My browser and games "pause" frozen for variable times (usually 10-20 seconds) then resume as normal...

[Not Pete]

My computer is (as of Winter) a mostly new build with a Ryzen 7 2700 on an ASUS ROG Strix B450-F, with 16g DDR4 and a primary OS drive that's a 240GB SSD.  It sat mostly unused until quarantine-time, when my regular use showed it pausing annoyingly while browsing.  I put up with this, as it was only occasional and my gaming seemed unaffected (Overwatch, AC Odyssey, others).  Then came Borderlands 3 on Epic sale which for some reason would pause similarly for up to 20-30 seconds, quite frequently and most often with a change in sound/music/cutscene/etc.  After browsing several sources and trying some basic fix attempts (disabling antivirus/firewall, in-game setting fiddling, trying to play offline), I started watching the event viewer for clues during those pause times.  Several Warnings happened at various times, but two almost always appeared with the events:

 

Consistently happens:

WARNING source: disk
The IO operation at logical block address 0x18cdbe08 [or some other address] for Disk 0 (PDO name: \Device\0000003c) was retried.

WARNING source: storahci
Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort0, was issued.

Not always correlated:
Disk 2 (through 5, but mostly 2) has been surprise removed.

Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort1, was issued.

 

Warning from: ESENT: 
taskhostw (9848,D,0) WebCacheLocal: A request to write to the file "C:\Users\Pete\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\WebCache\WebCacheV01.jfm" at offset 0 (0x0000000000000000) for 8192 (0x00002000) bytes succeeded, but took an abnormally long time (27 seconds) to be serviced by the OS. This problem is likely due to faulty hardware. Please contact your hardware vendor for further assistance diagnosing the problem.

 

These are not the only warnings/errors, but seemed most chronologically related to the events.

 

 

Sooooo.... quite a few attempts ensued, recommended by a couple different advice posts about the 2 main "warnings":

 

Updated BIOS. (along with video/audio)

Updated IDE ATA/ATAPI controller. (already UTD)

Replaced SATA and power cable for the SSD.

Did a repair install of Windows 10.

Tried changing SATA from AHDI but only option was RAID; took a while to get back to a normal boot.

Turned off Fast boot.

Changed Timeout Value in with regedit.

Disabled Paging Executive with regedit.

Disabled Dynamic Tick with regedit.

 

Most of these were listed as possible sources of those errors, and after seeing no improvement I was hoping for other things to look for and/or try.  I saw no obvious mention of hardware being likely to blame, like needing a new SSD or (hopefully) not a motherboard.

 

If someone out there is learned in these mysterious ways...please please offer some wisdom.  This has already stretched my very meager knowledge and experience WAY out of my norm.  Please and thank you!

[spaceelf]

AHCI is better than RAID with SSDs as TRIM doesn't work over RAID last I checked.  Yes, to change between the two is much easier with an OS reinstall IIRC.

 

Have you checked the SSD for a newer firmware?  How old is the SSD?

 

Have you tried a different SATA port on the mobo?

[Not Pete]

23 minutes ago, LostCat said:

AHCI is better than RAID with SSDs as TRIM doesn't work over RAID last I checked.  Yes, to change between the two is much easier with an OS reinstall IIRC.

 

Have you checked the SSD for a newer firmware?  How old is the SSD?

 

Have you tried a different SATA port on the mobo?

Different SATA port was tried, but not a firm ware try... Will look for that in the morning. The SSD is many years old. 

[Peresvet]

Several years ago, I experienced a similar issue with my OCZ SSDs when I was experimenting with setting them up in both RAID0 and RAID1. Never put an SSD in a RAID since then 😄 

 

What kind of a hard disk drive setup are you running?

 

Have you tried running checkdisk tool?

[Not Pete]

53 minutes ago, Peresvet said:

Several years ago, I experienced a similar issue with my OCZ SSDs when I was experimenting with setting them up in both RAID0 and RAID1. Never put an SSD in a RAID since then 😄 

 

What kind of a hard disk drive setup are you running?

 

Have you tried running checkdisk tool?

 The switch to RAID didn't actually happen

... wouldn't work, so to clarify, it is still on AHCI. There is also a 2TB storage drive. FWIW, all the other games that showed no pausing problem are installed on the HDD, whereas Borderlands is on the SSD. Another site mentioned updating the old SSD's firmware. Will try that today.

 

ADDEND:  the old (very old?) PNY SSD I have seems to have no support for updating firmware--only newer models.  Also, I did try chkdsk repair prior to most of the other labor-intensive tries.  I wonder if the answer actually is a new SSD?  Was hoping to fix it without having to go that far, but this would be a good excuse to get something nicer/faster/bigger.  

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

Freezing normally means your CPU is "used up"

 

Look at resource Monitor. Is your CPU (any core(s)) at a high usage?

 

Could be memory, too. You say you have 16GB. I'm guessing you a have 2x8GB? One stick could be bad. System could still detect it, but not use it. I'd run MTest on it...

 

 

[Peresvet]

^ worth a shot. A bad RAM configuration (voltage, timings) can also be to blame.

 

An overheated SSD can also cause the aforementioned symptoms (thermal throttling).

 

I'd check how adequate the system's cooling is. HWMonitor is a great app for the job.

[spaceelf]

7 hours ago, Mindovermaster said:

Freezing normally means your CPU is "used up"

Its actually not uncommon at all with bad drives, I've encountered it several times.  Windows can be very awkward about that.

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

9 minutes ago, LostCat said:

Its actually not uncommon at all with bad drives, I've encountered it several times.  Windows can be very awkward about that.

why i said noremally, not always 😉 

 

Yeah, anything in your system can potentionally slow down your machine. Like you said.

 

But as we don't know everything 100%, anything could be up in the air.

[Marujan]

1)bad RAM

2)bad SSD

3)bad PSU

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

Just now, Marujan said:

1)bad RAM

2)bad SSD

3)bad PSU

PSU normally fries your system when it goes bad, not freeze it. But yeah, either of the top 2, I agree.

[Not Pete]

Well I appreciate all the thoughts on this. I'm running memtest at the moment. The windows memory diagnostic found nothing. I also went ahead and ordered a new nvme, because of course this is a fantastic justification for an upgrade (whether it's the drive or not, right?)(actually, of it's something else I never figure out, I'll be needing more than just a drive).

 

So not to sound ungrateful, but I was hoping the particular errors that keep recurring would indicate more accurately what might be to blame, instead of just bad ram/SSD/power supply? All of these I've had happen in prior machines, and always with more dramatic failures like bsod or just d. 

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

5 minutes ago, Not Pete said:

So not to sound ungrateful, but I was hoping the particular errors that keep recurring would indicate more accurately what might be to blame, instead of just bad ram/SSD/power supply? All of these I've had happen in prior machines, and always with more dramatic failures like bsod or just d. 

It's called troubleshooting. We don't just say "this is your issue" 100% of the time. Mostly it is try this, try that. We don't have your computer in front of us.

[Not Pete]

That makes good sense of course, and I am indeed grateful for the input. Most of my prior problems as I mentioned were pretty catastrophic, without much error info to go on...and so the brute force hardware swap out was usually my only option. Since I finally had an error giving consistent data, I found myself getting excited about some fine-detail troubleshooting that produced an elegant/magical solution. Just frustrated I guess... Feel like I've done a lot of "fine detail" and am going to end up brute-forcing after all. Got a spare drive I could try. And power supply. 

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

28 minutes ago, Not Pete said:

That makes good sense of course, and I am indeed grateful for the input. Most of my prior problems as I mentioned were pretty catastrophic, without much error info to go on...and so the brute force hardware swap out was usually my only option. Since I finally had an error giving consistent data, I found myself getting excited about some fine-detail troubleshooting that produced an elegant/magical solution. Just frustrated I guess... Feel like I've done a lot of "fine detail" and am going to end up brute-forcing after all. Got a spare drive I could try. And power supply. 

Don't fret. We've all forgot standoffs on the bottom of our motherboard...

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

Have you tested the drives installed in the computer for errors?  If so, what were the results?

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

 

[Not Pete]

My silence on this was from awaiting the new NVME to arrive--and the happy ending to this story did include a new SSD and fresh windows install--no errors since.  Despite all my diagnostic efforts (chkdsk, etc all normal), seemed like luck was better afterall.  Thanks for all the idears, everyone.