsing the internet when my cursor turned into the 'busy' hourglass. Several minutes later it was still 'busy' and I still couldn't do anything like call up task manager, minimise my browser window, open the start menu, etc. I had to do a hard reboot. The PC then would not start up. It kept giving me an mesage about an "intel boot agent" right before the windows splash screen should have appeared. I turned the PC off, let it sit for a bit, turned it back on, and it behaved as though the hard drive didn't have windows present. I brought a new hard drive, replaced my old primary, installed windows and set the basics back up. The next day I connected up my old primary drive and recovered my important files from it. The PC was fine until today.

Yes it looks like the hard disk drive simply failed. The symptoms of the boot agent loading and the non responsiveness, hourglass etc all point to this being the case.

This morning I reconnected the secondary hard drive. Everything was ok; I wiped it and began to reinstall my games. Everything was fine until, after installing Sword of the Stars and its expansions, the PC went into busy mode again. It didn't end. Reboot required. Fortunately no damage appeared to have been done. Not longer after it went into busy mode again, and again I had to reset.

I mention Sword of the Stars by name because there's a bit of a theme and I don't want to leave out information which might help solve the problem. My PC had been running without a single issue for 2 years and 4 months, since the day I built it until several days after I first installed SotS. Then I got the busy mode which forced the new hard drive and reinstall. After the reinstall it was fine for a week, until SotS was installed.

It's probably not SotS fault but there's definitely something wrong.

The busy modes were prompted by:
1. Reading a favourite web page and doing nothing else (this is the one which required a reinstall)

2. Pressing the pause button on a download window whilst a game (SotS, coincidentally) installed. Both installer and downloader were running in tiny windows so I didn't need to minimise a window or anything at all in order to press that pause button.

3. Trying to move a single entry in my start menu while JKdefrag ran.

Virus scans come up clean.

Nothing unusual, and nothing I haven't done hundreds of times in the past without problems. I used to be able to do three or more things at once without the least hint of trouble or even slowdown.

PC specs:
Windows XP home
Intel E6600 Core2Duo
MSI Intel 975X PCI Express Motherboard
BFG GeForce 8800GTS 640MB
2GB Corsair DDR2 RAM
1 76GB raptor hard drive (my brand new primary)
1 160GB western digital caviar hard drive, about 2 1/2 years old. (the original primary was identical to this)

And so your problems began again once the secondary HDD was reconncted? I wonder do you have enough power supply wattage to run that lot?

I doubt it's the game - that's probably coincidence. Have you updated all drivers for motherboard chipset, graphics card, sound and ethernet/LAN?

[frogbeastegg]

Yes it looks like the hard disk drive simply failed. The symptoms of the boot agent loading and the non responsiveness, hourglass etc all point to this being the case.

When I connected the drive up in the secondary position it still worked and accessed ok. Some files were damaged, nothing outside of windows itself.

If I can pin it down to mechanical failure and prove it then that would be nice. It's a Western Digital Caviar model and they come with a 5 year warranty, of which I still have 2 years left.

And so your problems began again once the secondary HDD was reconncted? I wonder do you have enough power supply wattage to run that lot?

I've run this set up for over 2 years without any trouble so I can safely say it's not a power issue.

Have you updated all drivers for motherboard chipset, graphics card, sound and ethernet/LAN?

Yes.

[caravel]

When I connected the drive up in the secondary position it still worked and accessed ok. Some files were damaged, nothing outside of windows itself.

If I can pin it down to mechanical failure and prove it then that would be nice. It's a Western Digital Caviar model and they come with a 5 year warranty, of which I still have 2 years left..

I would bet on overheating. Most drives have a thermal cut out that will cause them to power down to prevent damage to the disk platens. You probably wouldn't have heard the drive powering down because a) WD drives are usually very quiet and b) you have a second drive which would drown the sound of the other one out anyway. I have had drives that failed that could be got working again for long enough to back up the data. Putting the drive in the freezer was another old trick (don't try that one).

How is your case ventilation? (Bear in mind that the weather is warmer here lately).

[frogbeastegg]

I would bet on overheating. Most drives have a thermal cut out that will cause them to power down to prevent damage to the disk platens. You probably wouldn't have heard the drive powering down because a) WD drives are usually very quiet and b) you have a second drive which would drown the sound of the other one out anyway. I have had drives that failed that could be got working again for long enough to back up the data. Putting the drive in the freezer was another old trick (don't try that one).

How is your case ventilation? (Bear in mind that the weather is warmer here lately).

Now that is a very good thought. I have a tsunami dream case which has vents at the front as well as at the back and some nice big fans and good heat dispersal overall. The weather here has been baking, the hottest it's been in several years. Yesterday I'd been using the PC for a few hours before it started playing up, and the first time I'd been writing for an entire afternoon.

I shall have a wander into the temp monitoring page in the machine's set up ...

[frogbeastegg]

The temperature checks are reporting as follows:

Motherboard: 45 degrees C
GPU: 61
The raptor HD: 36
The caviar HD: 34

[caravel]

The temperature coming from the motherboard thermistor seems a bit too high. What is your CPU temperature?

The HDs seem ok as far as I can tell.

The GPU seems to be running a bit hot. Is that under load? Cooling varies from one card to the next, but a lot of cards are fitted with substandard coolers. Check it for dust and debris and try running with the case side off.

[frogbeastegg]

The temperature coming from the motherboard thermistor seems a bit too high. What is your CPU temperature?

Had to check that with a different tool. It's fluctuating between 48 and 49 degrees C.

The GPU seems to be running a bit hot. Is that under load? Cooling varies from one card to the next, but a lot of cards are fitted with substandard coolers. Check it for dust and debris and try running with the case side off.

It's under very mild load. I've been reinstalling my games, starting them up to sort out the settings, playing them for a few minutes to check they work correctly and then quitting to install another. Time is also spent on downloading and applying patches, so there's quite some gap between each game launch.

The card has its own headsinks and fans; they're big enough to make the card double size. It's a BFG version of the 8800 so they should be decent. The card's positioned right next to the rear case fan. The two hard drives sit next to the front fan.

I gave the machine a clean out when I swapped the raptor drive in.

I should add that it's so hot here that I'm sweatingly slightly just sitting here. Horrible. Britain is supposed to be cold; all this warmth and sun isn't natural.

[caravel]

It's a strange one... definitely keep an eye on your temps from now on and run with the case side off until the weather breaks.

[Xiahou]

A couple of things...

First, check Event Viewer- look in the System and Application logs for any events from around the same time as your lockups. Let us know if you see anything interesting. (If you don't know where to find Event Viewer, just do a "Start->Run Eventvwr.msc")

Second, you might want to try something like Speedfan to look at the SMART data for your second drive. It has an option for a "detailed" report that opens in a web page. SMART data is no guarantee, but the data it tracks can often predict hard drive failures and Speedfan also aggregates this data into drive performance and health percentages.

[Whacker]

I will also mention from direct experience the problems that a seemingly-good-but-really-bad HDD can cause.

I've had my self-built system for about 2 years now. Several months after I had it put together and broken in, I started noticed weird problems. Inconsistent lockups, weird software behavior, freezes needing hard reboots. This progressed and finally got to the point where I literally had to reset BIOS settings after every restart, because they system would detect things wrong AND it wouldn't save settings no matter what. Not only that, I was starting to fear that power supply was going bad and had caused me to already RMA the mobo once AND my expensive RAM. I was on my 3rd pair of RAM sticks and gnashing my teeth. All of this lead me to believe that my entire system was fried or about to be fried.

Finally, about 2 months ago, the HDD finally breathed it's last and started the repetitive clunk of death noise. Got my new 1TB HDD and plugged it in, and suddenly every problem I've ever had with the box disappeared. I mean every. Single. One. BIOS works perfectly. No random lock-ups after marathon gaming that heats my video card up to nukuler temps. No wierd RAM-based CRC or consistency errors. I've never seen anything like this happen in my 15+ years in working heavily with PCs.

All of that headache and heartache because of a single stupid HDD that was bad but kept working for a year or more.

So the short, short version is don't trust that HDD. It could be bad but still "working", AND it could be causing a lot of problems that may appear to be symptomatic of other hardware problems, like PSU issues. Just something to think about as you troubleshoot.

[frogbeastegg]

The temperature has dropped, which means system temps have gone down by 10 degrees C or more across the board. Not had any problems today or yesterday, although I haven't used the PC much because I've been at work or doing other things.

If the problem does reoccur I shall disconnect the secondary drive again and see how it goes.