Windows 10: BSOD ATTEMPTED_ SWITCH_FROM_DPC while using AOMEI Backupper

Yep.

Degradation happens for various of reasons, like
- amount of usage, expected
- amount of crashes (BSOD, powerloss), unexpected.
Generally speaking, HDDs usually lasts only a couple of years (3-4), with some luck twice that time.

An example of the mentioned unexpected reason, something that happened to me.
A large amount of BSODs could cause the HDD to degradate, not because of the BSOD itself but the cause what triggered the BSOD, the BSOD is there to protect the system and your data.
When I had my laptop the first couple of months, 4 years ago, I had a ton of BSODs. Everytime a BSOD occured I couldn't boot, everytime this was resolved by starting all over again. However, after some time I couldn't clean install anymore, I ran the Dell diagnostics that I accessed through the boot menu. The diagnostics revealed that the HDD died. I presume that the HDD died because of the amount of BSODs I had, in other words the forced powerlosses and possibly bad data written to the disk, another factor was that I was terrible at maintenance at the time but a novice like me wouldn't have thought about that at all.

 

Hi @Yoshm,

How is it going? *Smile

 

I have a WD Caviar Black Edition 1TB drive that is probably going on 6-7 years old and it still runs flawlessly. Fast transfers, very stable. Some do last quite a while.

 

Hey, @axe0,

Well, the new disk is installed & it is noticeably faster than the previous one. I also used the opportunity to put in an SSD for the system drive. I had an accident, unfortunately - my full backups were on an external drive. As I was restoring them, someone walked by, tripped on the power cable and flung the external drive violently to the floor. It no longer works :-(

So now I am very slowly getting a backup restored off the cloud (CrashPlan). All my critical files should be available by the time I am done (within a day or two of the disk swap), but there are some non-critical files that weren't backed up anywhere else, but my external drive.

I did want to certify the new drive. I ran HD Tune on it and got better results - I'll paste them below. However, I really like to use SpinRite to fully certify the read & write capabilities of a drive. Its Level 4 will read every single byte, and rewrite a few times inverting bits & such and finally restore the original data. It verifies every single bit is usable. Unfortunately, for some reason SpinRite isn't able to read the hardware properties of the new drive so refuses to run. :-(

Dell's diagnostics still hang on the SMART Extended Self-test - it hangs now on the SSD, so it never even gets to test the new hard drive.

Overall performance is pretty snappy - but that may also be a function of a fresh install of Windows with out much detritus added yet

Do you know of a good non-destructive, full-disk write test? I would like to raise my confidence slightly before I let Dell close my ticket.

BTW, I did have another BSOD a few days after the new disk was installed. It reported stopcode of BAD POOL HEADER. I'm not sure its related to my hard drive. It hasn't recurred. Any thoughts about that?

Thanks again for your help & interest. If you have any more pointers or ideas, I'd be pleased to hear them.

Best,
Yosh

 

HD Tune Pro: WDC WD7500BPKX-75HPJT0 Benchmark


Test capacity: full


Read transfer rate
Transfer Rate Minimum : 14.2 MB/s
Transfer Rate Maximum : 117.9 MB/s
Transfer Rate Average : 86.4 MB/s
Access Time :
Burst Rate :
CPU Usage : 8.2%






HD Tune Pro: WDC WD7500BPKX-75HPJT0 Health


ID Current Worst ThresholdData Status
(01) Raw Read Error Rate 100 253 51 0 ok
(03) Spin Up Time 189 189 21 1541 ok
(04) Start/Stop Count 100 100 0 6 ok
(05) Reallocated Sector Count 200 200 140 0 ok
(07) Seek Error Rate 100 253 0 0 ok
(09) Power On Hours Count 100 100 0 5 ok
(0A) Spin Retry Count 100 253 0 0 ok
(0B) Calibration Retry Count 100 253 0 0 ok
(0C) Power Cycle Count 100 100 0 4 ok
(BF) G-sense Error Rate 100 100 0 0 ok
(C0) Unsafe Shutdown Count 200 200 0 1 ok
(C1) Load Cycle Count 200 200 0 44 ok
(C2) Temperature 112 106 0 35 ok
(C4) Reallocated Event Count 200 200 0 0 ok
(C5) Current Pending Sector 200 200 0 0 ok
(C6) Offline Uncorrectable 100 253 0 0 ok
(C7) Interface CRC Error Count 200 200 0 0 ok
(C8) Write Error Rate 100 253 0 0 ok
(F0) Head Flying Hours 100 100 0 1 ok
(F1) Unknown Attribute 200 200 0 10027511 ok
(F2) Unknown Attribute 200 200 0 2449712 ok
(FE) Unknown Attribute 200 200 0 0 ok


Health Status : ok




HD Tune Pro: WDC WD7500BPKX-75HPJT0 Error Scan


Scanned data : 749 gB
Damaged Blocks : 0.0 %
Elapsed Time : 2:26:41















HD Tune Pro: WDC WD7500BPKX-75HPJT0 Random Access


Test capacity: full


Read test


Transfer size operations / sec avg. access time max. access time avg. speed
512 bytes 62 IOPS 15.989 ms 29.303 ms 0.031 MB/s
4 KB 63 IOPS 15.862 ms 28.669 ms 0.246 MB/s
64 KB 60 IOPS 16.465 ms 29.047 ms 3.796 MB/s
1 MB 37 IOPS 26.455 ms 81.662 ms 37.799 MB/s
Random 46 IOPS 21.305 ms 41.072 ms 23.816 MB/s
HD Tune Pro: WDC WD7500BPKX-75HPJT0 Random Access


Test capacity: full


Read test


Transfer size operations / sec avg. access time max. access time avg. speed
512 bytes 62 IOPS 15.989 ms 29.303 ms 0.031 MB/s
4 KB 63 IOPS 15.862 ms 28.669 ms 0.246 MB/s
64 KB 60 IOPS 16.465 ms 29.047 ms 3.796 MB/s
1 MB 37 IOPS 26.455 ms 81.662 ms 37.799 MB/s
Random 46 IOPS 21.305 ms 41.072 ms 23.816 MB/s

 

All tests I know/use are HDTune, SeaTools and chkdsk. I could also include CrystalDiskInfo which is similar to HDTune in regards to the SMART, but nothing more.

I'd say, if the read tests go alright, you could assume the write test would also go alright.


The Google images aren't showing for me.

 

Ah, if only that were true... my experience has been otherwise...

You mean the screenshots from HD Tune? Probably not critical. Don't know why you're not seeing them. I've reloaded my browser & they still show up.

 

You can ask, is it because of a problem with the test or with the drive itself? I've mostly seen it being a problem with the test.

Looking at the source, it seems the images are gone (error 410)

 

Just to let you know what happened next...

I did a few disk tests that I could, all involving full-surface scans. The disk seems fine according to those. I did not find a test that is as comprehensive as SpinRite that I could use, so I'm keeping my fingers (figuratively) crossed.

Meanwhile, I was surprised to get a couple new BSODs:












To me these seemed to indicate RAM problems, so I followed the advice on the memtest page. almost immediately, it reported a bunch of errors:





Repeating the test repeatedly showed memory problems of various magnitude.

Aha! I thought. So I took out half the memory and ran it again. No problems, so I figured it must be the removed half of the memory (or the slots they were in). So I ran the tests again with just the removed memory reinstalled ... no problems! So I put the other half of the memory in the original slots and ran again... no problems! In short, every which way I tested showed no problems. The last thing I did was to leave the memory with the sticks swapped from the original configuration and ran a very long test - after 15 passes, still no errors detected:





For good measure, I also ran 4 passes of the Passmark free version of memtest86 - also detected no errors.

So.... I don't know why I was getting those memory errors - maybe reseating the sticks cleaned the contacts or just gave a better connection. At any rate, I'm moving on and hoping that all is now well. We'll see if it blue-screens again...

Thanks,
Yosh

 

Hi Yoshm,

I'm sorry for the delay.

How's your system behaving?

 

Let me know if you need any further help while @axe0 is away *Smile

 

Thanks. Well, my system is continuing to have a variety of BSODs. I am not sure if I should start a new thread or continue in this one. At this point, since replacing the hard drive & reinstalling Windows form scratch, I've had about 8 BSODs, with a variety of stopcodes. Here's the report from Nirsoft's BlueScreenView:
Crash List

Created by using BlueScreenView

Dump File Crash Time Bug Check String Bug Check Code Parameter 1 Parameter 2 Parameter 3 Parameter 4 Caused By Driver Caused By Address File Description Product Name Company File Version Processor Crash Address Stack Address 1 Stack Address 2 Stack Address 3 Computer Name Full Path Processors Count Major Version Minor Version Dump File Size 051017-8515-01.dmp 5/10/2017 9:21:19 AM KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED 0x0000001e ffffffff`c0000096 fffff806`88e444bc 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 dxgkrnl.sys dxgkrnl.sys+1b44bc x64 ntoskrnl.exe+14e7c0 C:\Windows\Minidump\051017-8515-01.dmp 8 15 14393 545,956 050417-9484-01.dmp 5/4/2017 3:54:14 PM SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED 0x1000007e ffffffff`c0000005 fffff800`e0c6b958 ffff9501`acd88368 ffff9501`acd87b90 ntoskrnl.exe ntoskrnl.exe+1f1958 x64 ntoskrnl.exe+1f1958 C:\Windows\Minidump\050417-9484-01.dmp 8 15 14393 513,508 042617-8078-01.dmp 4/26/2017 2:12:46 PM 0x00000154 ffff9b89`93a0c000 ffff8901`3ddcc050 00000000`00000002 00000000`00000000 ntoskrnl.exe ntoskrnl.exe+14e7c0 x64 ntoskrnl.exe+14e7c0 C:\Windows\Minidump\042617-8078-01.dmp 8 15 14393 546,348 042317-8906-01.dmp 4/23/2017 9:58:13 AM MEMORY_MANAGEMENT 0x0000001a 00000000`00041284 00007ff8`57a90000 00000000`00000000 fffff500`10804310 ntoskrnl.exe ntoskrnl.exe+14e7c0 x64 ntoskrnl.exe+14e7c0 C:\Windows\Minidump\042317-8906-01.dmp 8 15 14393 537,484 042017-8453-01.dmp 4/20/2017 9:57:17 AM SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED 0x1000007e ffffffff`c0000005 fffff802`f487b958 ffff8300`b3b88368 ffff8300`b3b87b90 ntoskrnl.exe ntoskrnl.exe+1f1958 x64 ntoskrnl.exe+1f1958 C:\Windows\Minidump\042017-8453-01.dmp 8 15 14393 538,908 041317-8109-01.dmp 4/13/2017 11:37:38 PM 0x0000012b ffffffff`c00002c4 00000000`000003ef 00000000`2da79e10 ffffc601`02ff7000 ntoskrnl.exe ntoskrnl.exe+14e7c0 x64 ntoskrnl.exe+14e7c0 C:\Windows\Minidump\041317-8109-01.dmp 8 15 14393 677,244 040617-9156-01.dmp 4/6/2017 10:14:22 PM SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED 0x1000007e ffffffff`c0000005 fffff802`14882958 ffffa280`d2353368 ffffa280`d2352b90 ntoskrnl.exe ntoskrnl.exe+1f1958 x64 ntoskrnl.exe+1f1958 C:\Windows\Minidump\040617-9156-01.dmp 8 15 14393 530,412 033017-8187-01.dmp 3/30/2017 4:54:21 PM BAD_POOL_HEADER 0x00000019 00000000`00000020 ffffba8c`d2e2b450 ffffba8c`d2e2b490 00000000`04040012 FLTMGR.SYS FLTMGR.SYS+345e8 x64 ntoskrnl.exe+14a510 C:\Windows\Minidump\033017-8187-01.dmp 8 15 14393 546,140
Most (but not all) have happened while resuming Windows 10 from hibernation. The most recent (KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED) happened this morning.

I'm not an expert in analyzing dump files, but I used BlueScreenView to see the stack & they all mention the VGA boot driver (but not only that - in fact, the list is very similar in all the files). Here's the beginning of today's dump (see rows I marked red):

Filename Address In Stack From Address To Address Size Time Stamp Time String Product Name File Description File Version Company Full Path dxgkrnl.sys dxgkrnl.sys+1b44bc fffff806`88c90000 fffff806`88eaf000 0x0021f000 0x58d9f03f 3/28/2017 8:10:23 AM ntoskrnl.exe ntoskrnl.exe+183990 fffff802`c1e8b000 fffff802`c26a3000 0x00818000 0x58d9f097 3/28/2017 8:11:51 AM hal.dll fffff802`c1e16000 fffff802`c1e8b000 0x00075000 0x57dac91a 9/15/2016 7:15:22 PM kd.dll fffff802`c0419000 fffff802`c0424000 0x0000b000 0x57899bfc 7/16/2016 5:29:16 AM mcupdate_GenuineIntel.dll fffff806`86150000 fffff806`861de000 0x0008e000 0x57899bb5 7/16/2016 5:28:05 AM werkernel.sys fffff806`861e0000 fffff806`861f0000 0x00010000 0x57899be3 7/16/2016 5:28:51 AM CLFS.SYS fffff806`85e00000 fffff806`85e63000 0x00063000 0x584a76cf 12/9/2016 12:18:07 PM tm.sys fffff806`85e70000 fffff806`85e95000 0x00025000 0x57f4c3a4 10/5/2016 12:11:00 PM PSHED.dll fffff806`85ea0000 fffff806`85eb7000 0x00017000 0x578997a4 7/16/2016 5:10:44 AM Microsoft® Windows® Operating System Platform Specific Hardware Error Driver 10.0.14393.0 (rs1_release.160715-1616) Microsoft Corporation C:\Windows\system32\PSHED.dll BOOTVID.dll fffff806`85ec0000 fffff806`85ecc000 0x0000c000 0x5789979d 7/16/2016 5:10:37 AM Microsoft® Windows® Operating System VGA Boot Driver 10.0.14393.0 (rs1_release.160715-1616) Microsoft Corporation C:\Windows\system32\BOOTVID.dll FLTMGR.SYS fffff806`85ed0000 fffff806`85f32000 0x00062000 0x578997a5 7/16/2016 5:10:45 AM msrpc.sys fffff806`85f40000 fffff806`85f9d000 0x0005d000 0x57899a8a 7/16/2016 5:23:06 AM ...

I have no idea if my surmise is correct...

What would you advise? Should I start a new thread? Attach a collection of minidump files? Do the whole BSOD posting procedure over again to collect all system info (with DM Log Collector)? Should I focus on my VGA hardware & driver?

Any advice will be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Yosh

 

Please post a new set of files using the DM_log_collector and we can take a fresh look at what is happening.