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My personal laptop is constantly crashing without logging a useful error.

The PC is a ThinkPad T570 with an NVMe SSD, latest Bios and drivers, Windows 10 Pro 22H2 and generally running only Lenovo Vantage and Firefox when it crashes. I don’t get any useful Stop error in the event log nor do I get a memory dump since I get a volume manager error saying dump can’t be created.

The hardware passed a full UEFI diagnostic including an extensive memory test but threw on error on SMART test. Chkdsk and SFC both pass.

I most commonly crash when typing in a text box in Firefox but sometimes it will just crash 2 or 3 times immediately. The closest I came to a fix was fter updating from 21H2 to 22H2 it ran a disk check on reboot and stayed stable for two days before resuming “normal” BSOD.

Has anyone seen this, fixed this or have a suggestion?

39 Spice ups
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Typical SSD failure. Theory was proven when ChkDSk resolved the issue for a few days.

11 Spice ups
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PC or lappy ??

Set the lappy to use mini-dumps or even no dumps as 99% dumps are useless as it may take too long to write & set the lappy not to auto-reboot (this will allow you to see the BSOD message)

Most lappy “crash” due to overheating as fans or vents get clogged, CPU thermal paste worn-out or dried.

Sometimes its outdated or firmware issues causing false positives shut down at BIOS level (I have seen many recent Latitudes do that, but after Firmware update, all the affected lappy no more “blacking out”.

This lappy been out since 2017…already 5 yrs…if still under warranty, send for servicing

3 Spice ups
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Adding to what Don.W and adrian_ych suggested it is about 5 years old and is at the point where it is problems arise.

SSDs, as they age, do get more reallocated sectors when looked at with the SMART test and this is normal. If the SMART test is showing errors then what are they? I expect that you already know how to interpret SMART values but if not there are plenty of guides such as How to check your SSD's health and other stats | PCWorld . Certainly, I would be thinking about trying another SSD in the laptop

I believe that the warranty period on Lenovo is generally 3 years and so you are out of luck for that. Certainly a strip, clean and reapplication of a very thin layer thermal grease (or any grease for that matter) would not go amiss.

Does the fault happen if you leave it running in the BIOS setting pages and what temperatures are you seeing there?

Another check you could do is as a temporary test is to run the laptop from a Linux USB stick to see if you get a fault when using Firefox. If not then it it indicates that the SSD is your problem but if it does hang then the strip clean and thermal grease action is needed.

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Try running BlueScreenView, it can sometimes give you a better idea of the the cause of your BSOD.

It reads the log and breaks it down, you can get it here.

That being said, I will mirror everyone else in saying that a SMART error comes from storage so the SSD is likely the cause.

3 Spice ups
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Just for grins and giggles, have you tried using a different browser, or better yet, have you tried the “nuke and pave” approach?

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I was thinking other browser too. I was also thinking create a new user account in windows and see if FF crashes under the different user. If it doesn’t crash, perhaps it’s corrupted FF profile, or something in the FF profile? Or the %AppData% folder?

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Like the others, if you have firefox open during a BSOD, stop using firefox, go to chrome. if it continues with chrome then you know firefox is unrelated.

uninstall lenovo whatsit as you dont really need it and see what happens, if your machine still dies then replace the SSD and install a new windows and chrome and lenovo and see if it crashes if it doesn’t start to put your software back on until it either crashes or doesn’t. then you know it was the SSD.

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SMART errors are with the hard drive / ssd. sounds like the drive itself is going bad.

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In my PC shops days we often got hard to solve odd, weird and rare issues to solve. Usually issues the Techs can’t recreate too easily or at all. One such time a machine passed memtest, 24 hours no less. After a but more TS the tech left it on Memtest86 for DAYS, after a hundred and some or i think more likely a few hundred hours of passing, the screen started lighting up red and errors galore. It was faulty RAM still that could pass tests and stress tests.

Green don’t mean squat!!! I’ve seen bad hardware pass tests and diagnostics before. If your laptop was mine, i’d swap the power adapter, (sand the RAM slots with plain printer paper) RAM and SSD, firmware/bios/EC updates fresh thermal paste and clean install the OS all in one go …a la… “SHOTGUN” Troubleshooting. (meaning fi fixed you won’t know what fixed it) if it still did it then it’s either certain driver version of MS update or a junk piece of hard but, anymore everything is soldered to the motherboard. (in which case i’d go buy a Framework laptop)

EDIT: yeah a good place to start would be with an ice quality SSD. I like the samsung pro series, can deal with a little higher temps and has 5 year warranty

3 Spice ups
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I would focus on the drive.

First make sure everything you need is backed up.

I had similar weirdness and it was the 2 month old NVME drive slowly going bad. It was mostly unexplained slowdowns for me with occasional lockups. Switched back to the SATA SSD I had before that and the problems went away. Nothing in event viewer related to disk failures. You could maybe look into more advanced disk diagnostics.

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It’s your SSD (Hard Drive)

You Failed a SMART test and a Disk Check fixed for a couple days. These are tell tale signs it’s your storage media. Replace that storage drive, before you have a catastrophic failure.

If it makes you feel any better, you can run the SMART test, as supplied by your storage drive manufacturer. They each have their own diag test. (i.e. WD, Samsung, Crucial)

3 Spice ups
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Looks like you’re having SSD issues. See if you can clone it with a newer/faster/more reliable model.

2 Spice ups
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Thanks for all the responses, I had an error last night that specifically said SSD detect so I’m leaning more and more towards a failing M2 drive. I bought the machine used so no warranty and I’ve already replaced the batteries. I have tried Chrome but I’ve also had it crash with no apps open so I think Firefox is not the problem and hardware is.

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Have you tried to boot in safe mode?

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You’re not out of space on the drive?

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If you’re still scratching alternate ends on this and you have reliable spare, I would remove the drive and any available memory, and kick it into BIOS. Leave it there. If you come back after a few hours or days, it’s one of those two. Just to be sure, if the BIOS will let you do a memtest or some other busywork, kick that off before you go to work while the HD and mem is out of the unit.

I would also check to see if it tried to leave gracefully before leaving you wondering. It might be a voltage irregularity of some kind. If this thing has one of those daughterboards where the power is accepted, that critter could be your issue.

I think if it were me, much more work than this, and I’d be researching black friday ads…

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It could be the SSD as others have suggested, or it could be the SATA controller.

I’ve had a couple of laptops – one a Lenovo, one a Dell – that would occasionally exhibit similar behavior, and I traced it in both instances to the SATA controller. Sometimes, I had to let the machine cool down before restarting it.

With the Dell, it would start having the problem after a Windows 10 feature update. And I’d have the problem for 6 months until the next feature update came out, and then it would be fine. Until a future feature failed to fan the 'face and it would fail.

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I’ve just gone through exactly the same issue with a Dell desktop. It was the SSD failing. Swapped it out and no more problems.

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By way of a coda I got a new SSD, and after cloning failed, did a clean install. So far the constant BSOD is gone and it only crashed once early on so fingers crossed the controller is good because I really don’t want to deal with a motherboard swap

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