This DARLING computer

[dwynnehugh]

A week or so ago I posted on ‘This bl**dy Computer’  well I thought I had the answer – new SSD in place of a failed WD Black 1TB unit – loaded W10 etc. and all was well for a time … then back to the old tricks – not booting up (??), booting up but no video output.  Set in an Antec case I remembered when new there was a problem with the ON/OFF case switch which I changed and all was well – so this time I got a spare switch and inserted that directly to the motherboard – all was well. UNTIL a couple of days ago when back to its old tricks – no monitor output.  Mobo is a Gigabyte GA-B150M-D3H DDR3 unit and I am using the on board graphics with the BIOS set to IGFX (I think – w/o checking – it’s certainly not set to a discrete card).  When the system goes into hibernation it will not come out of it w/o occasionally removing the mains lead to the PSU. Currently I am updating W10 but when the system tells me that it will need to restart a few times – I just get a black screen as if the monitor is in power save mode.

Any ideas anyone – the system is new as of March 2016 and has had a busy life – normally just left on.  New system screams at me – what do others think?   Thanks Dave

PS – As I have said earlier I am not up to date with the current trends in PCs – can anyone suggest a suitable mobo / CPU and RAM (Intel or AMD) basically for  use re office work and internet access / surfing please?

The more you meet people the more you understand why Noah took animals instead of humans

[Ed P]

I’d suggest that you try running through the Windows 10 Hibernation Troubleshooting checklist:

link

Hibernation has always been an issue with Windows 10 and earlier. Luckily Win11 generally seems to fix these issues.

I bought SWMBO a Beelink computer – small footprint, reasonable price, good support, but does everything she wants in a small office PC

[Ed P]

I note that Beelink have a number of different cpu/hdd combos.

The Intel N5105 was the one that I purchased for SWMBO. As I had a spare 2.5 inch hybrid hdd I also installed that to give her a backup/data storage disk. Not really necessary, but it did satisfy me that the Beelink could easily be expanded.

[dwynnehugh]

It just gets worse – when I initially looked at the PC I was able to recover some 145K files from the HDD and these were stored on another WD Black 1TB HDD – I checked them and they were there!!

Today I decided that despite the problems of ‘hibernation’ I would return the files from the holding HDD to the new SSD on the PC – using Dave’s suggestion of a Fideco double HDD docking station – I inserted the HDD and guess what – NOTHING – no files at all. To the best of my knowledge I have not inadvertently formatted this HDD and going back to the old faulty one they are not there either!!

Management – Storage tells me that the HDD (onto which I copied the files)  has a 500MB Active partition – Healthy and 931.02GB Pri Partition with a file system shown as RAW. Similarly the old (damaged) HDD gives an identical reading when read from my W7 PC. When either HDD is placed into the docking station and attached to my W7 PC, neither is seen in ‘My Computer’ – before I go absolutely mad has anyone any ideas, suggestions etc.  Many thanks,  Dave

The more you meet people the more you understand why Noah took animals instead of humans

[keith with the teef]

Try a new bios battery.

[Ed P]

(Before) or after changing the Bios battery try running SFC and DISM in admin mode.

Right click Command Prompt and run as Admin.

Type in

sfc/scannow and let it run

(You may need a Windows Installation Disk if any of the system files are corrupt)

then Type in:

DISM /online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth

Some people recommend running

chkdsk /f /r

Frankly I would not do this before having a bit copy of the drive as chkdsk often gives more problems than it solves!

I’d rather disable hibernation using:

powercfg -h off

again in Admin mode.

[dwynnehugh]

Thank you one and all for your inputs.  I have just done a My Computer – Manage – Storage – Disk Management on the known good HDD on which I stored the 145K odd files when I recovered them for the suspect HDD.  As many will have guessed I am more than a bit rusty on PCs by now but by looking at the screen grab could my 145K files be in the 931GB shown as ‘Healthy, Primary Partition’?  If it could be there – how has this happened and how do I recover same.  Thanks once again,  Dave

The more you meet people the more you understand why Noah took animals instead of humans

[dwynnehugh]

And just to make matters worse – if that’s possible – using data recovery software on both the failing HDD (rec 4.1M files) and the holding HDD (rec 0 files other than system) – there appears to be no trace at all of the lost files!!!!  I’ve even checked that I am checking the correct holding HDD – NOTHING!!

The more you meet people the more you understand why Noah took animals instead of humans

[Ed P]

Sorry – it looks as though you had better do a fresh install and use your backups.

Making a wild guess, I would say that you have a mobo/disk controller problem, and if you plan to treat yourself to a new PC (preferably a Win11 one) I’d do it before trying to restore your files, as it sounds as though you have a really spooky Halloween PC that kills disks it contacts!

Although I’m happy building PCs, it has reached the stage where those new PCs which only allow SSDs to be added/exchanged do all I want at a very competitive price.

[dwynnehugh]

Hi Ed,  Thanks for all of your inputs. The PC is actually owned by a friend and has been having ‘hibernation / sleep’ problems with it for yonks – until it really got awkward and he phoned me.  When on the bench a short test with Data Lifeguard showed all OK but an Extended Test gave up the ghost after 45mts when it said ‘too many bad sectors ..’ I then tried to get the files needed off of it and was able to access said files and download to an identical 1TB WD Black HDD which I stored in a file named ‘Y Ni’ (Us) exactly as his original folder.  Having downloaded same onto the ‘storage’ HDD a check showed that they were there and about 99.9% had been recovered – so I felt great.

We then had the ‘hibernation / sleep’ problem which you helped me with,  so yesterday morning I thought whilst I looked at your solutions I would re-install the old data onto the new SSD – I did – the folder mover across and a few seconds later all was well and finished, bearing in mind the original folder had 145K files (about 12GB of data), their return had taken far too short a period.  Checking on the folder gave a ‘No Files – empty’ response.

I have used Recuva data recovery on the original failing HDD and the storage HDD – the failing returned 4.1million files and a cursory check does not indicate anything that I wanted to recover – the storage HDD indicates (on the face of it) that the files never existed on that HDD.  I KNOW that neither have been inadvertently formatted but even if they had, I would have expected that SOME files could have been retrieved.

It looks as if something / someone – a fairy – perhaps – has been there and simply cut out the sectors on both HDDs thus removing completely the data I need to recover (daft I know – sign of desperation???

I am completely and utterly flumoxed on this.

 

The more you meet people the more you understand why Noah took animals instead of humans

[Ed P]

I’m quite confused as to what works and where.

I now make the following assumptions based on what you have written so far.

a) The C-Drive is apparently OK (but I still think it needs a SFC/DISM check for bad system files)

b) All the craziness takes place on a data drive . Drive 4 which is lettered D or F

c) Drive 4 seems to corrupt anything that is attached to it. If true, take out Drive 4 and attach to your PC, put a couple of file folders on it, reattach, reboot and see what you get. If corrupted, then the PC mobos disk controller is suspect or it has corrupted drivers (running SFC/DISM should eliminate the latter as a problem)

If everything points at the disk controller then I think it is time for a new PC as you could waste a lot of time/money trying to resusitate a PC that is well past its sell-by date.

[dwynnehugh]

Ok,  I will try to be more specific, the friend’s PC is running W10 and has a C drive only – a WD Black 1TB HDD date of production Aug 2017. For quite a while there has been the sleep/hibernation issues with it and recently it got to a head and he called me. The PC wouldn’t even boot up at his home so I bought it to mine. I was eventually able to boot up the PC, locate and download his files, and then to copy them to another WD Black 1TB HDD which I attached onto his PC as another drive (Storage only for the recovered files)  – not bootable.  When the copying had been done, I checked and all of the files were there or at least about 99.9% – some 145K files in total.

When I came  to re-installing them onto his PC, post our sleep/hibernation issues, using a docking station I copied the recovered files from my storage HDD to his SSD.  This took a matter of seconds which seemed very odd as I knew that the size of the contents was about 12GB. On checking both the SSD and the storage HDD – no files at all. (They WERE there when I checked the recovery a few days earlier).

I then Went back to check the original HDD ‘C’ drive and nothing there either – EVERYTHING seems to have vanished.  Recuva data rec s/ware finds some 4.1M files on the original C drive but a quick check does not show that they are anything that I need to recover.  Doing the same on my storage drive shown 0 files – as if they never ever existed at all on that drive.

Neither drive has been formatted not even inadvertently, but I expect that had one been accidentally formatted Recuva would have found something – NOTHING on either!!

Common factor both HDDs have been connected to my friend’s PC – the SSD seems to be working OK though there are no files on it at the moment save for those needed with W10 instal and updates. The ‘storage HDD has been connected to my W7 PC via a docking station with identical results.

I’ve accepted that the files are lost, but what intrigues me is HOW?  This is not my first job in trf’ing data from one HDD to another but is the first time this has happened to me.  Any help, guidance, pointers, ideas or anything would be most gladly accepted – I just can’t see what I have done wrong or incorrectly on this occasion.

I hope that this is a bit clearer.

The more you meet people the more you understand why Noah took animals instead of humans

[dwynnehugh]

I should have added that the SSD was in place of the original failing WD ‘C’ drive

The more you meet people the more you understand why Noah took animals instead of humans

[Ed P]

As there is only a C Drive, I think it would be wise to check the system files using the SFC/DISM combo.  While a more likely problem area is in the write-behind area, I think you need to check that this is not being caused by bad system files.

[Ed P]

On re-reading I realized that my write-behind comment was a bit opaque.

Normally SSDs are processed to use Write-through while slower HDDs often use write-behind.

link

If the Win10 PC was fully updated it should have automatically fixed things when you substituted an SSD for the hdd. However I suspect your friend never bothered to keep the software up to date. If so there is a chance that the SSD was set to use write behind, and I suspect that this may have caused the craziness.

All wild speculation on my part but it would partially explain why this PC behaves as though it is a part of the Zombie invasion, and is programmed to kill SSD drive contents !

 

[Ed P]

My edit was too slow.

I tried to add:

Alternately it could of course be TRIM.

 

[dwynnehugh]

Well the SSD is still alive, it’s possibly killed the info on two HDDs!!!!

I’ve had a chat with him and he wants me to quote for a new system – in this case just a mobo, CPU and RAM – he may need a new case as the On/OFF switch (built into the case) I also suspect is playing up – currently by-passed by a similar switch directly to mobo!!

What ELSE can go wrong please – DON’T TELL ME I don’t want to know!!

The more you meet people the more you understand why Noah took animals instead of humans

[wasbit]

I had a similar problem with a Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H motherboard.
It was in a Zalman media centre running Windows 7, & was given to me with an unknown problem.
Turned it on, used it for a couple of days without any problem, then upgraded to Windows 10.
It ran fine for a couple of weeks, then it died. Not a beep. It was dead for a few weeks then one morning it beeped tried to boot, then went dead again. The next morning it beeped & tried to start several times & eventually booted. All this without any user intervention.
Despite asking several knowledgeable people & posting on several forums the consensus was that the motherboard was waiting for an input from the OS (Windows 10).
The OS was changed to Windows 8.1 & has now worked flawlessly for several years.

Not much use to you other than the few times that I have heard of similar problems they are all with Gigabyte motherboards.

I have never had to use a file recovery programme in anger but TestDisk & PhotoRec freewares come highly recommended.

Test Disk for partition recovery & PhotoRec for files – both available from the link

– https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

 

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[dwynnehugh]

Thanks to you all for the inputs – the files are lost – I suspect that a localised version of the Bermuda triangle might have visited Anglesey and spirited them all away w/o any trace at all!!!!

The more you meet people the more you understand why Noah took animals instead of humans

[Author]

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