Dreaded Black Screen

[Maggoty]

Since I seem unable to keep it from happening and thus having to re-install or reset windows, I figured I would share my plans with you guys and see what you guys think. The problem as best as I can tell is that windows 8.1 keeps trying "repair" drive errors on my SSD. I've tried several fixes for that to no avail. The repair patch it makes brings on the black screen bug every time. (three times this week)

1. Turn off Windows Updates and just be better about selecting proper updates on a weekly basis.
2. Setup an automatic function to back up everything to the cloud.
3. Setup a restore point once my games are re-downloaded.


Of course if anyone knows how to kill the black screen bug or keep windows from trying "fix" my SSD, I'd be grateful. I'm an open book at this point.

[dennisph]

Windows 7 lol

[Maggoty]

8.1

[Mokona512]

For that first reply, the user may have been recommending windows 7 :)

If windows keeps trying to repair files, then I recommend you backup all of your data on the SSD, then using another system,or a linux live USB running on your PC, Erase everything on the SSD, then create a large file on a known good drive. (50-100GB in size) (a windows image backup can easily do this, or you can have fraps record uncompressed for a while)

With the file on a known good drive, create a hash for it using a tool such as http://www.winmd5.com/

after that, save the file to the SSD, then check the hash again to see if they match. if they do, then leave the drive unpowered over night, then do 1 final test to make sure there are no major data retention issues.

Once the SSD is verified to be good, then you can do a fresh install if needed.


If it fails, then I recommend using a program like spinrite, and have it do a level 4 scan on the SSD (do not do this on a SSD that is working reliably, it will add a few hundred gigabytes of writes to the drive, only do it on a drive that is not reliable in the hopes that the flash controller will detect the bad cells and disable them. SSD's have 7% more flash storage than you have access to, that is to allow for bad flash cells to be disabled without you losing advertised capacity.

[Maggoty]

thanks, if I do this it won't happen for a couple days. I also want to see if the problem still exists. If it does it will certainly rear it's head in the next few days. Since the only fix I have right now is re-install or reset that would provide the perfect time to run a test like this.