Computer Issues

[Caspian]

Got home last night to find my computer had restarted itself, gotten stuck and wanted a boot disk.
History: About a week ago I noticed I'd randomly lose certain sounds whilst playing FFXIV. Usually while I was crafting or harvesting. Sometimes music, sometimes sound effects, other times I'm mount my chocobo and disappear until I dismounted. Usually it would fix itself, sometimes I'd have to zone for it to start working properly. Then everything would freeze up, I'd get a blue screen, and it would restart. Starting about 4 days ago it would tell me that there was an error on the hard disk and I needed to back everything up and replace it. I chose to ignore this prompt (partially because I'm lazy, partially because I'm broke, and partially because there really isn't anything on there that's all that important or can't be reloaded during the course of one evening). Anyway, I get home last night and it won't load windows at all. I'll get the windows loading screen for about a minute or two then it will just restart itself and end up saying I need a boot disk.
Question 1: How would d/l'ing FFXIV and playing it way too much somehow cause an issue that would physically screw up my hdd?
Question 2: Would reloading windows fix it or do I need to just get a new hard drive? If I go hdd they're crazy cheap so its really not as big of a deal as I thought it would be before I looked and I can apparently even now got for ssd without breaking the bank.
Question 3: Will just replacing the drive fix this problem completely or is the culprit likely somewhere else and I'll be looking at major parts replacements in my immediate future?

If I go the ssd route, are any recommended over others? I'll probably eventually buy a backup hdd for storage but at the moment its not a real priority.

[Jarre]

Re: Computer Issues

Can you scan disk from the utilities or chkdsk to see if their are bad sectors on the drive or corrupt files?

[Caspian]

Re: Computer Issues

Can you scan disk from the utilities or chkdsk to see if their are bad sectors on the drive or corrupt files?

Not sure, I tried booting it in safe mode and it got stuck on chkdsk.
I'd do all that from Bios, yes?

[cidbahamut]

Re: Computer Issues

Question 1: How would d/l'ing FFXIV and playing it way too much somehow cause an issue that would physically screw up my hdd?

It wouldn't.
Even if it was there would likely be other people experiencing the same issue and documenting it somewhere on the internet.

Question 2: Would reloading windows fix it or do I need to just get a new hard drive? If I go hdd they're crazy cheap so its really not as big of a deal as I thought it would be before I looked and I can apparently even now got for ssd without breaking the bank.

If it's a hardware issue then formatting won't do anything to fix it. Given the problems you've been getting I'm inclined to believe it's a hardware issue of some sort.

Question 3: Will just replacing the drive fix this problem completely or is the culprit likely somewhere else and I'll be looking at major parts replacements in my immediate future?

More than likely it will fix the issue, and even if it doesn't harddrives are cheap enough that springing for some extra storage space won't be a huge investment pitfall. I'd be curious to know if the sound errors you experience crop up anywhere else or if they are exclusively found while playing games. I once had weird ass sound issues that were somehow connected to issues with a video card. It's an extremely remote possibility that doesn't make any sense, but it is on the table and you should be aware that shit like that can happen.

chkdsk is initiated in windows and then run at boot time. The BIOS will likely have some utilities of its own which may or may not actually help to diagnose the problem.

[Caspian]

Re: Computer Issues

Thanks guys, think I'll bite the bullet this weekend and get a new hdd to at least last me until I get around to ordering an ssd and upgrade to windows 7 or 8 (preferences?). Can always just use the new hdd for storage.

[cidbahamut]

Re: Computer Issues

There is absolutely no reason to subject yourself to Windows 8. Windows 7 is rock solid and a more user friendly experience. It'll also outlast Windows 8.

[Malacite]

Re: Computer Issues

Unless for some reason you LIKE using a Tablet UI on a desktop...

[cidbahamut]

Re: Computer Issues

In which case you're a mad person and should just buy a tablet instead.

[Firewind]

Re: Computer Issues

Windows 8 has no RAM limitations and has far better compatibility with Direct X 11.1. It's also slightly cheaper. The UI is garbage though.

[Malacite]

Re: Computer Issues

So what? Generally speaking 12 GB is the most you'll ever need, unless you intend to stream & record live games like I do in which case the more the better (or if you do a lot of heavy video editing)

Besides, IIRC, Win 7 64-bit has a max of 32 GB RAM?

[Aeni]

Re: Computer Issues

Caspian's problem isn't directly tied to FFXIV but I can see that it could be a result of just using your computer a lot more than you'd otherwise would have if you never played any kind of online game. The disk activity with many MMORPGs are really taxing, much more so than most other kinds of games, so the HDD will be accessed frequently. If you have power-saving mode enabled, this makes it even more stressful, as your HDD is constantly stopping, going, stopping, going over and over again. Either set your sleep mode to something like 30 minutes of disk inactivity or disable it entirely (I believe it's defaulted to 5 min but don't quote me on that)

You should also look into a more robust HDD and install Intel's Disk Monitoring software to be on top of the health of your drives as it's a lot accurate in predicting faults and failures. WD came out with NAS drives (Their Red series) and that might be more better suited for gaming than their other series, like the Blue, Green and Black. Not sure about other brands and their level of fault tolerance and robustness.

[Firewind]

Re: Computer Issues

So what? Generally speaking 12 GB is the most you'll ever need, unless you intend to stream & record live games like I do in which case the more the better (or if you do a lot of heavy video editing)

Besides, IIRC, Win 7 64-bit has a max of 32 GB RAM?

I was just listing the Pros of Windows 8. Honestly very few applications even need that much RAM and even if you required it, you would have built a specialist computer for it anyway.

[Caspian]

Re: Computer Issues

Caspian's problem isn't directly tied to FFXIV but I can see that it could be a result of just using your computer a lot more than you'd otherwise would have if you never played any kind of online game. The disk activity with many MMORPGs are really taxing, much more so than most other kinds of games, so the HDD will be accessed frequently. If you have power-saving mode enabled, this makes it even more stressful, as your HDD is constantly stopping, going, stopping, going over and over again. Either set your sleep mode to something like 30 minutes of disk inactivity or disable it entirely (I believe it's defaulted to 5 min but don't quote me on that)

You should also look into a more robust HDD and install Intel's Disk Monitoring software to be on top of the health of your drives as it's a lot accurate in predicting faults and failures. WD came out with NAS drives (Their Red series) and that might be more better suited for gaming than their other series, like the Blue, Green and Black. Not sure about other brands and their level of fault tolerance and robustness.

Weird part is this is the same rig I used for raiding in WoW for a couple years, never happened before.
Thanks for the tip about checking the sleep mode, I'll look at it when I get a new hdd installed this weekend.
I'll look for the red series this weekend. I'm looking at a fairly inexpensive Seagate that Best Buy has (I don't want to wait on shipping and I rediscovered a couple gift cards I have for there the other day) but I'll check on something a little more robust since it will likely be relegated to storage once I get an ssd and a new version of Windows. (I knew Windows 8's UI was bad, didn't know how much it had changed since 8.1)

[cidbahamut]

Re: Computer Issues

I was just listing the Pros of Windows 8. Honestly very few applications even need that much RAM and even if you required it, you would have built a specialist computer for it anyway.

More accurately you'd build a server or a cluster.

[Malacite]

Re: Computer Issues

If MMOs are that taxing on HDDs, what about SSDs? No moving parts, but won't it eat into the shelf life of the thing much more steeply?